GW2 Video Reception!

As you may have read earlier, I put together a time lapse video during the last Beta Weekend. (If you don't know, well then you should go check it out because apparently the whole internet is talking about it!)

Wow! First off I couldn't be more happy with some of the comments I'm getting. You people are amazing! And secondly, 16,200 views in 4 days is no laughing matter! I had an idea that people would like what I was putting together, but this goes way beyond what I could have imagined. So thank you to everyone who's watched, reposted, shared, talked about, or in any other way contributed to spreading my video around the internet. You are all gentlemen (or women) and scholars. I salute you.

Also, I figured I'd take this opportunity to answer a few questions that keep popping up.

How do you hide your character in a screenshot?
Hopefully ArenaNet will change this and allow for a first person view mode, but if they don't it's actually quite simple. 1) Type /sleep. 2) Zoom in the camera a little. 3) Your character should now be hidden. If your character is still in the screenshot you may have to play with the viewing angle a little so they are hidden, but it shouldn't take much. I've found that using a Human works best since out of all the races right now they're the smallest and the Charr's horns have a nasty habit of getting into your screenshots regardless what you do to hide them.

How did you take that many screenshots!?
I used a handy program called chronolapse. It's super easy to setup and you can set it to take a screenshot at whatever time interval you want. Then you set a folder you want it to save the screenshots to and voila! There you have it! 10,000 screenshots, every 3 seconds, all saved in one place!

On the usability side I did find out that in order for chronolapse to actually work right you have to set Guild Wars 2 to "Fullscreen Windowed" mode, under screen resolution, otherwise for whatever reason chronolapse will just take screenshots of your desktop, which is very much not what I want everyone looking at. Also, once I had taken all the screenshots I did reorganize them so that each location was separated into it's own folder, this made for putting the final video together a lot easier since I could edit each segment individually instead of having to cut up one clip a bunch (23 to be exact) times.

Why did you take screenshots instead of video?
The short answer is: I wanted to save disc space. 10,000 screenshots comes out to about 2GB, whereas 8hours of uncompressed 1080p video is on the upwards of 1.4 TERABYTES!

The long answer is: If I'm taking 1080p video at 30fps and then speeding it up to the rate at which I made the time lapse I would effectively be cutting 89 of every 90 frames out of the videos. That's a lot of wasted footage. If you do the math, 8 hours of video is 864,000 frames and I would only be actually using 10,000 of those. So instead of wasting all those (854,000) frames, I chose to cut out the middle man and just go straight for the screenshots. This speeds up the editing process, since I'm using smaller file sizes (2GB of screenshots instead of 1.4TB of videos), and I don't have all this extra footage wasting my disc space that will eventually just end up on the cutting room floor.

Where is this Sylvari area?
It's in the southwest corner of Kessex Hills. Lychcroft Mere.

In the end all I have to say to everyone is:

Thank you for your support and yes I will definitely be making more videos down the road.

GW2: The Beauty of Tyria

For this Beta Weekend Event I decided to do something a little bit different.

I made a time lapse showcasing Tyria, and how amazing the land is to look at. I realized that I'll have plenty of time to play the game later, and since all this effort to level up and build my characters will eventually be wiped it made since to take a more casual approach to enjoying the BWE. This way I could have something of value to take away from the BWE that's more than just a couple screenshots, or some shiny new shoulders. And you can enjoy it too.

The one thing I didn't think about, but got a good kick out of once I started putting together all of my footage, is how often people would unsuspectingly photobomb my video. In the actual video you hardly notice them, but some of them are quite funny if you take them completely out of context.

GW2 Gearing up for BWE2

Now that ArenaNet has posted what we'll be able to see and do in this coming Beta Weekend Event the question arises as to what will you ACTUALLY do?

With all this new content you could spend the entire weekend crafting, exploring and fighting bandits without even stepping foot into the new PvP content. Likewise, it's entirely possible for you to spend your entire time locked in brutal combat with the newly added sPvP tournament mode. Will your team be victorious, or will you be crushed by your foes? But perhaps, it fits your fancy to go look into the explorable Ascalon Catacombs and spend all your time vanquishing the newly formed ghosts of olde?

I know I for one haven't spent nearly enough time with sPvP and WvWvW content so I'm definitely going to make sure to at least do a tournament or two, and find out what this Dark Room they speak of has to offer. I do love tricks and traps. Also, I've finally gotten my rig set up for recording video (sorry no streaming yet) so I've definitely got some plans for a steady flow of content after the beta has run its course. Expect glorious screenshots and battle reports at the very least!

Which means if you've got any ideas on what you'd like to see feel free to let me know! My Mesmer would be more than happy to risk life and limb for you.

GW and Mesmers. A short history pt.1

I've realized that I'm developing a common theme among my posts. It's definitely Guild Wars, and probably Mesmers. I don't want go and say that for sure all I'm going to write about is Mesmers, but given that's what I have the most direct experience with right now, I'm going to make the most of it and work towards developing this trend. So let's get started properly and work through a some lessons on Mesmers for those of you who are new to the Guild Wars universe, or for those of you who have been here a little while and are only just now considering rolling a Mesmer. In this first installment we're going to go back in time and take a brief look at Mesmer background and history and how they pertained to Guild Wars from the start.

First of all: What are Mesmers, exactly?

In as few words as possible the Mesmer is an Arcane Trickster, my single favorite class description of all time. It gets right to the point. They're not Elementalists, or Mages but they are magic users. At the same time they're also deceivers intent on causing confusion and misdirection. They do damage, but not directly. They have plenty of hexes, but usually the hex comes with a caveat. Something like, the hex will only work if your foe performs and action, or doesn't, or whatever. Though their amazing interrupts and energy denial made them a staple in the PvP format. You can, of course, make a Mesmer revolve around doing direct spike damage and that furthered their roles in structured PvP, but even the Mesmer spike relied on your target having energy to deal it's damage. If your target could hide their energy then most of the spike tended to fall short.

Mesmers: Tyria's Neglected Child.

All these factors served to increase the confusion of  "why bring a Mesmer" specifically in a PvE situation it didn't make sense to bring a character who could only deal damage under certain circumstances. Even with all their usefulness the Mesmer tended to be very contextual. Mesmers were a class that was complex by nature and the massive pool ArenaNet had developed with their skill system (1319 total skills to be exact, of which a player could use any 8 from 2 different professions. Giving them anywhere from 222 to 281 skills to pick from at any given them) only worked to compound this complexity. Furthermore there wasn't typically something that a Mesmer could do that another class couldn't also do. After all, with the secondary class system anyone could take a Mesmer skill if they wanted. And in PvE, when the goal is to kill mobs as quickly as possible, people usually just went for the damage. It just made more sense.

You tank the mob, you heal the tank, you kill the mob.

A Mesmer was a big question mark in that equation. On their own, were too niche to handily fit into the standard Holy Trinity template. They were great for soloing, and specific builds, but general PvE didn't have a place to fit them in. Mesmers were almost too specific of a class.


If you're interested in some deeper reading on the Mesmer's lack of a role in PvE I suggest this post, it's quite lengthy but it goes into great detail on the issue.

Introducing ... Hard Mode.

Turn the clocks forward to the Hard Mode update. The days of Normal Mode and mass nuking were over. Previously all that the party needed was tanking, healing, and damage. They could clump up the mobs and decimate them all in one swoop. Elementalists were great at that. The introduction of Hard Mode improved monster AI dramatically, and increased their health and damage. Packs of mobs no longer stayed clumped up under meteor storms. They would scatter and avoid damage. Nuking, in the old sense, was no now impossible.

The group now needed a way to control the mobs as well, mitigate damage, reduce their healing, and shut them down. So much so that if you're going to run any Hard Mode PvE content today you'll always want to consider including Mesmers. It turns out that the way most Mesmer abilities worked made them perfectly suited to exploit Hard Mode and the mobs' increased attack speed and altered AI. Since Mesmers had always done damage best whenever mobs performed actions, now that they were performing actions 33% faster it meant that the mobs were actually now killing themselves 33% faster as well. It became a perfect situation for Mesmers to flourish. Then take into account Mesmer's amazing interrupts, they became crucial to killing any mob that had a lot of healing potential. The Mesmer could shut down the healer and the rest of the group could do their job and finish off the pack.

That's where it turns out the Mesmer fit in after all, by controlling how and when their foes perform actions. When you can't act, you can't fight, and when you can't fight, you die.

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I hope you enjoyed this short lesson on Mesmers. In the next part I'll be looking at the new Mesmer and how she fits into the Guild Wars 2 universe.

GW2 A look back at Ascalon Catacombs

In case you've been living under a rock for the last couple years it might be worth pointing out that Guild Wars 2 has done a few things to the typical MMO party dynamic (you probably already knew that). But with the recent Beta Weekend Event, and Stress Test we've all finally gotten a first hand look on how these new dynamics actually affect the standard MMO structure, which for some of us couldn't have come soon enough. For the last 5 years I've been on the perpetual Guild Wars merry-go-round in wait for this foretold sequel. I definitely had my ups (finally completing a Vabbian armor set) and downs (solo vanquishing Cantha... definitely never doing that again) so this breath of fresh Tyrian air was a more than welcome change to the constant grind random arenas had to offer.

Fortunately enough for me not only did I have the entire weekend free, I managed to stumble into a beta guild with enough like minded (over zealous level grinders) to be able to test our might against the Ascalon Catacombs early on in the weekend and get an even deeper look at how party dynamics had been completely thrown upside down.

First of all our group consisted of: Necromancer, Necromancer, Mesmer (me), Engineer, Elementalist (I guess you could add Rytlock Brimstone, and Eir Stegalkin as well since they do help you out quite a bit) but the first thing you would probably notice is that we didn't have a tank. Not even remotely. Our heaviest armor was on the Engineer and he's a ranged support class. Also worth pointing out, the engineer, elementalist and I were all slightly under leveled for the Catacombs. It's a level 30 dungeon and we were 26, 27 and 28 respectively, but given that the necromancers were slightly over leveled (32, 33) we figured we'd give it a shot and see if we couldn't send some ghosts to their ultimate end.

And we did. Eventually.

The run started out a little rocky as everyone was trying to figure out their class and how to work as a proper team. The question was even brought up, before the first boss, if we should just abandon ship and try again some other time. We even wiped 3 times on the first staircase. So far things were not going smoothly.

I get the feeling that a lot of initial groups in Guild Wars 2 will run through the same problem. You see GW2 isn't the typical "tank and spank" that we've all gotten so used to, and the mobs often hit hard, like 2-shotting caster classes hard. You can't stand around and watch the pretty lightis. The priest is not going to heal you up, and the tank is not going to magically taunt the aggro off of you. At first glance it would appear that you have the distinct responsibility of looking after yourself, but eventually it becomes more than apparent that the best way to take care of yourself is, in fact, to look after everyone else instead.

And once the whole party realizes that everything just starts working.

This isn't some weird, hippie, everyone heals each other drum circle. It's a unique and dynamic control system where each of the classes uses their strengths in a way to complement the rest of the group. For instance, as a Mesmer, I figured that my strengths were in confusion, interruption, and misdirection. I could best support the party through my ability to stun, cripple, fear, and daze mobs. My primary goal, it turned out, was not to deal direct damage, but instead to prevent and redirect damage and Mirrored Feedback was a spectacular way to do that. Not only could I keep ranged mobs from hitting any of us I could actually redirect their arrows back and turn their attacks into our attacks. Then if they were still alive I could daze and stun them further preventing those pesky ghosts from doing much of anything.

I can't even recall when I came to this epiphany. It may have been lingering in the back of my head the whole time and I just needed the right moment to realize it, but it appeared that the rest of the party came to this realization at around the same time. The fights kept going better and better that by the time we got to Master Ranger Nente he was a total pushover. This dynamic is something distinct to GW2. The fights can be complete chaos, but at the same time there's a distinct and underlying level of control. It's this orchestrated chaos that made the Ascalon Catacombs the most stressful, dramatic, fun, and rewarding dungeon run I've ever had the chance to complete. Everyone in the party, without any instruction or communication, somehow begins to know exactly what they're supposed to be doing. And there's instances (I'm looking at you Lovers) where it feels like nothing goes right and still by what would seem to be some form of divine intervention the fight ends up in success.

We were dropping like flies, slowly chipping away at Vassar's health, getting pounded by Ralena's lightning storms and managing to just barely keep the party afloat by the slimmest of margins. Naturally though, with Vassar at a sliver of life, everyone drops dead. And we think, "Well this might just be the end of it. Good job team but let's throw in the towel." I can only hazzard a guess, it might have been Eir, or her dog, or maybe one of the necromancers managed to run back just in time to keep Vassar in combat, but by some miracle when I had returned to the fight Vassar was still on a sliver of life and dying rapidly. Everyone was alive again (you see you can revive at a waypoint and run back to the fight if you want) and in mere moments Vassar was dead and all that left was to clean up the vaporal body of Ralena. I think during the entire ordeal there was only one line of text written between the whole group.

"Res at the waypoint. Run back."

After that King Adelbern's death was all but written in stone. Our team had come together and even without a true tank there was no spirit in the Ascalon Catacombs that could defeat us.

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also, special thanks to Syp over at Bio Break for mentioning my blog in his NBI post today. The Newbie Blogger Initiative is a great system that he's developed and I'm delighted to be able to take part in it.

GW2 Rumor to start your week

File this under 'unsubstantiated rumors' but I figure I'd bring it to your attention all the same.

Usually the first thing I do when I get up is check Google reader and get up to date on what's rumor milling around the internet and surprisingly the things have been relatively quiet these days. That was until I loaded up the GW2 beta client and it started downloading something.

See for yourself.

Noted, the download was pretty small. Somewhere in the realm of 35-40mb. And the content text from last week's Stress Test hadn't changed, but could this be a sign of an upcoming Beta Weekend Event? Possibly. We do know that during the first BWE the beta clients from earlier were updating as much as 2 days before the client was released to the public and we also know that ArenaNet has stated that they're aiming to have a BWE once a month. While last Monday's stress test was fun and all it wasn't a BWE, and factor in that there's only one weekend left in May, so if ArenaNet want's to keep up to their word it reasons to believe there's a good chance of a BWE this coming weekend.

Though, as I'd mentioned at the start, this is all just unsubstantiated guessing.

In the meantime you should go check out GW2Guru. There's an awesome post showing all the armor sets we know of. It's great eye candy.

UPDATE: There was a post on the GW2 Facebook a little bit ago regarding BWE and their frequency. I think this part gets to the point:

"We're going to adhere to a monthly schedule as much as feedback and development allow, so it may be a little more or a little less each time, depending on how things progress. For now, we will have more information on upcoming Beta Weekend Events and stress tests as soon as we're able, and we thank each of you for being an important part of the creation of Guild Wars 2. ~RB2"

So while it's possible that there might be a BWE this coming weekend, I'm definitely not going to get my hopes up.

GW2 The value of 100%

I'm hooked! It's like drug. I just have to do it. After I finished Queensdale there was no turning back. I've become a completionist.

I'm a perfectionist, maybe it's my biggest flaw, so when I get a reminder every time I zone of how much of an area I have left to complete I always have the nagging urge to get that one last heart, or find that final way point. It's a nice reminder though, Guild Wars 2 doesn't force you to do anything if you don't want to and there's no rush either. Completing a zone in 15minutes won't get you any extra rewards and the journey to 100% is where all the fun is anyway. 

For example, I was on my way to get the last heart in Diessa Plateau and ran across this guy laying waste to the Town of Nageling. There was a number of Charr, Norn, and Humans all working together to fend off the giant and many of them were already dead on the ground by the time I showed up. A dynamic event like this, with it's promises of loot, experience, karma, and gold is just too hard to pass up. How could I not help out? After all, I am the awesome level 33 Mesmer who vanquished the Centaur Horde from Kessex Hills. Lending a hand is my duty.

For my troubles was rewarded with a badass sword. It had +condition damage, great DPS and since I was in dire need of replacing the crap sword I had been running around with for what seemed like an eternity, well I couldn't have been happier.

Did I mention the sword was badass? Just look at the spikes.

The crazy part is that to get 100% in Diessa Plateau the Champion Giant is totally optional, and yet completely necessary. Having a "questing structure" (I don't know if I should even call it that, you never actually accept a quest apart from your personal story) that creates habitual exploration like Guild Wars 2 has done means that by venturing out to complete a zone you feel obliged to help every little villager who's running into an issue. You're a spectacular hero saving the lands from subjugation and ruin, and by doing so getting handsomely rewarded in the process.

Oh and if that wasn't reason enough, once you finally do get that coveted 100% the Tyrian Explorer's Society mails you gold, and loot, and praise. It's all win and I'm loving every obsessive moment of it.

GW2 What is your story?

ArenaNet recently posted an amazing story about the real world inspiration for Ameranth, a Sylvari NPC who's decided to venture every corner of Tyria. They mention that you can find her outside of The Black Citadel, which is definitely true. I stumbled across this particular Sylvari during the beta and was definitely curious why she was standing there on the steps of the Charr fortress. Not only was she completely across the continent, the towering structures of iron and flame were a massive contrast to the Sylvari standing at their steps. The designers have definitely put quite some time into polishing the GW2 world and living up to their claim to create a living and breathing Tyria.

To think that it's entirely possible that there could be any number of other characters in GW2 who have been inspired by such stores is great. We already know that the ArenaNet team is going to great lengths to build community for GW2, and given that they've said that they will be making sure to add post-launch content there's no question that any other stories or events worthy of praise could get included into the game with ease. They even go on to add that anyone could go out and have a similarly epic real life quest. You don't have to be superman, you just need to get up and walk out the door. ArenaNet keeps asking in GW2 "What is your story?" maybe now is the time to find out. After all, you could be next to be immortalized into Tyria, forever standing as a hero against the Elder Dragons.