GW2 The BWE Downtime Game

As many of you have already read this morning ArenaNet announced that the next BWE will be from June 8th-11th and there's some interesting bits in there that should be of interest to you. Particularly all your characters will be kept.

I find this to be great news because after spending 30+ hrs building up a Mesmer over the course of the last BWE and Stress Test I would hate to have to do it all over again. Of course I totally would do it all over again, and probably take the opportunity to explore some different options starting out. Maybe go through the Charr story instead. I really fell in love with their starting area when I was exploring around and just having fun. Their dynamic events have a particular flavor to them that's really fun and unique. You're definitely not going to find little human kids running around commenting on how badass they are when you kill ghosts for them.

With that in mind, I can't wait to see what the Asura and Sylvari zones have to offer. I've been gripped by the Sylvari lore since they were first announced and was planning on making one even before they became even more awesome. I just hope we don't have to wait too long to get a chance to see what they have to offer. And all this waiting has really gotten me thinking what to do in all this GW2 downtime? I'm not going to pony up for Diablo 3 right now because, well frankly I don't have the money, but that's besides the point. I know that once GW2 launches I'm just going to shelve everything else anyway so I don't really think it's a great idea to go and buy a bunch of stuff potentially months before you stop playing it entirely.

So I've been picking up hobbies, like blogging, for example, and I've been watching SC2 streams over at TeamLiquid. As well as chugging through the Brutal campaign in SC2. Sometimes that campaign just feels like you're smashing your head into a brick wall. It's like a test in how much of a masochist you are. Honestly, I don't think it's really worth it, but it's something to keep me entertained in the meantime. I'm also going through and finishing up Playthrough #2 of Borderlands. I've built up a SMG Siren to the point that almost nothing poses much of a threat though, so it's really more to get some kind of FPS kick than anything else. There's a few Achievements I have left to get, but the Underdome is retarded and I don't really feel like spending 16hrs of arena grinding to get 4 more achievements.

Vanilla GuildWars has always had a special interest for me so I log back in there from time to time, but given that I've already gotten 40/50 in my HoM I've almost entirely retired my character to playing dollhouse with all the armor sets I've collected and screwing around in Random Arenas from time to time. And with the gargantuan time commitment I'd have to invest in order to get another 5 HoM points it's one of those things that I'm really not interested in anymore.

What have you been doing in this downtime? Are you still working on finishing up your HoM? Or is there something entirely different that's been keeping your attention? I hear a lot of people have been logging back into old favorites to pass the time.

Page Questing

I feel like I'm on a quest, but all the objectives are hidden. I have this overall goal, talking about gaming, or MMOs,  or something... Though, there aren't exactly any flagstones that say what to do, so I'm just going to talk about whatever I feel like, and maybe it'll be worth reading (maybe not... either way the content will probably be interesting). Hopefully I can keep this updated with some kind of frequency.

I sure do play enough games, mostly MMOs but I'm also huge into StarCraft, as well as various FPS titles (Portal, TF2, Borderlands, Halo...), so I'll probably have a little bit of a unique gaming perspective given that I pretty much try to play everything I can so long as it's fun. I've spent the most of my time divided between WoW and Guild Wars, but my entire highschool life was deep in StarCraft: Broodwar and Warcraft3 so I have a fairly good grasp of the RTS genera as well, especially on the competitive end.

Recently I'm starting to lean heavily towards Guild Wars 2, so that's definitely going to be a primary focus around here once it goes live. It's an awesome game, definitely go check it out if you haven't already. Though if that's not your fancy don't worry I plan to discuss a lot more than just GW2.

Deckard Cain said it best, "Stay a while and listen."

You might get rewarded.