Guild Wars: A Journey

Good Times

Chapter 5: A New Beginning (December 20th, 2005 to January 29th, 2006)

Wintersday 2005

    After searching all of my hard drives and through thousands of screenshots, I still can not find most of my pictures from the Sorrow's Furnace update and of Wintersday. Sometime in the latter half of December I returned to Guild Wars. I was amazed to find everything decorated for the holidays. Ascalon City, Lion's Arch, and Droknar's Forge were all covered in snow and full of Christmas cheer. I was also quickly dismayed to find out that I had missed out in the Halloween celebrations, and most of all, the pumpkin hat that came with it. Oh well, you snooze you lose I guess. I was back in plenty of time at least to be able to fully enjoy the Wintersday festivals.

    Since I had missed Halloween, I really was surprised that Arena Net really went all out and redecorated whole towns, added in new holiday items, added in holiday games, and created new quests as well. I was amused by people picking up packages that appeared around town only to be quickly killed by a Grentch. The holiday quests were so-so, but that was to be expected since they were just for show. I made sure to collect plenty of Candy Cane Shards and turn them in to the Candysmith so that I could have one of each of the Candy weapons. I even used those weapons on occasion for new characters since there were no requirements on them. I even tried out the snowball fight and enjoyed that for a short period of time. It started out fun but it didn't take long for the "hardcore" players to run in there and turn it into some kind of serious competition. The exact opposite of what it was supposed to be...

    Finally the big day arrived when Dwayna battled Grenth for supporters to decide whether or not the world would remain in the bitter grips of winter. The players quickly developed their own odd/even system to divide the districts into Dwayna and Grenth zones so that everyone knew ahead of time where to go to grab the hat they desired. Naturally my Monk supported Dwayna and got herself a spiffy Yule Cap to go on her head. Eventually though she "accidently" wandered into a Grenth district and picked up the horns as well. It had been clearly evident for a long time now that I favored my Monk over all of my other characters. But Wintersday made it official when I never even gave it much thought to get hats for anyone but my Monk. While my Elementalist will always be my first "real" character (I don't really count that very short lived first character), my Monk was by far my favorite to play and idle on.

    On the first of January my Monk was doing participating in the usual Dance-And-Reject-Invites when she met some people I would eventually spend the next several months playing with. I had never joined a guild before and this was the closest I ever came by participating in countless guild groups to help people complete missions. I never really saw the need to join a guild since I could just as easily add people to the Friends list and whisper whenever I wanted to organize something. Furthermore, I have very little interest in Player versus Player, eliminating the need for a guild for certain PvP matches. To this day I have never joined a guild, although I have been thinking about it...just to give it a try.

Player Versus Player

    I have never been a fan of PvP. I buy role playing games to play a role in a story, not to beat up other players while spewing nonsense about how much they suck. On rare occasion though I have dabbled in PvP out of shear boredom. Sometime in early January I got tired of my Ranger and deleted her. I then made another Warrior in her place. While I don't like melee characters, I thought I didn't give the Warrior a fair enough chance. This Warrior would get her chance and then some, as I still have this character today. One day I was playing on my Warrior and decided to stop by the Ascalon Arena. As usual when I PvP I was extremely bored. I entered the arena at level 10 and didn't expect much in the way of entertainment. Most of the fights were mundane, one of the teams would happen to be filled with terrible players and the other with good players. The good team wins of course and keeps feeding off of the bad teams until they break up or happen along the rare good versus good matchup.

    One match was different though. Our group consisted of an over-confident level 5 necromancer, a level 10 ranger, me, and a level 8 monk. The necromancer kept saying how good his build was during our matches. While it may have been good, it didn't help us any since he was dead most of the time. It took some effort but we managed to put together two wins in a row before facing a group that had two damage dealers and two monks. Tried as we did we just could not overcome the healing power of the other team. My other three teammates all died and my poor Warrior was left to fend for herself.

    Before this match I had read many tales online of irritating warriors in random arenas that would use mending and sprint to run around forever until the other team gave up and quit. This often worked because random people generally did not bring enchantment removals or crippling skills. My Warrior had never tried anything like that before, but she did have Mending and Sprint on her skill bar. Maybe she could pull off a miracle...

    I quickly used Sprint and off I went, fleeing the battle scene. The opposing party quickly chased after me but could not keep up with my speed. I was in luck, they had no crippling or enchantment removals. They tried everything from trapping me to wearing me down. One time they almost had me when I stopped to try to resurrect a teammate. I had to stop in mid-cast and quickly flee before I died. I didn't try that again. After fifteen minutes of me running two of them finally gave up. Unfortunately for me, two of my teammates quit as well (probably out of disgust). This left me and the dead necromancer to face off against two monks. Now it became a waiting game. Me and the necromancer could not out-damage the monk's healing abilities and the monks could not do enough damage to do any real harm to me. After awhile we all stopped fighting each other and played around with emotes. We also carried on conversations and stood right next to each other without conflict.

    But then something happened. I noticed one of the monks seemed to not be paying attention anymore. I immediately pounced on this opportunity and attacked the monk, killing him before the other monk even had a chance to respond. As soon as I did that the second monk immediately began to use a resurrection spell but I would have none of that! I used Disrupting Chop on that monk. Check. Mate. It took 57 minutes and 33 seconds to earn that third victory, but it was an experience I won't soon forget.

    A week later my Warrior, now level 20, was bored again and decided to enter the Random Arenas. As usual I generally either lost or won once before being quickly wiped out in the second match. But eventually I came upon a group that worked quite well together. It consisted of a W/R20, a Mo/R20, a N/Me20, and my Warrior. We easily crushed team after team, most of them being flawless victories. No matter the arena and no matter the format, we just kept winning. Finally we racked up 11 consecutive wins which still stands as my best PvP outing ever. Unfortunately on our 12th match we came across a team that was just slightly better. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Some Firsts

     Most of the next few months were spent doing one of three things: idling at Hell's Precipice on my monk, helping friends or friends of friends, or working on whatever new characters I felt like creating. No matter what I did though I was usually busy talking, helping, or playing with a bunch of other people. It was a good time for me and finally having a lot of other people to play with made the game much more enjoyable than how I spent my first few months playing, generally alone. I even start using my latest Necromancer that I had forgotten about since last August.

    One day my Monk was bored so she decided to help a random group at Fort Ranik. Considering the ease of the mission she just slapped mending on everyone and used smiting skills to kill enemies. About halfway through the mission though she killed a Charr Stalker and it dropped a vial of dye for her. Black dye! Since then I have collected 8 Black Dyes. Just 8 dyes in 29+ months of playing. Rare indeed.

    A point of interest in January was the corruption of the Tombs of the Primeval Kings. Once a PvP area (which I avoided), it was now transformed into a PvE area overrun with evil. My Monk explored the region and managed to make it as far as halfway through the second area with henchies before failing. She then joined a group of friends and beat it handily. As usual though everyone in the group ended up with a green weapon except me. I had terrible luck.

    Near the end of January my Warrior is bored one day and decides to try to run Elona Reach. It turns out to be easier than expected. She did have a little trouble with the second crystal due to the placements of enemies and the close proximities of those crippling traps. She almost died but she always managed to sprint out of range just in time. The third crystal was easier to get as the area was more wide open. She made a respectable time for a first try. Well done Warrior!