Guild Wars: A Journey

Good Times

Chapter 7: Current Events (February 14th, 2006 to April 27th, 2006)

Mesmerizing

    As I had planned, I filled the void left by my departed Elementalist with the creation of a Mesmer. To somewhat honor the memory of my Elementalist, I decided to actually play through the game and complete each mission unlike most of my more recent characters. I enjoy magic-user characters a lot more than melee characters and I enjoyed playing with my Mesmer but I never really found a specific build or role that allowed my Mesmer to shine. My skillbar looked almost exactly the same through the entire game with Empathy and Backfire being my skills of choice. I never could become good at interrupting because my reflexes and my computer were not fast enough to allow me to interrupt anything with a casting time of less than two seconds.

    I was feeling bad about my decision to delete my Elementalist because I was just not having as much fun on my Mesmer. I almost didn't want to play her. But with some dedication and the company of friends I stayed focused and progressed through the game at a decent clip. I left my secondary as elementalist throughout the game in part as remembrance to my Elementalist and in part because I originally thought about being a fast casting nuker on occasion. Another important reason for choosing elementalist as my secondary was to get away from using Rebirth as a crutch. All of my previous characters started with or eventually became monk secondary just for Rebirth. Rebirth was a great way to recover from mistakes but it allowed players to be sloppy.  

    Even nearly a year after release there were still a large number of people who swore that Thunderhead Keep was impossible to hench without either a monk primary or monk secondary. The thinking behind this was that the monk henchmen were not able to keep the king alive, therefore a non-monk would have to have a monk secondary in order to bring a few spells to heal the king. Enter my Mesmer/Elementalist.

    It was nearly a month since I first successfully henched Thunderhead Keep. The mission had lost much of its intimidation. However, after hearing over and over that henching without healing was suicide, I considered changing my secondary to monk just to make sure I could beat it. But I was feeling too confident for that. I would give it a shot as a Me/E. I would prove the nay-sayers wrong.

    My approach was simple. I went with nearly the same skills as I always used plus a ward for added defense. I took extra care when aggroing mobs and made sure to kill anything that posed even a slight threat to the king. The fort area turned out to be slightly hectic as I often double or even triple aggrod the tighty packed Stone Summit mobs. But good ol' King Jalis Ironhammer remained alive. Mhenlo and Lina had done their job so far. When it came time to camp the king I made sure to keep close to the stairs so that I could intercept the Mursaat before they even came close to aggroing the king. I made a mistake on the Mursaat boss on my first try that caused a party wipe but I managed to successfully hench Thunderhead Keep on my second try. No monk secondary required.

Monks on Strike

    During my Monks' frequently idling at Hell's Precipice she came across a lot of monks that were tired of being mistreated by bad groups and those who blamed the monk for all of their failings. It was common for a warrior to aggro several mobs at once only to blame the monk when he died. Monks were always in high demand and yet they were often treated as if they were indebted to any group that demanded they join. By the time February '06 came around it was more and more common for monks to gather around in high-end missions to simply dance or chat, ignoring anyone who invited them. It became common to see half a dozen monks dancing on the bloodstone at Hell's Precipice while scores of people cussed and pouted because they wouldn't join their groups.

    On February 20th Hell's Precipice had so many monks that they could very well just form their own party and forget everyone else. After about an hour of standing around and chatting my Monk along with six other monks did just that. We formed our own group and announced to the rest of the outpost that we would do the mission without them. After discussing each players' role and what build they would use, and after we grabbed Lina because we were one monk short, we entered the mission, our group of eight monks.

    Despite our planning and the confidence we had in ourselves, we were not sure what to expect. Our adventure turned out to be one of the easiest trips to Hell's Precipice that I ever had or have had since. We had monks to heal, we had monks to protect, we had monks to bond, we had monks to smite and we had monks to use their secondary skills. There were times when our progress was somewhat slow but we were taking so little damage and having so much fun that it was hardly noticeable.

    After we reached the portal area we decided to pause for a moment to pose for a screenshot. One of our monks had to leave but even with a party of seven we hardly missed a beat. The mission proceeded flawlessly until we reached the Lich, when we made some minor mental mistakes (probably out of over-confidence) that led to a couple of deaths. But we regrouped and finished off the Lich with no further trouble. The monk party was a success. Monks are indebted to no one.

    Just days later on the 24th some members of the group moved on to help form the monk strike that was staged at Thunderhead Keep. My Monk merely went there to witness the spectacle (she had no reason to strike since she rarely helped people anyways). Scores of monks converged on Thunderhead Keep to complain about their treatment and to announce their refusal to help any groups. Eventually word spread across Tyria and a portion of monks all across the continent were refusing to help anyone.

    The excitement didn't last long however. By the end of the day the strike was a memory and everyone went back to their usual roles of helping, losing, and blaming each other. The whole thing seemed rather silly to me anyways. If you don't want to be mistreated, don't join a PUG. Bad groups were easy to spot. You don't need to strike in order to visit a random late-game mission and dance there quietly.

MesCon 2006

    Monks striking was not the only spectacle taking place in the months leading up to the release of Factions. In March I was finally growing tired of idling at Hell's Precipice. I felt like going somewhere else for a change. One of the places I began to idle at ended up being Lion's Arch International. The regular Lion's Arch was of course full of trade spam and other nonsense that made idling intolerable. But the international district was a whole different story. It was often filled with interesting people who would do anything game discussion to role playing. One day while idling there I overheard plans for a grand Mesmer Convention to be held at the Henge of Denravi. The idea behind the event seemed to be a place for mesmers to gather and have fun since they were excluded from parties the majority of the time. Now aren't I glad I created my Mesmer?

    When my Mesmer arrived at Denravi on the evening of March 17th there were already a few mesmers on stage even though the event wasn't set to take place for another hour. As the hour went by more and more mesmers began to show up until the entire place was packed with more mesmers than I had ever seen everywhere else combined.  Once the event began several rows were formed: the female mesmers up front, the male mesmers behind them, and then non-mesmers were allowed to stand in the far back to dance or play instruments.

    On command, all of the mesmers in attendance would all use the same emote at the same time. Different emotes were cycled through throughout the event to give everyone a chance to capture their screenshots. It didn't take long for almost everyone to get into a good rhythm and perform the emotes seamlessly. The main event lasted about an hour.

    Afterwards an after-party was held back at Lion's Arch International where many of the mesmers and other guests gathered on the boat. People talked and goofed around for who knows how long. Eventually the after-party hit the road and left Lion's Arch to travel across Tyria to random outposts such as Yak's Bend. People were slowly starting to trickle away though and I myself was getting tired. I eventually called it quits and went to bed. This event probably marked the last major playing time my Mesmer would see since she had recently completed the game and I still could not find much for her to do.

Countdown

    The last couple of months leading up to Factions were for the most part very boring. I had already done everything in Tyria countless times. I was growing anxious for a new continent to explore. Every now and then Anet would release a small update that would add some minor content to the game, usually a quest or a new Green. On March 2nd they added Kepkhet's Refuge to the game, a good Green monk staff. To get the Green players had to venture out into Prophet's Path and slay the scaracb queen Kepkhet Marrowfeast. My Monk was up to the challenge and banded together with some friends to obtain this item. Slaying Kepkhet was simple enough, you just had to pull out her ring of scarab guards and then move in to kill her. My Monk soon had a shiny new staff which she would use as her primary weapon all the way until Eye of the North came out.

    Later that same day my account reached a milestone of 1,000 hours played. 384 of those hours were played on my Monk. Since the last age check I recorded I spent roughly 140 of the last 200 hours on my Monk. This large disparity exists to the present day when my Monk has a large majority of the total hours played.

    Another noteworthy event that occurred on March was a one hour server roll-back that took place because of a sudden reset in the prices of NPC traders. Everyone across Tyria flocked to these traders to buy items what were once 100k but now sold for as little as 100g. This happed twice that I remember and I missed out on the most valuable items each time. One of the events was not rolled-back so that people kept what they received. I managed to stock-pile a ton of Damask (the best I could do since everyone else cornered the rest of the market) which I eventually sold for a fair profit down the line.

    In the latter-half of March my Warrior finally starts to see more playing time when she begins to Ettin farm. Killing the Ettins of Nebo Terrace and North Kryta Province was a good way to collect valuable runes to sell for quite a nice sum. Best of all the Ettins were only level 15 and they were easy to kill.

    April proved to be extremely boring. Droknar's Forge International turned into a cesspool of spam. A mere one second visit would flood your entire chat log with gibberish! I spent most of my time either idling or farming. I was so bored at times I would even dabble in some PvP.

    While I always thought it would be a joke, on April Fools Day my Monk finally broke down and decided to try some 55 farming. The concept seemed simple enough. Use Protective Spirit to take a mere 5 damage while maintaining enough health regeneration to overcome that. Since enemies didn't run away from AoE back then, grouping them up for a slaughter was a piece of cake. Toss in some smiting skills and you have easy money.

    My Monk farmed Trolls as well as other creatures for easy money almost every day. I figured I might as well begin to stock up on money to purchase whatever goodies Cantha would have to offer. But there was one prize that was still out of reach. One area that defined a 55. The Underworld ecto farm run.

    With a friend and a lot of practice, I began farming ecto several nights a week. Unfortunately we could only enter the Underworld when America had favor and since America had apparently stopped caring about the Hall of Heroes, we only had favor in the evenings. Most of my ecto farming runs were done during the month leading up to Factions. In all I only collected about 20 Globs of Ectoplasm and once Factions was released I no longer was interested in spending much time in the Underworld anymore.

  Just days before the release of Factions I was in some random Fissure of Woe PUG when I saw something I had never seen before or since. A Ruby dropped! Too bad it would take two more Guild Wars Campaigns for Rubies to become useful.

  Before Factions was released we were treated to a few special quests that involved refugees coming from Cantha. They weren't very exciting but they redecorated parts of Kryta for a brief period. Two days before Factions titles were introduced to the game! Titles would turn into a very big deal for me, but I'll get into them later.

Finally the big day came. The long wait was finally over. Guild Wars: Factions was here!