No time for long posts.
The impending signs were ignored….
…and now the apocalypse is upon us.
I’d talk about how neat it is that one can do the event solo, in small groups or in zergs, and marvel at the human propensity to glom together in search of easy kills (who then promptly die in droves to the scaling that throws up heaps and heaps of elites – anti-zerg mechanics are part of the design, people! Spreading out lowers the scaling, but no risk, no reward! Still, you’d be surprised at how much more often I get 5 bags from a single kill when soloing, as compared to trying to tag all the things with staff 1 and failing to either do enough damage or blowing up to something unseen) but I’m really too busy fighting and collecting bags and bags of loot.
The only thing I wish for is the ability to attempt this in slightly more organized fashion and aim for 1500 citizens in a single go, to exist alongside the random grouping in overflows where people are more self-focused on their personal loot rather than a collective effort to reach the larger goal.
I’m a little scared that “be careful what you wish for” might come true, because you know me, I’m allergic to elitism and exclusion, but in this specific case, because the pickup group aspect is already pretty rewarding and gives out bags like candy, I think it probably would be safe enough.
Anyway, less talk, more fight.
Moar bags.
Why I Game 
Not sure about “anti-zerg mechanics” there. As a dedicated zerger I always thought we zerged so we COULD get harder mobs. I’d have said those were “zerg-building mechanics”.
I was very fired up by the whole thing last night when it first came up but doing it for the second time today I really wish it had been a single event like the Karka Invasion. I’d happily take three or four one-off events like that per year in place of these extended loot farms and I say that as someone who loves an extended loot farm. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to attach them to major, game-changing events.
I think ANet probably felt much as I do coming into GW2 but they have learned that the huge majority of players want a game not a world so that’s what they are settling down to give them. he emotional effect is, of course, completely obliterated by the meaningless repetition. The event runs 24 hours a day for two weeks (at least). If we successfully saved the full 15, 000 refugees every time that gives Lion’s Arch a minimum population in excess of five million! Given that people were querying in map chat today whether Lion’s Arch could even hold the eight thousand we’d rescued so far that completely undermines any sense of verisimilitude.
Oh well, it’s certainly fun as a game. I guess that will have to do.
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Elites are a giant sack of hp that take forever to kill and don’t yield much reward for the time spent – though when I referenced “anti-zerg mechanics,” I had in mind more of the Aetherblade lasers coming down to zap areas centered around players and the indestructible Molten turret things that spew out fiery tornadoes of doom.
Still, there are certain events that seem to be higher yielding than others. I’m sure players will start to figure things out after a while.
Wish more would actually care to revive NPCs though. I hear the 1500 reward is pretty good, but I think we’re seeing the triumph of personal profit over communal good.
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The patch notes have some numbers: Escorts are worth 5 points, champions are 10. Miasma events are 5 each with a bonus of 35 if you get all three.
If you assume the events take a comparable effort, the escorts are the least efficient, but they’re heavily zerged because there are achievements for doing all six. But because they’re zerged, it’s harder to get the achievement credit since you actually have to get a kill on a mob. So most of the zerg doesn’t get the achievement and has to zerg the event the next time it comes up.
I agree Elites are a step in the right direction to stave off “let’s all zerg here to scale the mobs and get tons of champ bags.” LA feels a bit like Scarlet Invasion 2.0- seems like all the patches this year have shown that Arenanet’s learning how to do this whole Living Story thing.
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I don’t zerg for loot, though. I zerg because I love running in a huge crowd having exciting running battles. As I’ve said, often, there’s next to nothing that you can get in GW2 in the way of material rewards that interests me. All it does is clog up my bags and my banks and I barely use 1% of any of it. No, I just like running around in a really big gang yelling and shouting and rolling about. Any content that encourages that is a winner in my book 😛
The sky zappers are interesting. I was down in the shallow water, on my own, for about fifteen minutes today, encouraging and rezzing refugees. They were being zapped constantly and so was I, but only when I got near an NPC. I was literally the only player there for most of the time. I’m not sure the Aether Pirates are actually aiming at players at all.
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