It’s a good thing I waited until I’ve gained some perspective before writing this recap. (Not to mention, some shiny exotics after phase 3.)
Had I gone with my initial urge to make a post just after phase 2 “one-off event” completed, it would be full of the most vulgar expletives and cursewords ever to plague this blog. Every other word would probably be the f-bomb, and your eyes would likely sear after reading it. What happened, you asked?
Well, it started out promising.
I got to Lion’s Arch. An overflow, anyway. (Take note, this will be important later.)
No one knew where to go. There was discussions in map chat. Nothing over Twitter as yet.
Being the inveterate explorer that I am, I took the initiative to revisit the old locale of phase 1 to see if anything changed. That, after all, is what Guild Wars 2 prides itself on, that stuff can keep changing in their world.
Sure enough, I halted in my tracks and blinked. Was this trebuchet here before? I don’t think so…
No one else was around the area in my overflow at the time, so I am quite happy to say I was probably the first guy to find it on that particular server. (It’s the little things that make us explorers happy, y’know.)
I was chatting up the NPCs, getting more and more sure I was on to something here, as the event state finally switched at around 12.06pm server time and reported the Lionguard and their alchemical weapon thing.
Oooooooh…
Three minutes later, more people started noticing the treb and it was reported in map chat. (I was admiring the workers going for their beer break at the time, hoping something would start.)
Which led to a vast crowd of people around the treb, climbing on the treb, jumping around, all manner of spell effects as we waited, and waited, and Waited, and WAITED and WAITED some more, in perfect befuddlement as the workers cycled between banging on the treb and having so much beer that their bladders ought to have burst.
At 12.27pm, nearly half an hour later than the event was scheduled to start, the trebuchet FINALLY completed itself on our overflow server.
Cue more perplexed stares as absolutely nothing happened for another three minutes.
When the only thing that happened (aside from a bored someone growing a pine tree on the treb) was a tiny event state change (blink and you’ll miss it) that said the Lionguard had moved on from their alchemical weapon thing and were now launching an assault on the karka colony.
Huh?
One minute after that, the “coat your weapons with solvent” event finally began…. wherein I made the largest mistake of my virtual GW2 life.
While wading through the combat lagfest that had just hit, the ubiquitous overflow queue thing popped, where it asked if I wanted to travel back to my home server. I didn’t think, just went with the vague feeling that hey, this might be more fun if I did it with my home community with recognizable folks, and hit the “Travel” to get to Lion’s Arch back home.
Wherein I popped up in utterly quiet surroundings, no event around me, and a mail in my inbox pointing me to Southsun Cove.
What the-?
Oh shit, all the servers are on different timers… I should not have done that! I missed that part of the one-off event!
Apparently, as I gathered in mapchat later, the event for them popped for only a couple minutes, they got to the big boss, which bugged out, and then shoved them the mail that shoved us all to Southsun Cove.
And if you bothered to read my guildchat, apparently for some of my other guildies, the workers on their overflow server were still enjoying their beer, half an hour later into the event.
Immensely pissed off at this point at ArenaNet, myself, the world in general, I decided to close my eyes and pretend that the trebuchet fired their alchemical weapon, we coated our weapons in the solvent and killed all the karka in Lion’s Arch, purely in my imagination (which probably was better than the real thing) and board the ship to Southsun Cove – because no doubt, MORE one-off events would be firing there that I didn’t want to miss either.
The Southsun Cove fights went a little better. We ran with Inspector Ellen Kiel through several DEs, capturing control points and what not. I think there were a little less people around than in the Lion’s Arch fights, so all our framerates were better.
Being able to hit the big karka for real damage (my weapon is coated, really, just PRETEND with me here, okay?) was quite a refreshing change. I admired the armor knocking off thing that Anet was so proud of before. I vaguely reflected it would probably look better to me if my graphic settings could go up any higher, but y’know, crowds and all that. Still, it was pretty cool.
There was a sinister growing speck of unease that this effectively gave the big karka multiple very big health bars and locked us all in place attacking and attacking for quite a long time, but for now, it was all still rather new and exciting.
We set up outposts, built roads, smashed through trees for a little bit, running in a big zerg that was vaguely reminiscent of launch day crowds.
Then we hit the fork in the path.
I honestly don’t know how many people realized how “momentous” this was. I spotted it for what it was, a way to separate people and get them following different DEs, dividing the crowd, and also making sure that each experienced a slightly different story.
Except, I’m really not sure how appropriate this is for one-off events. I really don’t like missing out on anything. Call me entitled, but that’s just how my feelings roll.
Eventually, with a heavy heart, as I watched the majority of the zerg, 98% of them, race off after Inspector Ellen Kiel on her bulldozing road steamroll of justice, I decided I would rather see the path not taken, and followed the Asura to find the mysterious lost expedition’s camp.
We (and there were only 5-7 of us at this point) fought more karka and escorted the advisors to the lost camp. The reduction in player numbers did make the events more enjoyable and playable, not to mention a little less auto-attacky, we actually used other skills.
We took over the abandoned camp and set up the outpost or whatever…
It eventually segued into a retrieve consortium crates DE which I was beginning to suspect would run on even after the one-off event. That left me feeling a bit empty, like maybe I might have just missed out on whatever Inspector Ellen Kiel was doing, god knows where.
I did however enjoy being possibly one of the first to spot a splendid chest on top of the lost camp’s roof, and made my jumpy way up to get it and a jumping puzzle achievement.
Booyah.
In retrospect, examining the screenshot, it is ironic that Ellen Kiel’s chain also completed around the same time and I got a bronze medal for it. I don’t know what happened with her, and never shall, unless I check out a youtube video.
Feeling a little sad, and lost and empty, which are very strange feelings for a new zone with new content just being opened… I stared at the rest of the island on my map, unsure of where to go next, whether there was any other one-off dynamic events that I was probably missing out on…
Sighed, and gave up.
The island would be here for good. I could take more time later to explore it at leisure. Running about lost and aimless trying in vain to catch another one-off event or another, while being uncertain whether this one DE would be here all the time or which other DE was a one-off…
…it was just too depressing to fathom.
So I logged off, feeling oddly disappointed and feeling like I missed out on very crucial bits of the story.
My entire misadventure with phase 2 gives me a lot more sympathy for those who couldn’t attend the event, could only attend bits of it due to real life, who may have inadvertently crashed or disconnected, who had bad luck and ran into event-stopping bugs, and basically everyone who might have missed out on a specially advertised “one-off event.”
It doesn’t feel very inclusive or community-building at all.
And if the attitude of those who did catch it is “lol, too bad, I saw it, you didn’t, and that makes it all the sweeter and more special,” I’m not sure that kind of elitist schadenfreude is the kind of attitude we want to be encouraging with Guild Wars 2 either.
Why I Game 
I guess what bothers me is that although I understand the pain of missing out, you also have it tied into your own bit of elitism and entitlement. First there was the thing about the trebuchet and keeping the discovery to yourself, and then there’s the DE split that’s specifically to emphasize the most interesting thing that can come from a one-time event: not everybody can see everything, but there can be loads of stories and cross references to tell and piece together afterward.
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I was wondering when someone would point out that little thing about explorers enjoying keeping trivial secrets to themselves. I mulled about it myself after I wrote it too. Then I realized the difference. Secrets will -always- out and be shared eventually. In this case, it lasted for about three minutes. So no one misses out in the end, even if the secretive explorer types get a moment’s enjoyment hanging on to their private knowledge. And very usually, after a while, we cannot resist sharing it with other people anyway, if only because it’s so cool or we want to look cool having known.
On the other hand, if the event is designed specifically to make sure no one can see everything, then by definition, most people will miss out on something, which ain’t that great in my book.
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Okay, I see your point, but I still don’t see the need to experience everything during an event. The charm of a one-time event is the very fact that you can’t experience everything, so everyone has a story to tell. And at the same time, it’s a game, so it’s not as if everything is absolutely necessary to see anyway. It seems OCD to try and catch everything now, especially when years later there’s going to be something going on in the world that you’re not going to bother to check out, or have something else you’d rather do wholeheartedly.
To make a point of this, I skipped the first two main events on Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t necessary, and there would be other stories to listen to, to read, and on my side, to tell. For the final day, I played it on a level 40 character, and instead of getting precursor envy I was happy that the extra precursor droppings meant that prices were going to lower for everybody, and that this battle got to be extra special to some people.
I realized this first during Halloween. I needed to go into upstate NY for a few days before Hurricane Sandy hit. I was too busy on the day that the Mad King burst out of the lion. I was only able to log in for an hour where I just entered the dungeon instance for all of one second by my lonesome so I could get the achievement. Then, the next day, the hurricane hit and power was lost. While ANet extended the timeframe to get a single part of the achievement track, they didn’t keep the dungeon open, or keep the labyrinth open or anything at all. And in the end, I didn’t care enough. I missed it, but so what?
The most exciting thing about Guild Wars 2 is the fact that it’s a world where things are actually changing at a wonderful pace. A world full of nooks and crannies to go on about. And part of the charm of living in a changing world is the fact that you can’t experience everything. That’s what makes it all the more fun.
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It probably is OCD. 🙂
Some of it is likely passion at work. I’m well aware I’m missing Rift’s Storm Legion, and LOTRO’s Riders of Rohan, but it doesn’t bother me the same way. I’ve chosen not to play those games for now.
Some of it is discomfort at the theory in the design. If I did choose to play the LOTRO expansion, I would still be able to experience all the stories, in my own time. I’d have to drag myself out of Moria first, get through Isengard and what not, but the stories won’t arbitrarily go away after a time limit (assuming no MMO shutdown.)
I guess the real question is, how many of each of our viewpoints there are, and who ArenaNet chooses to cater for. The survey is a good step, and time will tell, I suppose.
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Question. Any chance you still have the images from Phase 2? I see in the screenshots you took several, and you’re pretty much the only person I’ve seen that followed the Consortium on their path. I was hoping if you still had them if there was some way to get them from you so I can update the wiki with whatever info I can gleam from the content. Yeah, it’s not there anymore, but I’m interested in this content I missed.
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Yes. I didn’t take too many and they are low quality due to my minimal settings from the crowd, but you can grab what I took of the entire event here. (http://imgur.com/a/NaxNr/all) Totally raw though, not gonna clean ’em up. It gets a little muddled in the middle as you will be able to note that I got sidetreked off the “build roads with Ellen Kiel” event into some golem parts event (that I started suspecting would always be there) and ran back to join the Consortium to the lost camp.
I was also losing steam and interest, being worried about what I was missing elsewhere, and didn’t record as much as I would have liked in retrospect, eg. not taking any screenshots of the retrieve Consortium property event – I just recall it got fairly tedious like most scaling ‘collect item’ DEs do (consortium items were in barrels and crates and things, and there were a bunch of skelks to kill) and the very jumpable looking ruins distracted me.
Appreciate your wiki updating! I’m way too lazy to do that. 🙂
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Thanks a lot! This helps a bunch.
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