[ ARF ] - In Closure...

Well about 2 months have past since we started our jounrney into Elona, and it seems to have ended all too soon. Most of the regular officers have pretty left for better more interesting things to do again. I myself have completed the game with 2 characters and beginning to feel the drag in completing it the thrid time just for my incredibly hard to get Ritualist elites (with 2 in the Domain of Secrets, 1 in the Depths of Madness...)

It's sad to say that Guild Wars still lacks that immersive storyline and interesting characters to keep players coming back for more. Once you hit end-game, replayability relies heavily on an onslaught of endless quests and PvPing. The quests are substantial enough to keep one busy for an hour or more, but most of the quests simply involve killing certain targets or just going to point A to B and so forth.

PvP can be a pleasure (especially if you're winning of course)... But then again PvP is usually the place you meet stinkers who are out to spoil your day, or just people who can't seem to work together. HvH seems more attractive to me as I have better control over the entire team, but it seems to be a trend where opponents rely heavily on strength in numbers to simply overwhelm and win. Ironically this was our initial guild concept... You'll probably find in the HvH arenas players who are either spirit spammers or pet-rushers. It gets kidna dull seeing how everyone wants to win so badly, and resort to cheap methods of success. I suppose this is where one has to come up with counters for popular builds, something which I haven't quite figure out myself.

In any case, the blog here will probably be going into a slumber, not unless some interesting event happens that brings everyone together again. The Alliance is pretty dead as well... The green items in Nightfall are hardly attractive either, thus farm groups seem to be very few. Probably with the introduction of Heroes there is less demand for human players to fill in empty slots...

As I said before, it was great while it lasted. What will Chapter 4 bring us all I wonder?

[ ARF ] - Seasons Greetings

[ Nightfall ] - Good Game

And so the world was worth saving after all, in the latest installment of Guild Wars Nightfall, the Land of the Golden Sun, Elona is purged into darkness as a long forgotten exiled god, Abaddon, is release from his eternal binds.

The new skill templates are wonderful, making character builds easy to manage and set up with a few effortless clicks. The hero system is enjoyable, and apparently these controllable AI henchmen (whose skills, weapons and armor can be fully customised and controlled) are far more reliable then the players that go around calling other players "n00bs" and then dropping out on you.


What's pleasing to know is that ArenaNet figured out that their past two installments where rather shabby when it came to the story bits. In fact Factions was so shallow and side-tracked it only left more questions unanswered and opened up newer loops. Nightfall is the means to end all that, and through the completion of certain late-stage quests in the Realm of Torment, unanswered mysteries such as the invasion of the Charr, the fall of Orr, and the plague of Shiro Tagachi (endgame boss from Factions) had been nicely wrapped up.

In a manner of speaking, Nightfall is the "apocalypse" to this story arc of the Guild Wars saga. The game is easy to comeplete within 2 - 3 weeks if you only focus on mainly getting to the next missions all the way to the end. But the multitude (and I really mean ALOT) of quests will keep your characters busy way beyond the release of Chapter 4.

So how would we rate Nightfall, the third chapter in Guild Wars? Well, see for yourself.

Life is Good

As we step into a new year, and await for yet another content-packed release of the upcoming forth chapter to Guild Wars, I decided to count my blessings from the 5 gods of Guild Wars (apparently now 6). Here's a compilation of screenshots of all my lucky green drops since the last Green Drop Event for GW: Factions till now (which also includes the Green Drop Event for GW: Nightfall as well). It has been a year of good harvest indeed - the most remarkable drop of all being the double green drop of the Veras and Jayne's Staff!