Slightly overshadowed by the whole Valentine's Day thing, it's also Chinese New Year time (18th Feb), and another excuse for the MMO to do something a bit different. I'd kind of forgotten really, and it wasn't until I looted a 'Lunar Token' during a re-run of the Infusion mission in Guild Wars, mostly to capture the 'Barrage' Ranger Elite skill, that I remembered.
Intrigued, I headed to Lion's Arch, figuring that if anything was happening in GW, it'd be happening there, and I wasn't wrong. The place was almost unrecognisable, festooned with red paper lanterns and seasonal NPCs, fortune tellers, lamp-lighters, etc, and one very popular chap doing rock-paper-scissor games, in exchange for these Lunar Tokens. I've no idea what you get if you beat him, because I always pick Rock....good old dependable Rock...
Anyway, among these festive folks was one 'Rollerbeetle Trainer', talking a lot about beetle racing. I figured what the hell, this'll be some lil scripted thing with small beetle mobs - probably letting you gamble Lunar Tokens on the outcome. So I went over and clicked, and the next half hour was quite possibly one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had in an MMO.
You teleport to a new zone, which by the look of the loading screen, is based on some place in Factions, although I don't have it and got in fine. Upon arrival, you find, quite disconcertingly, that you are now a four-foot round beetle, that looks much like an Amercian Football helmet, with pincers, in one of a variety of lurid and garish colour schemes. Your skill bar is replaced with eight entirely new 'beetle-specific' hotkeys, and all around you in the lobby area, everyone else is a beetle too!
Once the shock subsides, and after talking to a few NPCs in the place, I got the gist of the thing. It is indeed a beetle race, only we're the beetles! When you're ready to go, hit 'Enter Race' and the game adds you to a random line-up with seven other beetles, all in crazy paint-jobs of their own, in a starting gate. 3...2...1...go!
The race itself plays a lot like Super Mario Cart - eight of you go rolling off around this looped island circuit at a fair old whack, and by running over crates littered about the track, you can recharge your various Beetle Skills, which include speed boosts, the ability to knock other Beetles over, resistance to being knocked over, spitting rocks at other Beetles and similar. It's all a tremendous lot of fun, and quite staggeringly innovative, for an MMO anyway. I had a few goes at it, placing fourth out of eight at my best, but was getting more Lunar Tokens for taking part anyway. I've no idea what the winner gets, but the best bit for me was standing about in the lobby, typing '/dance' and giggling a lot - the Beetle Dance is never going to get old.
A quite startling change of pace, in GW or any other MMO, and definitely worth a look, sooner rather than later, as this being a Seasonal Event, it's likely to go away again before long. A shame, as for a throwaway Holiday stunt, it's a surprisingly rounded and complete mini-game that I wouldn't mind having access to all year round. Top marks! Now if only I knew what to actually do with these tokens...
Rollin rollin rollin...