An absentee this week from the regular Guild Wars Nightfall night, leaving two of us to pick away at a few sub-quests, poke about in Tyria, unlocking all the outposts we'd already got, with these new characters, and eventually, and somewhat inevitably, a stab at Hard Mode, on our previous 'main' Tyrian characters - the ones that had finished Prophecies.
I must admit to having gone into it with a disapproving frown before even trying it out to be honest, as the whole thing smacks of a cheap kludge to the problem of end-game content shortage to me. Mind you, it is clever - have to give them that. Basically,
Hard Mode consists of having to do the entire game you thought you'd just completed, again, only this time, the monsters start at level 22 and go up, with...ahem...'trash-mobs' seen as high as L33 in the latter zones. It's not just a sliding scale either - all these new mobs are faster, have elite skills they use often, get extra self-heals, and know to run away from AOE damage, and kite players. Both the missions and explorable areas are given this treatment, which you can access by pressing the appropriate button in the party window, while in a town on the continent you've 'completed'.
More in the spirit of investigative journalism, than any real desire to Prove Our Worth, we had a go at the Old Ascalon zone in this new difficulty level. Pretty much everything is superficially the same - the same zone geography, the same monster art, and quite crucially, the same party sizes, but now the previously light-weight yard trash, is all end-game boss grade stuff, and requires a damn-sight more forethought, planning, strategy and communication to bring down than the last time through.
The team was me (R/Mo - mostly Beastmastery and Nature Spirits), my friend (Ritualist/Something - I forget exactly), a Healing Monk Hero and a Minion Master Necro Hero, and my god, was it hard work. Starting with the Flash and Shatter Gargoyles loitering out front of the city, each and every pull - (and these were actual pulls, rather than the rampaging carefree mayhem we normal enjoy) - was a lengthy process of setting up spirits, creating a mini 'fortress' area, luring, complex agro and taunt work (which I've NEVER understood in GW), and a huge amount of mostly frantic DPS, which would leave half the party dead most of the time. We'd rinse and repeat for as long as it took for me to get stroppy about the whole thing, (-40% DP) and eventually gave up, with the new 'Mob-O-Meter' showing only 40 or so killed, out of the 291 listed on the GuildWiki. Apparently, if we kill
every monster in the game, on hard mode, we get a
title! (Around 10,000 for Prophecies alone, not including Missions, which is a different title)
Gaming for Masochists, clearly, and we've not even considered trying the Missions in Hard Mode yet. I got so far in and started questioning the nature of Fun pretty extensively at that point, and reasoned that I was here to relax, and enjoy myself, so called a halt to this nonsense, and didn't get much argument from my companion. I had another go, alone with three NPC heroes, and didn't do much better. In particular are the bits that are supposed to be challenging in Normal Mode - one point along a path where three scorpion things pop up out of the ground and ambush you comes to mind. I knew they were there, from memory, but three of these things, all L23, suddenly opening fire soon wiped the four of us out. High-end Normal Zones where that happens, usually give you a team of twice our size. There were some compensations though...gold drops are up, and you're more likely to get the top-end Purple and Gold item drops, but I'd always thought the point of farming was to pick easy, fast fights that consume few/no resources with middling, but dependable rewards, not necessarily difficult, time-consuming costly fights with valuable rewards.
Still, I see myself as being pretty low down on the food chain when it comes to Leet Gaming Skillzorz in Guild Wars, and I expect Hard Mode will become the new Underworld/Tomb of the Primeval Kings - a place for the Ultra-Hardcore to grind out cash while waiting between Arena Battles and the like. Hard Mode isn't
for me and mine - I've yet to finish the Easy Mode stuff yet. I do admire the bang-per-buck Arenanet get out of this system though - I'd imagine it took comparatively little work, and will provide one particular sub-section of the playerbase, (usually the most fanatical and vocal) with more Stuff To Do for quite some time to come.
Indeed, part of me still isn't convinced that they're not just taking the piss entirely with this Hard Mode idea, and all watching with great interest as the Cream of the Crop struggle their way through what it probably meant to be an impossible task. giggling lots. I expect the smirks will be wiped of their faces in due course when GuildWars' most determined Catassers turn around in a month and go 'Nightmare Mode kthxbai!!'
I wonder if we'll see similar 'Difficulty' levels being applied to the rest of the MMO genre soon? Northshire Abbey with Level 71 Kobolds anyone? It just goes to show - the reward for doing your work well, is always more work...