Thanks to some kind of network implosion at Arenanet Towers, they had another go at the Dragon Festival this weekend, and I happened to be online during a large part of it over Sunday afternoon.
I was actually out alone with my original Prophecies Ranger, making a start on the Nightfall stuff with that character, following along behind in the Mesmer's wake, and joining the outpost dots, partly to grind out some cash for the somewhat costly set of end-game threads for said Mesmer, and partly to get another go at the various Treasure spawns. I'm happy enough with my own equipment, but I have a lot of Heroes to find gold weapons for these days!
(The plan being to have one character from each campaign, complete with fancy end-game armours and solid Heroes, to choose from, for when I finally get round to the new expansion.)
Saw a 'Victory Token' drop and shortly after that, a game-wide broadcast that the Emperor was shortly arriving at the Shing Jea Monastery. "Ah," I thought, "I actually have that this time!", so promptly logged across to my new Ritualist have a look. Neither my Ranger, nor Mesmer is allowed on Cantha until the Ritualist makes it to the big boat 'Travel' place, wherever that turns out to be - my own rules, rather than any game-imposed restriction.
It was a popular event, so much so that I found myself in 'European Common District 38', and it went up to the high forties before much longer, as pretty much everyone on the GuildWars network promptly mobbed the Shing Jea Monastery. Well done on the parallel districts design! Lots of events on offer and special holiday quests to do out in the various low-level zones around the island - mostly a string of tongue in cheek 'reenactments' of historical battles, the dialogue of which had me chuckling away most of the way through. For the most part, they were quite well done, although I'm only L13 at the moment, and the henchmen available tend to range from L3 to L10, making the last quest in the line a bit of a nightmare, against L18 'Lesser Grasps'. Managed to get them done though; the Ritualist seems to be very good at defensive play, and although slow work, setting up my sprits and traps, and then pulling the beasties onto them worked well. Avoid any melee henchmen if you're going to do it like this - it does rather rely on the monsters coming to you, not the other way around.
One that I did have to give up on totally though, was a separate quest in which you have to defend the Monastery itself. The festival is usually to commemorate the founding of the Dragon Empire; Cantha, but this time around it was also being held to commemorate the defeat of Abaddon (Nightfall), and the ensuing little quest involved having to close down a number of chaos portals, while fighting off actors dressed as Grasp of Insanity demon-things. Actors or no, they are all at the near-20 end of the leveling, and the henchmen available in the Monastery, are all Level 3. My own low level notwithstanding, it seemed one that needed at least one other player, and six maxed out Heroes, to do, or a full party of players at L20. Never mind though. Most players are much more well set up than I was, and it's just unlucky the festival caught me with a fairly newish character.
The main event itself, repeated at intervals throughout the day, was a big collaborative capture the flag type of event, unusually, conducted in the actual town itself, rather than out in a zone where skills and attacks are allowed to work. For fifteen minutes, 'Celestial Charge' carryable objects would randomly spawn across the Monastery. We'd then have to grab one, and deliver it to the nearest Imperial Sorcerer, to score a point for 'us'. Not a simple as all that though, as across the zone are also more Grasp of Insanity mobs, trying to stop us all. Being a town, you can't attack them, or even use any buffing or running skills, and so have to rely solely on your wits. The Grasps seem to lock on to the nearest person carrying a Charge and run at them. If they touch you, the Charge blows up, killing you, and scoring 'them' a point. You automatically resurrect, and there's no DP involved, but it's still quite humiliating, what with all the other players about too - something that never normally happens in GW, with it's instanced world. The grasps are also a bit faster than most players, which doesn't help.
My Skill of the Afternoon helped though; Sugar Rush. This is usually a bit of a useless cosmetic status effect, gained by eating any of the sweet type foods you can buy or gain from collectors, and gives you a run-speed buff, but only while in towns or outposts, and not out in the explorable zones, where it would be in any way useful. In this case however, inside Shing Jea Monastery, the extra speed boost put me on a par with the Grasps, making life a bit easier all round.
Mind you, the real trick to it all was simpler than all that. Hold down ALT to show all the names, and when you see a Grasp headed toward you (the fast moving green triangle dots on the minimap), just drop the Charge on the ground. Grasp loses interest and heads off after someone else. Then pick it up again, and be on your way. Mind you, this does require a general understanding that we're all on the same side, which didn't seem to occur to many people, and it was quite fun listening to the constant explosions and screams of those folks too paranoid to let go of their Charge, and risk letting someone else also score a point for all of us.
Anyway, we won with a comfortable lead, 400 vs 200ish, and were rewarded with a big firework display, and a shower of presents dropping from the sky; little boxes containing money, wine, cakes and more Victory Tokens. This shower was ingeniously programmed to pre-allocate the boxes to individual players, like world-loot, rather than the mad scrambling petty free-for-all of previous years, a fact which cause a great deal of dissatisfaction on Local Chat.
"why they done it like this?? last year wuz more fun!11! i stoal loads of prezenz lolz"
A question which contains it's own answer, I think. I tend only to turn Local Chat on when I'm feeling particularly full of self-loathing, in general. Today was no different, and a representative sample of vocal yahoos mocking the scripted broadcast dialogue, each other, and then getting into protracted 'NO U STFU!!11' type dialectic. I long for the days when Urbane Understatement becomes the new Caps-Lock Hysteria. Ho hum.
And while we're at it, would it kill people to give the smart-arse PvP Hall of Heroes Team Names a rest just this once? Not five minutes goes by without seeing something like this:
"wE aRe GoInG tO mAkE yOu [CRY] has won a battle in the Hall of Heroes and retains the favor of the gods for Europe"
"R0XX0R 4TW [WTF] has won a battle in the Hall of Heroes. America needs to win three more times to gain the favor of the gods"
etc, etc
I suppose it has some kind of useful psychological effect. Hell, I'm exploring in my own private instance on a different continent and it still winds me up. That kind of towering arrogance can't help but make any actual adversaries a little more rash than is usual I guess. Still, it would be nice to see the occasional sensible name win something for once, 'The Order of the Salamander', 'The Cabal of Shadows', whatever, hell, even a 'Knights Who Say Ni!' would break the monotony a bit, rather than this trickle of continual witless phonetics the whole time. Is there a way to turn PvP globals off? Remember kids, if everyone does a thing all the time, the Irony tends to cancel itself out, leaving only Stoopid! Chuck Norris is quite powerful, you say? Soviet Russia was quite harsh? Well fancy that!
Anyway, back to the event, and a lot of fun in all other respects (i.e. the ones that didn't really involve players too much), including a special PvP arena thing which I didn't really have a look at (not being L20 and having all my skills yet), the Rollerbeetle racing again and a variety of simple gambling games out the back of the monastery. I even managed to get enough Victory Tokens for the Demon Mask, which is now tied to my account and reproducible on any character via the [Festival Hats] guy for a negligible 10gp a time. No stats, just a bit of fun, and great for those Alien Vs Predator Theme Parties.
The Canthan Emperor himself hands these out, after the speeches and running about. The lore behind it all was quite interesting, being new to Factions as I am, although during the course of his speech, he does give out a massive Nightfall spoiler, (Of the 'Bruce Willis was dead all along!" grade) which even I didn't reveal in my long running set of writeups. I guess the assumption is that everyone has done Nightfall to death by now, which may or may not be the case.
Quite glad to have seen it all really, but if you haven't, you'll have to wait until next year now, as I think it was just something for the weekend. Back to work on Factions tomorrow!