Life in the Luxon Army isn't all Jade and Nagas, as we found out last night. The story so far sees us trying to unite the long warring factions of Kurzick and Luxon, in the hope that with their combined strength, the world might be saved from the temporarily at-bay Shiro Tagachi. Leading that effort are Master Togo and his number one student, Brother Mhenlo. Mhenlo has gone off to sort out the Kurzick side of the problem out, leaving us and Master Togo to somehow convince the Luxon peoples that maybe the whole neverending civil war thing is perhaps a Bad Idea just now.
To do this, our merry band of hapless adventurers have to earn their trust first of all, and this comes in the form of a whopping 10,000 Luxon Faction points. These are earned primarily through various minor sidequesting around the magnificent Jade Sea, home of the Luxons and an outlandish landscape of petrified ocean, full of walking fish, spiritualist jellyfish, and invisible ninja Oni. These quests are quite interesting, but nothing major to write...er...home about, but we picked away at a few last night.
Unfortunately, due to some oversight on the part of Arenanet, it transpires that there aren't actually enough of these quests to fill up the required quota on our side, leaving us with two possible alternatives to make up the full 10,000. We can do repeatable quests a few times over. This is easy enough; any chap standing about in one of the actual explorable zones who has a job for us in that same zone, will have conveniently forgotten about it by the time we leave and come back, allowing us to have another go. Some of these are quite near their respective outpost entrances, and so hopefully won't require the entire zone to be exterminated each time, although my own personal 'avoid aggroing nearby monsters' skill could use some work. I'm not terribly good at sneaking around fights in there, usually resulting in us getting hit in the back by the previous monsters, while trying to fight the next. Hey guys! I bought some friends...is that okay?
The other alternative, is PvP.Toward the far end of the Jade Sea, (and by necessity, Echovald Forest, the Kurzick stomping ground) are two Challenge Missions. They're entirely optional in terms of pushing the main story forward, but we ended up in the Fort Aspenwood (Luxon) lobby at the far end of some overland exploring, and figured, why not?
The Fort itself is an 8v8 random team PvP arena with numerous objectives. Done out in the Kurzick style, I think that makes this the 'away' match of the two. The Jade Quarry seems more Luxon based for home matches. At the far end of the Fort, the Kurzicks are trying to complete some kind of super-weapon (which looked suspiciously like a Tuba on steroids to me), and its our job to stop them, by killing the Kurzick Architect standing next to the thing.
It all got a bit hectic really, but I almost worked out what was going on, I think. (The GuildWiki guide is here, and I wish I'd read it beforehand, frankly) The place really is a fort, comprising of a set of outer doors, with NPC guard support, and a set of inner doors, also guarded. To break through these, we need to kill the guards. There's quite an arrangement of ramparts making the ground between the first and second sets a bit of a killing field, which wasn't helping. Beyond all that, more guards, and the Architect and his Tuba.
Quite a siege really, but on the plus side, we did get NPC backup of our own, including huge siege turtles with some kind of cannons on their shells. There's also teleporters all over the place, resurrection shrines a plenty, and of course 15 random strangers trying to variously kill or help you. The match is defensive for the Kurzicks...they just need to hold on until the Tuba Timer ticks up to 100%, although they can hurry it up a bit by pushing out into our half of the map and capturing our Amber Mines.
All in all, quite a busy little place, and the thing reminded me a lot of WoW's Alterac Valley Battleground, with similar kinds of multiple objectives, NPC support and random strangers Not Working Together. I spent the match mostly confused and trying to work out what the hell was going on, with a build very similar to my standard PvE one; mostly Channelling skills, attack spirits and various spirit support skills. I'm not sure it was helping mind you, as I suspect being highly mobile helps the most in there, and my spirits are quite a static and defensive kind of thing.
Matters weren't helped a lot by two of our team dropping out of the match quite early on, making it 6 vs 8. Numbers are important in mass PvP, I've found over the years. The Tuesday N00b club got split up by the random team-formation in the lobby, leaving myself and our Ranger/Warrior in one match, and our Assassin/Necromancer in another instance entirely. Annoying, and I wonder why partial groups can't be kept together? Still, the Assassin's instance yielded a victory for the Luxons, while our own version didn't go quite so well. The thing lasted a hectic twenty minutes or so, and with no Death Penalty in evidence, it was mostly non-stop action.
Like the more mainstream Random Arenas on the Battle Isles, the main difficulty with the whole affair was an almost total lack of coordination on our team. I expect similar held true for the Kurzick players also, but by the look of the map, it seems a lot more obvious what they should be doing; dig in and hold. There seemed more decisions that needed to be taken on our side though; which gates to attack? Stay with the turtles, or charge? Defend the mines or push forward? All that stuff, and no Leader to make the necessary choices.
My skill of the night seemed to be helping a little; Grasping Was Kuurong. One of the few Elites I've managed to capture so far, this is an item spell, that summons the usual urn of ashes. When Kuurong's ashes are dropped, all nearby foes take damage, and crucially, are Knocked Down. They get back up again, of course, but by that stage, I'm a rapidly receding pair of sandals on the horizon! Cowardice for the...er....Survive! Some logic to it all though, and many of the 'regulars' in there seem to be dauntingly armoured Warrior/? types, with huge frickin swords, of fire, and the game has auto-follow for melee types - target, mash space and your little tank of destruction will relentlessly chase after the squishy Ritualist in an attempt to slice them into thin strips. At that point, its a deliberate effort not to chase after them, and these muscleheads are awfully tenacious. Dropping my...er...Clumsy-Bomb buys me valuable time to get the hell away. It doesn't help much against the Assassins mind you, who simply flip back up and then teleport across the intervening gap, daggers blazing. Most unsporting!
I did manage to use these skills to kite some of them a bit, but the line between cunning strategy (Ah-ha!) and abject terror (Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!) is often very hazy in the Fine Art of Kiting, and it does all rather depend on there being an alert ranged damage person (Ranger, Elementalist, etc) nearby to actually do the killing bit. Ho hum.
We lost, which is fair enough I suppose, me and the Ranger being first-timers and all, but in the excitement of it all, I'd quite forgotten the reason I avoid PvP in general, and sure enough, one or two members of the winning team managed to get a couple of masterly barbs of smacktalk in on 'All' chat in the few moments between the match ending and us all being whisked back to our respective lobbies. Even WoW doesn't allow that, and trivial as it sounds, it put me out of sorts for the remainder of the night, which I suppose means they've achieved their objective. My own stupid fault for ever turning Local chat in Guild Wars, I suppose. You'd think I'd learn really; there's always some Friend of Humanity holding forth in most main lobbies of towns in there. Good Tip: If you ever come to a dismal point in your life where you feel that you need self-flagellation, try going to the Domain of Anguish 'End Game' Lobby in Nightfall, and just reading local for half an hour. Its a lot like stabbing yourself in the arm repeatedly, but leaves no awkward physical scars to explain at work the next day!
Anyway, despite all that, I was quite fascinated with the whole thing, and must admit a fair part of my ensuing irritation was caused by me worrying and fretting at revised strategies and plans for Next Time. Better yet, kills in there net you Luxon (and Balthazar) faction points, so the somewhat frenzied interlude actually put us closer to our main objective. If we run out of quests, as we are likely to do as Luxons, we can always hit the Fort, and the Jade Quarry. These points are awarded to everyone on the team, echoing somewhat the problems of the 'Tunnel AFK' crowd in WoW AV, but with only eight of you, such loitering is likely to be noticed, and felt, a lot more. I think I'll give it my best shot on future visits anyway, in the spirit of the thing, but like the Random Arenas, so much of it is out of your own control, which can be a blessing, in that its not necessarily your own fault if the team loses, and a curse, in that no matter how hard you try, or how good you are, there's always plenty of others to let the side down.
An interesting aside in the main quest, and we're all over half way on the points now. Next week ought to see us fill the gap, one way or another, and get back to the story, and the saving of the world...