Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament final rounds

Well, the Celestial Tournament is finally over for us with yet another forfeit. Rex already posted his verbose-as-always screed on the subject. In summary:

Wins vs. teams with a hench: 1
Losses vs. teams with a hench: 1
Non-hench savage beatings received: 1
Non-hench savage beatings inflicted: 1
Forfeits (win or loss): 4

Pretty sad. There weren't really any good matches for us. The only team we played that was really in our skill bracket had to play with a henchman. Since we were a PST guild and most of the guilds are European, they'd have to get up in the middle of the night to play us and hence forfeits were abundant. Well, I told you so. Admittedly, I didn't figure out the full extent of the scheduling horror until I saw the first round pairings. I think the whole 8-man roster fiasco overshadowed the time zone issue initially.

Guild Wars: Fixing Hexes

Phelann has an interesting post on fixing hexes over at the Guild Hall. Specifically, tweaking single hex removal skills to remove 1 hex per 2 hexes on the target, rounding up - so Holy Veil removes 2 on a target with 3, but only 1 on a target with 2. Makes covering hexes still have a point, but overwhelming hex stacks not so useful.

Could be one approach for fixing the all-or-nothing nature of hexes that seems to be a bit of a problem right now. Some hexes are fine - notably water snares and some of the mesmer domination line - but most are only worth it if the whole build is devoted to them. I'm not sure that this really solves the issue but it does at least provide a solution to the rock-paper-scissors metagame that narrow mass removals like Divert Hexes are currently providing.

Guild Wars: GW2 & Eye of the North official announcement

The announcement's over at GWGuru - it came in PCGamer.

Sounds like a more standard MMO-ish direction for GW2. Notably for the PvP fanatics in the audience, they're currently planning on having the current GW arena-style PvP as well as "world-style" PvP, which sounds like the Realm vs. Realm PvP of Dark Age of Camelot.

New skills but no new professions in the next GW chapter, due out at the end of the year.

In summary, the main points of the previously accidentally leaked details were correct.

Guild Wars: QQ vs EW

Go watch this match from the Celestial Tournament. If you're easily bored, skip to the last 3 minutes.

Music choice is a bit sketchy but the actual match is excellent.

Guild Wars: Izzy Interview

I finally got round to listening to Izzy's interview on Weapon of Choice. Here are some choice tidbits:

• ArenaNet made a conscious decision not to prioritize PvP balance testing in Alpha because it wasn't working well for them. The most competitive players didn't have a big enough incentive to play Alpha regularly to really bring out the issues.
  
• Balance changes don't happen overnight - it takes a lot of people and time (translations to a zillion languages, etc).
  
• Yes, Jade Isle needs some love.
  
• Right now they're planning on the Automated Tournament system having daily, weekly and monthly tournaments with prizes for different levels of play and support for different time zones. Izzy seemed pretty sad they didn't have the system from the start.
  
• The PvP priority from their point of view is building a larger PvP base and that's the point of the AT system - to energize the PvP community.
  

It's an interesting interview, and recommended if you're interested in the PvP game. I invariably agree with Izzy - I think he does a good job of moving the game in the right direction. Even though he has my fish.

Guild Wars: Dev Update

Q. What do ritualist spike and discord spike have in common?

A. They both just got nerfed in the face.

Thanks Izzy.

Shadow Prison, Wastrel's Demise and Blades of Steel also got a tap from the nerfbat. Hero Battles also got tweaked to hopefully fix the "holding" builds. I haven't played HvH for a long time since I'm always GvGing these days. I don't know whether I'll get to try the format again anytime soon.

The Usual Apologia

The usual readers may have noticed that they aren't.

I blame it on spending too much time on the guild-membership-required XoO forums, watching obs mode, practicing for the Celestial Tournament and *gasp* actually doing work.

In other news, Blogger flagged me as a spam bot. Whee.