Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

Guild Mourning

Rise so high, fall so far.

Aeon you lousy no good mother fucker. In the past you’ve caused problems, but now that you’ve taken virtually every founding member of my guild, including the top 2 players and my guild leader, I hate you . We were one of the top guilds on the American servers, but after a long litany of complaints with Frogster, they’ve bolted for greener pastures.

So I’m stuck with a guild falling apart, talks of mergers, disappointed friends and guilty feeling people who want to move on (aka traitors) to Aeon. Another problem? The only other guild that’s any good on the server are a bunch of douche bags.

I don’t really want to start over with another guild in Runes. I liked where I was at, occasionally running through Heart of the Ocean, getting to do the hardest stuff in the game, that 75% of the server can’t even do. I’ve killed all the bosses in Hoto, the #2 guild only recently took Medusa, the final boss, down for the first time.

So the details. Mainly I think the top players were pretty unhappy with one major thing. After 2 months of running Hoto, none had major improvements to their gear. The drop rate for clean good mods, off some of the hardest bosses in the game, are rare. Maybe that would be fine if Hoto were the end game instance. It isn’t. There’s Origin, Hall of Survivors, and Cave of the Water Dragon. If after two months you have made no real progress in a game, would you continue playing?

X, my guild leader, also made a long list of issues that need to be fixed on the official forums. He was banned. He was not surprised. Voice dissent or an opinion that is critical on the official forums, and you will be banned. Part of me thinks X quit partially because of his bruised ego after getting banned, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Finally I think the second reason they moved on was probably the cost. This game costs money to play at the top. One of the people leaving said she would save money by playing a subscription game like Aeon. That says something. People already paying that much do not want to hear about a Black Pegasus mount which costs 60 bucks. Goes without saying, but I can get one whole other game for that amount of money you morons.

None of them even mentioned the long list of things that I personally feel are wrong with the game. They had all grown accustomed, and didn’t seem to mind the constant bugs, hiccups, poor translations, and on and on.

So I don’t really know if I’ll continue playing much. I’m still hanging out in vent, while they play Aeon and we play Runes. I have to wonder how long that will last. Hearing them talk, two of them are already level 15. That was quick.

Pretty Wings Take Flight

Aion has such pretty little wings.  Fascinating how that one element, that one innovation, can draw in so many people.  Like keychains to dogs.  Catnip to kittens.

Ok so I suppose it has other elements, though I haven’t tried Aion.  It definitely looks beautiful, a vast improvement over the behemoth of the mmorpg industry, World of Warcraft.  I’ve heard other good things too, character customization,  armour customization, combat system, old school elements WoW neglected, quests that actually require you to read, and you can fly too!

The negatives are what persuade me not to try it.  Forgetting the terrible music and boring action of the trailers, what I’ve heard about gameplay isn’t very good.  One starting area for each race, with only 2 races, and both races are from what I can tell essentially human. Resource grind. I suppose some grind for resources is ok, but it sounds questionable in Aion. Few and linear quest hubs. I’m all about awesome quest hubs, its exactly what makes a game feel alive.

Aion never really had my attention, another Korean style MMO i thought.  No thanks.  I have my own pretty wings in Runes of Magic and although I can’t fly I can certainly jump off cliffs in a pathetic attempt to mimic flying. Same thing right?  Aion forgotten.  Until it punched me in the face.  Half my server left for Aion.

Maybe thats an exaggeration, but a lot of people left, including some leadership from my own guild, one of the best known guilds on the server.  The people actually willing to pay to upgrade their characters so that they could play through high level instances thinned out considerably.  The leadership of a guild we were friendly with (another high level guild)  folded almost immediately, and the remains of the guild merged into our own.  2 other guilds disappeared overnight.  Whenever a member stops playing, we speculate they’ve gone to Aion.  That says something.

Pretty things trump everything.