Played Lately: Guild Wars

• Since I don't often play Guild Wars anymore, those times I do are cause to blog. In this case, I was lured into the game to witness the start of the Fourth Anniversay celebration. I logged in Thursday night, initially just to play with my new storage area (which took forever to activate). But I stayed on to look at everything else added to the game.


• Since GW is my brother's game of choice, I got the inevitable invitation to try one of the new quests. In opposition to my usual inclination, I said yes. No reason not to try, right? The mission quest for that day had us taking on the Blood Washes Blood mission from Eye Of The North. I remember the first time through this mission. It was one of the first I complete with the expansion since I started with the Norn questline. It was (I think) the first time you get access to not-affected-by-the-nerf Ursan Aura. It was fun at the time, but I haven't seen the mission in months. Maybe longer? Probably.


• The mission was being run with my brother's new guild, who turned out to be a nice group. They, being well experienced and up for a challenge, decided to complete the mission in hard mode. I, being the inevitable dead weight, kept my mouth shut and hoped no one would notice. I noticed, though. When we started the mission, I was using the build suggested by my brother the last time we played together a month or two ago. I didn't even bother to switch it up. This was a pretty bad mistake since it was nowhere near optimized for the types of enemies we were facing. In most battles I didn't get more than one or two shots at an enemy before he was down and I had to scramble to find another target. The mission came to an end successfully without me really knowing what was going on or that we were even done. It was frustrating, even though I enjoyed hanging out.


• It was then suggested that we help another player with an old Prophecies mission, D'Alessio Seaboard. Once again, in hard mode. (Interesting fact: D'Alessio Seaboard was the mission available from Lion's Arch in the preview weekend I took part in.) I vowed to comport myself better this time, so I switched to a single target build I am partial to. Then my brother asked "Do you have Judge's Insight?" Judge's Insight? I didn't even remember what that is. Sounded like a monk skill. I asked if it was in a Retribution skill and everyone had a giggle at my WoWishness. Smiting Prayers is where I found it, so I slotted the skill and we took off.


• This was when I remembered that Guild Wars in not like your standard MMO. You don't get maximum effect from a skill just by using it. You also have to allocate Attribute Points to modify it. This is something I've forgotten in years since I played seriously. What this means is Judge's Insight only lasted eight seconds before I had to cast it again. This is not an optimum plan. Once again we were able to finish the mission, bonus and all, despite my noobish error. I wasn't completely dead weight, but I was also not satisfied with my performance.


• When ask when I would be getting my four year present, I informed the group that my character was 46 months old. It was a figure that surprised and depressed me. I've forgotten so much about Guild Wars that I feel I don't deserve the credit.