First up, let me say this was my first GW event that I really got into. Halloween never interested me, it seemed all a bit…. lame. After the Halloween event though I discovered that there were a few items and jumping puzzles I really would have liked. I really had no idea what to do where to go and discovered things way to late to get involved.
So this time, my brother and I decided we were going to get into this event and play this through together and enjoy it from beginning to end. We got friends of ours who had left the game and encouraged them to get on for it.
The Good
By far the best experience we had over the weekend was the Fractual Dungeon. We only did level one. I loved that not everything was about killing the trash, then killing the boss. We had to talk through it each step and play as a team. The scenes looked awesome. Each mini dungeon has had a lot of creativity and thought put into it. Some of note were:
- Being burnt by the cold and having to light fires to stay alive.
- Being a Dolphin and having to avoid Krait.
- Running through a haunted forest and avoiding the dreaded Mossman!
We had a throughly enjoyable sense of excitement once we got to Southsun Cove and began to explore through the zone. Doing the frustratingly fun jumping puzzles and taking part in the events was great fun. I love how this game rewards exploration.
Side story
We encountered a Veteran Karka for the first time. At first we didn’t notice that it would buff itself with retaliation. So we pounded it hard and it pounded us back. Only our groups Necro managed to stay up. Some how we managed to get it down. When suddenly it gets full health back. We’re all gob-smacked at first, thinking it glitched. We finally, got it down again and breath a sigh of relief, saying “We’ll avoid those in future.”
As we walk over the top of the next hill, we surveyed the land and saw the whole area was covered with them. The sense of fore-boding that fell over the group was palpable.
Now thats a game that has sucked you in! Loved it!
A handful of similar moments really made the weekend for us.
The Bad
Playing through the story was a bit rough at the beginning but that was, in part, due to us not reading carefully and not understanding that things won’t be available until later. We were under the impression the only thing to wait for was the final event. But once we got going it was fun… until we hit the first bugged NPC.
Then we frustratingly kept teleporting back to see whether it had been fixed yet or not. Wasted time and a small pile of silver. Still, we were determined to play it through and follow the story from beginning to end. Even when Phase 2 was released we didn’t go there until we finished Phase 1.
