Earlier this evening, I had the most obnoxious game experience which I can remember (I would say ever, but I have some years now and it’s possible that I forgot something): The Battle of Claw Island story instance.
My current character, Elementalist, is first which made it past level 30 (and first after a year’s break). I really enjoyed playing her until now, and also enjoyed the personal story progress (Sylvari, Durmand Priory) some of which was truly awesome. Well that seems to be over now.
(Spoilers from now on)
So, I started the mission. Beginning was OK, some initial battle, then a task to defeat a set amount of Risen Abominations. I actually enjoyed the part, rotating my cooldowns and taking the Abominations one or two at a time. After finishing it, next task was “Find and revive Deputy Mira”. That’s where it all broke.
On my way to the NPC, Risen mobs spawned and started to attack me. I naturally assumed I had deal with them, so I did … however, they kept coming. Again. And again. After cca 10 minutes of the purest definition of grind I had enough and just headed towards Mira.
(As an aside, after checking the web for it – kiting a train of mobs while ignoring them is apparently he correct way how to do the mission. That’s really an awesome design there).
Reviving the NPC (being already quite annoyed), next task was “Use trebuchets against the Dead Ship”. A cute minigame which seemed to put the mission back on track, which sadly wasn’t true. “Ignite the signal-beacons” was right back to “kite and ignore”. followed straight by “Help the Lionguard hold out against the Risen”. When I read the objective, I was desperate; and resigning to any actual effort (while losing the last bits of interest), I simply started to running circles around the objective area, dragging mobs behind me and hoping all I have to do is survive for some time (remember, I never did the mission before).
To my relief that hope has proven true. A cutscene with dragon played (no interest at this point), I got perma-feared running into wall and the train of mobs has beaten me to death.
The only luck was that after respawning the whole mission ended with another cutscene, alas I was so disgusted at this point that what could be a touching moment with my favorite NPC ended completely stomped to the ground of disinterest. I logged off thinking that it couldn’t be any worse than that.
How wrong I was.
Several hours later, I logged back hoping just to be done with the story. “The Ghost Rite”, is the next mission. Some initial cutscene, transformation into a warrior and “Gain Power through the slaughter of your enemies.”. Yay, another grindy grind objective. Oh well.
Oh well.
I killed a few initial mobs, then arrived to a place with invulnerable boss and about 10 minions. The boss despawned after a moment and the minions all swarmed on me, unsurprisingly killing me in a few moments. “Respawn on checkpoint”.
I respawn and am in the middle of the very swarm of mobs. I go down pretty fast again. In this moment I stop caring altogether; I keep dying and respawning while slowly working through the pack of mobs.
I have died at least 10 times, armor completely broken, before the cluster of mobs got thinned down to manageable level. Objective still says " Gain Power through the slaughter of your enemies". New mobs keep spawning, I kill them, die here and there as they are coming indefinitely. This goes on for several minutes without any change. After I eventually die again (15th+ time, stopped counting long ago) with the objective still " Gain Power through the slaughter of your enemies" and no boss or anything else in sight, I lose it and quit the game.
Since this is a rant, writing a conclusion is rather difficult. Maybe a question if anyone else got so disgusted and discouraged by this part of the personal story. Or maybe a question if I can delete the personal story, because I for sure don’t want to touch it ever again, and it will block other hints the game offers (like, when on a new map, “there’s an unexplored area in this direction”). Maybe a question if I , from the description, did something wrong. Or maybe … I don’t know.