I’m exhausted.
It’s hard to get beyond that sentence, because once I muster the energy I have to acknowledge that I am doing it to myself. I’ve spent many sleepless nights the last couple of weeks pursuing Winters Presence, alongside chipping away at the PvP League meta and farming up components for HOPE. Before that, it was farming masteries – an easy prospect in Central Tyria, but not for the Itzel Mastery that I needed to finish HOPE I. There’s also the new Fractal back piece and every specialization weapon collection that I’ve barely scratched. Then there’s all the old collections I haven’t finished yet. And forget leveling Scribe, because even my patience has a limit, and I sure as hell don’t have the gold.
We’re used to complaining about having no endgame in GW2. Well, that has changed and it is now upon us. We have a choice of endgames, whether it be hunting skins, masteries, fractal achievements, a functional guild hall, or that shiny new Legendary. Maybe you’re lucky and you had the resources for one or two already. Good news, you can pick your next focus and sequester yourself away from the light for a month, just like the rest of us. Grab a tractor and harvest that flax seed. Buy a watch to time your meta, and a calendar to project when you’ll have enough of whatever currency it gives. Grab your friends for those daily pip trades. Whatever floats your boat.
We are quick to call these a money grab – just another means of getting us to shell out cash for gold. I have a different feeling on this. In the absence of extensive maps, we’ve been given things to occupy our time; these were designed to take forever, not only to give the devs more time to develop new things but to give some sense of accomplishment to all the work we put in.
But it feels like very little of this pays off in the mid-term. When the achievement isn’t something I can knock out in an hour, it’s time to strap on the comfy shoes, because the journey might take a couple of months. I’ve been working on Exotic Hunter and Treasure Hunter since their release, at a pace that could generously be called glacial . I’ve worked on pretty much anything else that comes down the pipe as I can devote time to it. As big as ANet’s table is, my plate has grown to match. But without the ability to check off some of these things on the list, it’s starting to suck my enthusiasm dry.
Wintersday is over tomorrow. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get replaced with something else that will take a month to earn.
