Ok so… Overall Impressions
This event was crazy! Frustrating at times, buggy at others, but overall I can say that I enjoyed it.
The Major Issue
So the problem I had with the entire event was graphic/server lag. It’s no fun fighting monsters you can’t see and know it’s not your fault since you have a high end computer and fast internet connection. Often times I would just see people and see what they were attacking because of the effects, hope they were attacking something real that wasn’t dead already and then spam an AOE and pray I hit something. I wish there was a way to give render priorities – monsters and their effects first and foremost then you can worry about if my computer/connection can handle everyone else on the map and what they are doing.
Phase 1
I was there for the initial attack on Lion’s Arch. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t really that fun for the reasons I stated above. I didn’t get my first drop for the event until well into it and so wasn’t able to help with the samples either though I was glad to see we could still turn them in for a while after.
Once the attack was over I began the quests. I managed to get as far as Canach – who didn’t want to fight and Fadh al’Eshadhi – who thought he was fighting invisible Krait and wouldn’t let me see what was in his chest. But I figured those two things would eventually be fixed and moved on to the Fractals dungeon with my guild members after two more frustrating invisible enemy battles at Morgan’s Spiral and Garenhoff.
I ENJOY THE FRACTALS. I can’t stress that enough. I think it will get old once I experience all the maps but for the time being I think I’ll have some fun running this one to get my monthly achievement.
The next morning I was able to complete the scavenger hunts (I have to admit the 5 commendations as a reward was a bit disappointing) and I was ready for…
Phase 2
Retaking Lion’s Arch was similar to the first attack. By the time I was able to find the items to harm the karka and find a few to kill the event was over before I knew what was happening. I didn’t even get gold for participating despite being there since it first started.
The next was probably my favorite part of the event. Running through the island as the way points were created was genuinely entertaining and I thought – well planned. It felt like a good chain of events but it sorta just fizzled off. I wish that Kiel had said something along the lines of “Good work, now to just hold these points while we plan our counter-attack” or similar. Instead I think she just vanished on our server. I did love the jumping puzzles and my new ranger pet, though!
Phase 3
I feel very mixed about this. Like most of the event at times it was fun, but mostly frustrating. The walk up to plant the explosives was long and with the once again “invisible enemies” issue, the group continued to get wiped and I often found myself wondering what the heck was killing me only to have it actually render once I was dead under it.
During the actual attack on the Ancient Karka I loved the bits where you had to herd it back and actually did something. The avalanche, the steam vents, etc… The “reinforcements” part felt at best – tedious. There was a collective groan from my group when a guildie who was in a server that was completing it just a little faster told us there was a second wave of that. It just took forever and didn’t feel very rewarding.
The final-final battle was pretty great even if it did glitch during the jump and dump me into the lava. I was able to be rezed once the cutscene was over and then came the infamous chest.
I’m happy with the rewards. I like the unique 20-slot box and trinket. My guild the entire time was joking that we better get a bunch of exotics of precursors for doing the events. And we all got just that! True, I only got two exotics that were barely worth 1 gold a piece while a guild member got not just one, but TWO precursors… and yes, I was jealous of them but I’m hardly going to quit the game because of it.
Conclusion if you’ve read this far
So yes – Overall fun but definitely had some issues I hope to not see make a reappearance the next big event. And a final word on “One-Time” events: I have no problem with them being “Only one day” but the one-time-only thing seems to be a major problem for most of the community. I remember that we had “one-day-only”(somewhat…they became annual) events in GW1 but they ran often enough throughout the day so that most people could experience it. The Ancient Karka could easily have taken some servers 3 hours or more to complete so I understand that you couldn’t run it that often but maybe shoot for once every 6 hours within a 24 hour period? Still special, but gives everyone a chance to enjoy it.
