Sky Pirates (Continued)
Aetherblade units drop insignias and broken gadgets or something—a bounty has been placed on their heads. Bring stuff from defeated Aetherblades to the investigator headquarters so their researchers can learn more about them. Trade them in for small karma items, buff food, small amounts of coin, etc. Maybe even have different ranks of Aetherblades that drop more valuable insignias for skins, RNG boxes or something.
Aetherblade Saboteurs have tampered with the Asura gates, they now malfunction and sometimes send players to the wrong city, or even to one of that city’s accompanying starter zones! For example, if you went through the Black Citadel gate, you might end up in Black Citadel, or maybe Plains of Ashford, or maybe even Rata Sum or Metrica Province! For added fun, sometimes spawn them a couple meters above the ground.
(Keep it to starting zones so we don’t end up with level 10s zoning into Orr or something, that’s not fun.) The way to make the gates function properly for a time would be for players to complete a periodic collection quest where they need to bring glowy Asura batteries or whatever to the Krewe working on the gates. Players can still waypoint to the cities normally (for a little extra gold sink wink nudge), and the gates would work properly when people are doing the repair quest. The WvW/PvP gates would be unaffected.
In two days, Aetherblade airships appear in the skies above an ever increasing number of zones, troops land in villages, causing a ruckus, and starting “reclaim X village”-type events. This gives low-level and new players a way to experience the event without needing to hang out in LA all the time. There would be Lionguard investigation personnel stationed around to collect insignias in these zones, much like the audio log collectors in F&F.
About a week into this chaos, Lionguard officials have located the Aetherblade base of operations just outside Lion’s Arch. Players must defeat Aetherblade units, destroy mortars and complete events to decrease the amount of attackers and mortar shots spawning in Lion’s Arch. After a day or two, there could even be an outright siege going on outside the Aetherblade base. During this, keep a record in the Living Story meta event box that shows how many insignias have been collected, how many assaults were successful or whatever, sort-of a server-pride thing, and so players can see real progress. This is a little crazy, but maybe if players don’t try to hold back the invasion, Aetherblade start para-dropping into the other capital cities too.
Another couple days later, the Aetherblade bunker has been cracked, and the Aetherblade Retreat dungeon can be accessed. Also, those “other zones” that Aetherblade airships have been floating over now have Lionguard forces stationed around them, allowing players to use a jump pad to board the airships and complete an “Aetherblade Morale” event to disable the airship from bothering the zone for a time.
At the end of the event, establish that there will be a timed finale where airships explode in the air spectacularly. Maybe stagger the ships in the different zones so there will be multiple opportunities to see it.
Yay! Victory against a terrible threat to peace!
This might sound like it would be annoying, but seriously, “Sky Pirates: Lion’s Arch in Chaos.” People might even spend some time in some of the other major cities for once. People might look back on the event and think “Man, remember that one time Lion’s Arch was in absolute chaos? We had to do so much work to restore order and just get by.”
In closing, I felt the only cool thing about the Sky Pirates event was that Aetherblade Retreat dungeon. I thought it was awesome, almost as good as Molten Facility even. Everyone constantly whined about it because it was actually tricky, and you couldn’t faceroll it. I hope a cut-down version makes it to Fractals sometime. Same for Molten Facility.
Bazaar of the Four Winds
So far I have enjoyed this event for the most part, but it’s difficult to judge so early on. I have a feeling that It will end up like Dragon Bash, where I’ll get all the achievements done in a few days and then not touch it anymore. It’s too bad, that zone is quite beautiful and interesting. I’m really liking this “Canthian design” everyone seems to go on about. (Never played GW1) The zone is definitely very jump-puzzly, but that doesn’t really bother me personally.
Heh, If Sky Pirates had gone down like I described above, this event could be about how the Aetherblades discovered the Zephyrites’ big floating city, damaged it, and now they have to land and trade their rare goods for our crafting materials to get it repaired and even fix our silk/leather economy while they’re at it.
Ara Daybreak [GT] – Charr Elementalist – Henge of Denravi
