One of the things that’s kept me from posting here for the last few months has been an unwillingness to vent about Factions while it was still the current game, so indulge me for a couple of paragraphs while I take care of that.
With the Nightfall preview weekend behind us, and a month left until the release date, I’m happy to be waving goodbye to Factions. Goodbye to the poorly-implemented Luxon/Kurzick war, useless town control, inaccessable Elite missions, timers for almost all the mission bonuses, miles of ugly city and waste water, and ugly exploding enemies. That’s not to say that I personnally didn’t have fun with it (11 characters with the Protector of Cantha title), but that many other people didn’t – to the point that most of the end mission areas were mostly empty a lot of the time, and a surprising (to me) number of people in the guild that haven’t even finished the main story line with one character. There are some beautiful areas in Factions, especially in the Jade Sea, but unfortunately, it seems that few people had the stamina to get there.
Alliances, which could have been very helpful, turned out to also be poorly thought out – with no way to see who, if anyone, is online in any of the other guilds, you’re left with the only recourse being spamming the Alliance channel with “Is anyone there?” messages – which isn’t exactly inspiring, especially if there’s no answer. My response to ArenaNet’s question of “Do you really want to see a list of potentially 1000 members?” is an absolute Yes, Please – and I’d happily settle for just a list of those that are online.
OK, that’s better.
The Nightfall PvE preview weekend left me very hopeful and excited about what is to come. The Hero system means saying goodbye to the often-agonizing process of putting together a full team, while at the same time dispensing with many of the shortcomings of playing the game with the existing Henchmen. Have two people that want to do a mission together that’s designed of 8? No problem! Just take 3 heroes each, work out which heroes and which skill setup (also helped along by being able to save builds), and you’re good to go. As an extra bonus, you get to act as two squads, each player’s heroes following their respective player.
The storyline, voice acting, and map design also seem to have received a major upgrade from what we have seen before. A community divided by the Luxon/Kurzick war is reunited as all being Sunspears. The maps are largely open and unrestricted, with the exceptions actually making sense and fitting in with the rest of the game. The scenery has a theme, but isn’t repetitive. If they manage to carry on what was presented on the starter island into the rest of the game, Nightfall will be a huge improvement over Factions, and possibly even Prophecies. Imagine that.
Catching up with guild news, the cape redesign happened as a result of noticing that everyone (including me) had turned off their capes on a permanent basis. The black background both serves as a neutal separator and a way to keep the cape from being the main focus of attention when it’s on. The red/brown colors were chosen as being the most widely used in the base colors of the armors, and the organic theme of the background and foreground images was a nice change from the hard lines of the previous design.
I’ve pruned the unused trial accounts from the guild roster to give a somewhat more accurate view of the current state of our membership. I’m also seriously considering the removal of a couple of the long-inactive accounts, with the exception of our oldest inactive member – that one serves as a nice reminder of how long we’ve been here (and when the next round of birthday presents starts).
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