This episode of the living story was disappointing in several ways.
But you know what? That’s always the case with GW2 lately. It’s always fucking disappointing me, somehow, in some way. The writers destroy their own characters or forget they exist (Canach, Marjory, Kasmeer), they have moments of brilliance that they abolish and never return to (Joko’s fantastic ending monologue) and they misrepresent the selling points of their content which are hidden behind notorious grinds (Requiem armour set, Skyscale.)
I’m fucking sick of it.
I’m so sick of it, that in fact, I’m going to do a positive post first. Because there’s so much bad shit right now that if I keep looking at it, I’m going to abandon this game altogether and I don’t want to do that. I really don’t, I love this game, and I want this game to be better. So there’s a LOT of shit wrong with the latest update.
But there’s a lot of good, too.
• The map design is one of the single best map designs we’ve seen in a long time. Even for a map that was clearly designed for the Skyscale, every mount has value here. Skilled griffon flyers can really show off their stuff, dodging and weaving between branches. Jackal portals, once you get used to where they take you, make it very easy to get to the important cliffs very quickly. There are a huge number of gaps or breaks in terrain that both raptor and skimmer can cross, with Volatile Magic helping the skimmer in particular do so with ease. Springer easily shines with the new updates to it, turning it from my most hated mount to one of my second most used. The paths between each of the camps are, within reason, mostly flat so that the roller beetle can help you zip around from one camp to the next with little interruption.
This map is a good fucking map, okay.
• Map currency doesn’t feel horrendously difficult to get, and for once all the high prices at the vendors actually feel appropriate. Dragonfall is, hands down, one of the most rewarding maps ArenaNet has ever given us in terms of map rewards and map currency and do you know what this does? It makes me play it. Dragonfall is actually my favourite map right now to explore and farm - no hearts make it fun to complete on all my level 80s, the meta is not challenging but is engaging with events everywhere you go of hugely varying challenge, and the map currency nodes aren’t arbitrarily locked to characters or per account. This map feels good to play in and, as a result, I’m actually playing in it.
• The Mist Shard amour set is behind achievements, gives a recipe to you to unlock all the weights of it, is cheap to craft (as opposed to 25+ gold Diviner sets on the trading post) and, very notably unlike Requiem armour, is fun to upgrade. Upgrading it isn’t some god-awful collection hunt using overpriced items, it just involves playing on the map some more and that’s literally it. You get all the map currency, spirit shards and ectos you need playing the map, salvaging the rares it showers onto your heads and gathering the chests.
• I’m gonna come right out and say it; the Scion weapons look beautiful and it is really nice to see the Ascended skins given a new breath of life. I’ve always loved them, I’ve always loved the Sunless set though I’ve never gotten one, and I will be in this map for a very long time doing events, gathering keys and opening chests to try and get Gifts of Aurene and unlock some of those skins. It’s nice. It’s a good example of a simple but pretty skin, that even makes sense considering the Sunless set that already exists.
There was a lot wrong with this episode of the living story. Like... a lot. I’m not going to pretend that it was perfect because I’d be lying to myself if I did so. But you know what? I am playing GW2 again. I am enjoying parts of this new content. And while I genuinely hope that ArenaNet takes all the criticism to heart - especially regarding things like suddenly absent characters that make no sense to be absent, or the Skyscale problem - I hope they take to heart some of the compliments too.
Because while there was a lot wrong - a lot really wrong - some of the stuff in this patch has honestly been the best it has been in a long time, particularly regarding map design, the implementation of map currency and how you can obtain it, and the scaling and variety of events available.
(P.S. Screenshots of Felidae, soon. My poor mascot for this blog has been nothing but a glorified bank for a long time. Today I changed that, gave her a new look, gave her a new build and I’m going to try actually playing her more often.)
I’m highly disappointed by MO’s response towards all of this - which you can read here if you haven’t seen it.
On the one hand, it’s good that ArenaNet have decided that this is not the way to release mount skins in the future. But... on that same hand, that’s actually the only positive thing to come out of his post. The rest of it is PR jargon that’s been regurgitated several times inside their own office to staff because it’s very clearly out of touch with the player base themselves. Under a read more for some people who just don’t care - and if you’re tired of this issue already, I’m sorry I’m still posting about it.
But I think there’s a deeper problem inside ArenaNet than just the fact we had RNG lootboxes added. And I’d like to talk a bit about MO’s response to try and explain why I’m so disappointed in what has happened and, in particular, why I’m so disheartened in ArenaNet as a company based on the response we’ve had. I’ll dissect it:
1) There’s no comment on releasing mount skins - even simple ones - as in game rewards. Why? We have our legendary weapons and we have some legendary gliders and backpieces that you can do as collections. They take a while, sure, but they’re things people can work towards at their own pace if they want to! Why is this not even a consideration on the table?
2) Highly deceptive language that’s come straight from the mouths of the people that exploited the lootbox trend in the first place: nonsense like “You get a brand-new, unique mount skin every time, for a substantial discount versus an individual purchase price.” This is exceptionally false - the big complete pack only saves you a total of 600 gems. A one and a half license ‘discount’ is, in fact, not a discount. Every skin here is worth 400 gems minimum - the Halloween pack was worth I think 360 gems per skin or around that. These skins are not discounted substantially at all in the long run.
3) While I doubt every mount skin released in future will come to 2000 gems like the reforged dog does... there’s also nothing to say they won’t, either. I dislike this intentional lack of transparency as ArenaNet are trying to pull their pants back up from their ankles.
4) “You’ve requested variety, and this is a way to support variety. Individual sale is a mechanic that works with a few, flashy skins. Using a grab bag mechanic gives us leeway to create skins to suit a wide range of player tastes while offering a lower price per skin.” is flat out absolute bullshit. End of story.
Ultimately, here is my problem with the RNG skin boxes in Guild Wars 2, and it is a problem not only not addressed but, in fact, totally ignored because it would look bad if they actually addressed it: if I have to buy your game and buy the expansions to your game, you should not be using free to play lootbox economy. Lootboxes started in free to play mobile games, along with deceptive “microtransactions” that weren’t actually saving you much money but masqueraded to make it look like they did. And to be fair, it’s not only GW2 that has this problem: this is rife throughout the game industry like a disease that just won’t die. Developers want to use freemium economy marketing tactics in games that are not freemium games and I find it incredbly distasteful. Especially when their freemium economies begin to exploit their players solely to make more $$$.
MO’s response probably wasn’t written purely by MO himself - mostly because I don’t think most responses like these ever are. It was probably ran through a chain of people internally to make sure it seemed appropriate and also admitted as little fault as possible while trying to be apologetic because angry customers that make bad press need to be tided over so that they stop complaining about issues and the bad press just disappears. As a result, a lot of MO’s response is out of touch with a lot of the complaints actually levelled to the company, and it has a tone of “Well oops, you guys caught us with our pants down this time! We’ll be careful not to let you do that in the future.” The claim about protecting “investments” made by players who bought the skins is also absolute rubbish because ArenaNet (prior to MO’s ruling era, I should be clear) have actually been quite willing to, you know... protect player’s previous investments by refunding them when gemstore goods changed.
Town clothes and the Flamekissed sets are good examples. Do you remember when the Flamekissed Armour Set could be bought on the gemstore - and players were outraged because it used Human Cultural T3 armour skins while the Medium and Heavy flame-based armour did not? I do. I also remember what ArenaNet did: they allowed all player who purchased the armour to keep the new Flamekissed skins (now based on the Feathered set) and they also refunded them the gems they spent buying the original set.
So I hate to be the cynic here, but no. ArenaNet is not protecting the investments of their players. ArenaNet is protecting themselves and offering a sugar-coated poor reasoning as to why they are not going to actually address the bigger problem, try to rectify the system even a little and reimburse spenders their gems. Because they just want your money. They don’t want to change the skins (not even by splitting them into RNG boxes based on mount so you can at least try for a specific mount skin more reasonably!) because if they did that, you could buy more things from the gem store without buying gems.
I’m going to level with you all.
I don’t like ArenaNet with MO in charge. I have had hesitations and questions about the way MO runs this ship for a while - but this has to be the most telling thing about MO’s leadership of ArenaNet as a company. A company that was once well-known for listening to player feedback and making rational decisions that both addressed complaints and re-imbursed their players fairly across the board is no longer willing to make even a modicum of effort.
This company isn’t the same company it was three, four years ago. And I think this is possibly the most telling example of how. Which is sad, I think, and I know I’m going to be a lot more picky about my gem purchasing in the future. I can no longer rely on ArenaNet to actually care about my feedback, I can only rely on them to protect their own interests and offer me an out-of-touch apology for when I catch them trying to exploit me.
I don’t normally do this. But I just want to... gently, softly... slide this video in here.
For those who don’t know, by the way, Jim’s extremely vulgar and swears a lot and is generally quite offensively blunt in his content, so some of you may not want to watch this. But otherwise, he makes an extremely important argument about why cosmetics are, in fact, part of the gameplay, and do impact games.
It’s been on my mind a lot because the only argument we ever hear trying to refute lootbox problems and, recently in GW2 with the mounts, is “It’s just cosmetic, who cares, they don’t effect the game!” in those exact words. This video does a very good job of pointing out the very inherent flaw in that argument and how it is, one might say, literal actual bollocks.
With examples of times that the gaming community proved just how bollocks “it’s just cosmetic” is, too. I dunno. Food for thought.
As many here may know, I’ve been in a huge Guild Wars 2 slump lately. It’s why I haven’t been posting much in the way of content, especially due to the fact that Stormblood dropped for Final Fantasy XIV recently and man I really love that game. I didn’t expect to be interested in the expansion, and frankly I’d forgotten there was even an announcement about it till a friend reminded me. So... what are silly Felidae’s thoughts on the coming Path of Fire?
The Living Story has failed to capture my interest in any meaningful way for the last three or so episodes, and the final two in particular. To be very frank with you, the final instalment of the Living Story’s third season was so unimpressive to me that I had actually made the decision to ignore the likes of the expansion that was coming.
After all, I was using it as my justification to either go on and buy the expansion, or to not. So when I played through the story constantly asking “Is it bad that I’m having to ask myself why I’ve even logged into this game to do this?” for that entire stupid piece of story - which felt and still feels like it was filler and didn’t even need to exist, and like it did a terrible job at dealing with the Mystery Character reveal (to avoid spoilers in this non-spoiler post) - and when I had more fun spending an hour just doing the jumping puzzle rather than the hour I spent slogging through the awful story... why would I buy an expansion that was likely built in a similar way?
The Living Story had gone in directions I hadn’t enjoyed. The new maps were never places I found particularly enjoyable to explore and they never really got me to go back to them for any reason once I had done the story there.
It was mostly on a whim and at the behest of a friend I checked out the expansion announcement video - I’d completely forgotten about the stream that ArenaNet was doing and honestly I’d forgotten that an expansion for GW2 was even coming out. I had Put It DownTM.
Fair play to ArenaNet, however... having watched the announcement, I won’t pretend I’m not interested. There seemed to be an acknowledgement that the latest parts of the Living Story left everybody asking “What the actual fucking fuck?” and an undertone of acknowledgement that not everybody was happy about the direction the Living Story had taken. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to me. There was talk of taking GW2 back to its routes; of making maps that were not only fun to explore but were designed with exploring in mind in the first place, and it looked promising that a lot of the maps we were shown didn’t involve the drastic bullshit layers of verticality that the last several Living Story maps did. (Gliding’s great and all, ArenaNet, but I don’t want a five story fucking map that I can’t navigate because your minimap is ass and because I didn’t grind out asinine masteries.)
The mounts, something I was dreading as it went right backwards in the face of exploration, actually seem to have been crafted in tandem with maps so that they are less “get to place A faster than you would without it” but do seem to be, in fact, crafted as tools of exploration in and of themselves. Rather than just make a “go fast” thing that flew in the face of what exploration meant, maps and mounts seem to have been crafted to compliment each other, and they look like they’ve actually been done well.
Story...? Well... That, the jury is out on, frankly.
Elite specialisations look fun. They don’t just look like classes got a new weapon, they look genuinely like specialisations as the name would suggest. Oh, necromancers lose their death shroud, but they can more ability to actively support other players and more mobility - something neither of the last two have! Thieves get to pick up a proper ranged weapon that looks to focus on dealing damage burst, but also looks to sacrifice the huge mobility they’ve always been able to enjoy (and I am so excited to finally give my fiery salad thief the Predator, because I made that for him in the first place.) Mesmers have had their dodge roll fundamentally changed to fit this new up-close-and-personal playstyle and I couldn’t be more excited. Elementalists are having their four-attunement rotation thrown out the window in place of mixed attunements, and so on. The specialisations actually look like, well... specialised classes! Not just the same old classes with one new weapon. (I also enjoy ArenaNet subtly acknowledging pet AI is terrible by letting rangers basically fuse with their pet.)
And shit, for the first time since Heart of Thorns launched, we’ve even had an update to character creation with new faces (a very Big Deal even if the update is only for humans, because they’re genuine PoC facial structures and hairstyles that they have added for free into the base game and I would never take how big of a deal that is away from those who it is most important to.)
Things are... hopeful? I won’t even say they’re looking promising because that’s too much of an optimistic statement for where I stand with the game, but they look hopeful. Like there’s a chance. Like just maybe - but not guaranteed - this expansion isn’t the swan song of GW2 me and most of my friends thought it was going to be. And, whether it is or whether it isn’t... ArenaNet have at least convinced me that this expansion might be worth my time and potentially my money.
I’ve been really disillusioned with GW2 lately, mostly in terms of the direction that I feel it might be going and the latest living story patch, too. Now then I’m not abandoning the game - I’ve got far too much invested to just leave and I do still love GW2 as a whole.
I’m just... I’m taking a step back, and playing the waiting game a little. Rather than force myself to play the game while I’m just really not enjoying it, I’m going to wait and see what the future holds and just spend my time doing something else in a different game for a while. A game that, if I’m somewhat honest, gives me more to do at max level than Guild Wars 2 has ever given any player ever.
See that’s the thing - I have twenty characters at max level... who don’t really do anything. I loathe the newest map with a passion, and there’s nothing in there I really want. Achievements are nice to get but they don’t really feel like progression on max level characters. I could replay the living story on characters I haven’t done it on to grind masteries but that also... isn’t progression. I’m not really interested in crafting, which means that Ascended armour/weapons is basically an achievement farm or an RNG grind, neither of which feel like progression either and feel more like “lucking out” than anything.
So for now, I’m spending time in Final Fantasy XIV until I can look at GW2 and genuinely say to myself that I want to play it.
I feel like I could maybe make a post on why Guild Wars 2 really struggles at the end-game to keep veteran players around, if people were interested - but then again I’m also the sort of person who feels like the raids were made almost a little too exclusive insofar as requiring a really dedicated static that didn’t mind you sucking even if you had the gear, finding a learning party that didn’t mind you sucking even if you had the gear, or just desperately trying to PUG it (which nobody wants to do) while you do or don’t have the gear. My problems with ascended armour also tie into raids feeling extremely exclusive - because while you don’t need full ascended, if you don’t have a big guild (which I do not) that don’t mind trying to teach you, then no PUG wants to take you.
I never thought there would be a day where I said that a game that gives you a gear treadmill at max level is better than one that doesn’t, but it’s starting to seem like honestly traditional gear treadmills aren’t that bad of an idea. Maybe GW2 was trying to be too creative. I don’t know. All I know is that my level 80s feel useless and I’m not motivated to play any of them, because there’s no content for them that’s actually engaging... and I’ve recently levelled two to 80 in quick succession, so running around doing map completion doesn’t feel particularly engaging, either.
My lovely doggo is on the mend. It was a scary time for me especially because she's my best buddy, and hearing her scream her way to an emergency vet appointment was heartbreaking, but we're getting through it. She had to have two surgeries in under 48 hours, one for the initial spay and the second to re-stitch after she developed a haematoma due to loose stitches from the first. We then had an emergency out of hours visit to the hospital, where she was given a morphine injection for the pain, another injection the following day and an additional prescription of painkillers to get her through it. So, scary times. But I'm pleased to report that she's getting better and is her usual self these last two days: she's barking at the next door dogs, eating normally, being unimpressed with every bird that visits her garden, and bitterly disappointed that she still is only allowed to be lead walked for two weeks. Thanks to everybody who sent well-wishes after my first post on this, it meant an awful lot! We should be back to our more regular GW2 postings very soon - with more Charr to show off of course!
I promised I’d do one of these, and here it is! I have a lot of thoughts on the latest Flashpoint episode and I’m not going to lie to any of you: it’s not really all that positive. Of course, as always with these sort of posts, this is just my personal opinion and experience; plenty of other people might feel totally different and that is a-okay. My inbox is always open to asks if people have questions or want to talk about it, and I try my best to keep an eye on replies, so if anybody reads this and wants to open a discussion, you’re welcome to. <3
And as always, posted under a read more so it doesn’t clog up anybody’s dash if they aren’t interested.
But we’ll preface with a summary: what the fuck is going on with the writing in this living story? Also: spoiler warning.
Flashpoint has left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never been so quick to put down Guild Wars 2 after an update (I played it on release day and the Wednesday that followed and I haven’t touched it since,) and I’ve also never found myself so oddly jaded. I actually said to myself that if episode six doesn’t actually start making some goddamn sense in any respect and answering an increasing number of questions, I might not even buy the expansion.
Honestly, truthfully?
I don’t like the direction that Guild Wars 2 seems to be going in these days. Of course some of this ties into the big ol’ leaks going around, and I won’t discuss these on my blog at all until ArenaNet confirms them because I believe in confirmation from developers rather than taking leaks at face value, but I have some real concerns. Ever since Colin left, the direction of the Guild Wars 2 flagship has been slowly changing... and I kind of wish Mike would find somebody to permanently replace the position he’s temporarily put himself in in Colin’s absence, because truthfully I think he’s better at running a company than he is at implementing good game direction.
The biggest stickler for me that I’ll open with, as a really big Charr player : why are the Charr following Balthazar?
I haven’t, in my admittedly short time playing the game, seen any given reasoning for Charr to be following a human god. And I emphasise both of those things, because of all the known Charr factions that we have, not one of them fit the profile for following Balthazar.
The Flame Legion were the legion that spearheaded the Searing. They are Charr as we knew them to be in the first game: they’re sexist, they’re a cult that will believe in deities where there is some good profit to be seen in it for them, and they are incredibly racist. Now while some people claim that Balthazar, as a god of War and of Fire, would appeal to the tastes of Flame Legion, I want to contest this with the fact he is a human god. If any deity in the world were to be the one deity that the Flame Legion deem to be inconsequential and not worth following, any human deity falls into that category. I find it extremely unlikely that they would ever, even in desperate circumstances, come to align themselves with the god of the one race in Tyria they spent so many years fighting.
Our regular Citadel Charr are equally unfit to follow a human god: because they’ve cast aside deities entirely. Embittered to the notion of religion as a whole after the antics of Flame Legion, Citadel Charr out and out do not recognise gods in any form. Things can be big, and powerful, and in some cases beyond complete comprehension, but they aren’t gods. They’re just big, powerful and sometimes beyond comprehension - and also potentially killable. They wouldn’t put their faith blindly into anything claiming to be a deity, never mind a human deity. And sure, sure, there’s a truce right now that they’ve actively fought to keep alive, but just because there’s a tense peace treaty that doesn’t mean that Charr are about to abandon their history to go and follow a human god. Flame Legion have proven time and time again why gods don’t work: Citadel Charr outright say they killed their gods. Nothing is infallible.
The only other known faction of Charr are the somewhat disorganised Renegades. And I shouldn’t need to explain why these Charr - you know, the human hating Charr that strive to rekindle the fires of war between humans and Charr - wouldn’t suddenly start following a human god.
So again: why are there Charr in these mercenaries? I haven’t seen any Norn, for example, and this makes sense: Norn don’t recognise the human gods as gods. So why would they follow Lazarus or Balthazar? Naturally they wouldn’t. No sylvari either, from what I’ve seen, and this also makes sense: if Batlhazar is so gung-ho against dragons, he probably doesn’t want dragon minions in his mercenary army. (You know, despite Mordremoth being dead at this point.) It just makes no sense to see Charr there at all, and while I was playing I could see no reasons given or stated. (If somebody has found any dialogue clips, by all means please share them with me!)
I feel much the same way about the appearance of the Inquest, too, but at least the Inquest can be half-assed into the mercenary army through the use of Zinn and his research. No, they don’t recognise Balthazar as a god either, but they stand to gain from Balthazar’s actions via getting access to all manner of research that at one point was probably considered lost to the ages. It’s a flimsy excuse, I feel, but at least the excuse even exists.
Secondly: Balthazar’s entire scheme makes very little sense.
Of all the disguises that Balthazar could have used to come down to Tyria with and amass an army using, he chose a Mursaat so that he could employ the use of the White Mantle. You know... the one human group that doesn’t recognise the human gods as gods. Of all the humans in the world that he could have chosen to utilise, he used the only one that would have gone immediately rogue if they found out who he actually was. Instead of appearing to Separatists for example, who are begging for a war with Charr and would have probably thrown themselves at Balthazar’s feet as long as he promised them their war, or even just regular Krytans who are dealing with the war with centaurs and would have also likely been keen to at least listen to their god, Balthazar chose the White Mantle. And... we have no explanation why. Beyond that, he then had to hire mercenaries because he was concerned the White Mantle would discover his deception and no longer follow him - something he could have avoided if he had appealed to any other group of humans in the entirety of Tyria. It makes just no sense.
Beyond that, we really have no evidence that any of the human gods were involved in setting up the White Mantle to be able to even think they could find the aspects of Lazarus. So from where I’m sitting, not only did Balthazar choose arguably the worst human group to try and manipulate, but he did so simply because “Oh hey, I guess I could do this.” Now maybe there’s more to it than that, as the developers have said that his story arc isn’t over, but right now I’m just... not impressed. For saying he’s a god with some considerable power at his disposal - you’d think - he’s made a lot of stupid choices.
Thirdly: Balthazar didn’t make an intimidating foe... at all.
The last time we were dealing with a rogue god, it was in Guild Wars 1 and it was Abaddon. And I didn’t even play much of GW1, but you know what I remember? There was an entire campaign based around that. Abaddon was an intimidating villain simply on the principle that the original plan was to, you know, prevent the release of Abaddon. When that failed, the last ditch option of desperation was to defeat him outright - and that took some serious firepower that included the blessing of all the other gods. The threat was very, very real.
Balthazar... yeah. Not so much, huh?
We dispel his illusion through the use of Kasmeer, who admittedly may or may not be far more powerful than we know in fairness, but that means we pretty easily smash through a relic enchanted by Lyssa herself. Well, okay. How about Balthazar, then? Well, his puppies aren’t shit, frankly. You beat them down into submission and then utilise Taimi’s machine to completely destroy them, but the fact you physically beat them down so easily is... underwhelming. Haha, humans, not only was your racial elite skill trash in the first place but it’s now just been officially murdered in the game? Honestly. And as for Balthazar, while we know he hasn’t been destroyed and will likely resurge at a later date to continue what appear to be nefarious schemes, he just never felt threatening. You just blew up the machine he had sort of put himself into an oh, hey, I guess he’s just gone for a bit now.
What?
The human gods were never fully elaborated on at any given point in time, but Guild Wars 1 made it extremely clear that they were powerful. Extremely so. So unless Balthazar was half-assing his own plan and not using his full power, or unless he’s been somehow weakened by something happening on Tyria, his appearance has been critically underwhelming. Hell, it took more effort to defeat Zhaitan - and I remember that boss fight, I just pressed 1 a bunch. Yet somehow Zhaitan still made a more imposing threat, because it took serious work and preparation to even face him. You didn’t just talk so some slightly irritable druid spirits, get a nice fancy shield so you could jump into a volcano and then throw a bit of dragon magic at an Asuran machine to watch it go pop.
I have more gripes with Flashpoint beyond these three things, including the fact I think the new map is a good-concept-gone-horrifically-bad and is possibly one of the worst maps in GW2 since Tangled Depths and the utterly boring set up of one tiny but mildly intriguing instance, one bad map and then one tiny, eye-searing instance with a clusterfuck fight giving no real payoff considering how close to the end of the living story season we are.
Frankly, ArenaNet...
If you want me to buy your expansion hot off the press, this final episode of Living Story better see some real improvement when it comes to writing and see some genuinely good answers to these questions. I’m getting real tired of investing in your stories only to have you leave them half fucking finished and glaring lore discrepancies and plot holes that you then just never come back to.
You mentioned having 52 characters? How many are Char, how many Sylvari, and what races are the remainder?
I’m actually up to 58 character slots now, as my wonderful partner @queen-raatha got me some extra ones over the last few months! Only 56 of those are in use right now, though I’m sure the spare 2 empty ones won’t last long. Some fun facts and racial distribution numbers are as follows:• 20 Charr• 26 Sylvari• 6 human• 2 Asura• 2 Norn• 20 @ level 80• Of that twenty there are: 2 Elementalists, 4 Mesmers, 3 Necromancers, 3 Guardians, 2 Warriors, 1 Revenant, 1 Engineer, 2 Rangers, 2 Thieves (elite specs included in this, I’ve just banded them all together based on core class)• I have two more characters that I enjoy playing who are probably going to be the ones that hit 80 next, and both of these characters are Revenants.• I’m glad Transmutation Charges are so easy to get, because it almost all of these 56 characters all have their gear fashioned up. For the purpose of roleplay, of course. Some exceptions are characters who actually use outfits, but these are few and far between.
