www.questhard.com

I run quite a few websites at the moment and as such it is becoming difficult to update them all reliably. So, all the GW2 posts I write will be available exclusively on www.QuestHard.com. sorry if this bugs you but Questhard really is my main focus.

There will be many GW2 blogs over there so please take a look

Guildwars Vs Guildwars 2: screen shots

I have played very little of Guildwars 2 since launch. so far I can tell you that Guildwars 2 is everything I expected it to be and is a true sequel in every way. It's a very good game. The joy of the game has been overshadowed so far as I have spent most of my time going back and forth between GW1 and GW2 comparing locations, thankfully you can log into both a once so its been quite easy. This passing distraction has brought a real sense of place to some of the locations. I've been able to get to places like Lions Arch with relative ease making the gratification quite instant.

Each picture below is linked to a full resolution version if you click. GW1 will always be on top and GW2 below (unless stated otherwise.) Without further introduction I present for your viewing pleasure the new and old worlds of Guildwars.

Firstly the character select menu, not a massive innovation here but they both match the look and feel of the respective games and both a are clean and functional. Notice the GW2 menu shows progression and achievement detail of the upper right where GW1 shows a shop link. I have substantially more Character slots in GW1 but this is after four expansions so I can't really complain.

Quest Hard Audio Blog – Shot from the hip

 

Quest Hard  'Shot from the hip'
The Quest Hard Audio Blog is a UK based discussion about MMO and PC gaming from an adult perspective. ever episode we procrastinate about games and chat about the things we did in them, after all gaming is about building story’s to tell.

This week we talk about Fish’s new found love of Dragon Age Origins. Why we have no show notes, DCUO. Blog Politics. Face book. Rift and why we never stuck with it and how we all love keyboard cat.

Get us over at: http://www.QuestHard.com

Our RSS is here:http://feeds.feedburner.com/QuestHard

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Be Creative, put a fish in a light bulb

It has been said may times through the ages that true genius can be measured by a fish in a light bulb. No, that’s not true. Creative urges are something i have had throughout my life and even though i am not an artist or performer these creative urges have manifested in the form of maybe decorating a room or (like now) writing a blog.

With the Joy that can be found within our video games, the sense of satisfaction from a new character level to a completed challenge in paradise city i wonder how many potentially world changing ideas are not being manifested because of the high quality entertainment that we have access to.

I know this sounds like a random and strange idea but while playing video games or even watching a really great movie any creative urges (for me its writing) are simply lulled into silence for the duration.

Imagine if Einstein had not had that free time to think up the theory of general relativity because he was pwning n00bs in Halo. Does the world benefit from the quality of entertainment available to it? Buy maybe Hitler would have chilled the hell out had he been able to play SimCity 3000.

The amount of my free time i spend being creative vs enjoying entertainment is something that i am very aware of. i some times listen to audio such as gaming podcasts or Red-Ice-Radio speakers while playing Lord of the Rings Online to offset education/creative thinking vs mindless play. but what being said i sometimes stop a session of writing because its making me over focussed and just play  Air Control HD for an hour.

I Wonder how many things would have been accomplished if people where simply bored more and had more time to think. All this said there is the idea behind the sand mandala, the idea that sometimes just creative thought and play are the best things for your mind and soul. some times its okay to just play.

I urge you to think about how much time you spend tapping your creativity.

Guild Wars and the sharpened pencil.

I have again been playing Guild Wars with some little buddy’s I like to call ‘Team Quest Hard’ (they don’t like it when I call them that. I say it in my finest movie voice). Some thought about the game have popped into my head recently. I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t play allot any more or because my gaming habits are more diverse than when I started originally but i will try and articulate my thoughts using words of the finest quality.

Guild Was is not an MMO, I only realised this the other day. The best way i can describe it is as a single player game that you can play with as many mates as you want to. That sounds strange but i have played guild wars alone with AI team mates and with full groups of friends and honestly its a great game and either way its lots of fun.

In my opinion guild wars is an anomaly in the gaming world. its a Co-op Role play game with persistent characters, not an MMO, not a single player game, not a traditional single player game as you have a group but its not squad based.

with all this in mine here are three reasons you should love Guild Wars, even all these years later…..

Its epic – I know that sounds like a fan-boy thing to say in every way you can think of i agree with you but its worth saying anyway. Everything about guild wars is EPIC with caps lock turned on, totally.

Look at this picture (left) its epic, every character is epic, the way they are standing is epic. the game is epic! – Okay fan-boy moment over. the game is epic thought, you are the hero, the key to everything and through 4 entire story arch’s you get to be just as important and as you play thought you meet characters, real ones with personality and voices (thank you regular cut scenes) the plot makes you feel, well, epic.

How many MMO’s are there that actually make you feel like this? in LotRO you get to be a little person in the story of larger people and in WoW, well no one i know can tell me the plot to that game in less than a million words (that make little sense) but in guild wars i am he chosen one (depending on campaign) and hand picked by the gods to be the one to change the world (three times at least anyway)

Environment – again, this is a bias and fan driven post but the world crafted in guild wars has a read feel to it, granted I'm thinking ‘epic’ but the game does show you things that make you stop and just look at for a moment.

In Prophecies we see lush  jungles and ice planes and desert wastelands, that’s every variation that we can think of when we have to list different places.

In Factions we see an urban maze and an eastern land of adventure that we imagine in legends. a little later in the game we see this magical forest that;s filled with strange wonders.

In Nightfall we see a swash buckling land of possibility and the struggles of a nation at war. as the game progresses we see an almost pre-historic desert with huge stones and planes of water with occasionally breaks for oasis’s. we even venture into a plane of torment where its dark and sinister in ways we never before imagined.

The unexpected  - the first time i played the game i was forever seeing unforgettable sights and talking to new NPC’s who want to give me quests of push me to the core plot of the game but then when ‘Eye of the North’ came out we met something new. the Asuran race. and the game took a new spin, with portals (star gates, i don’t care what they say, those are star gates) we get to see our would of fantasy take a sci-fi twist in a very subtle manor

Vekk was just one of these new people that we meet. he uses magical energy to power robots and in so many subtle ways the story of the Asuran is woven through him. we know they are an old and xenophobic race, its even hinted that they come from another plane of existence (possibly even aliens).

The point is here that Guild Wars is a twist it has so many strange and wonderful twists and turns that the unexpected in visual aspects, story and character depth is astounding.

One last thing – Guild Wars two will be out relatively soon and with lore as well thought out as it is in this game allot of the lore is going to be subtly built into it. so if you have never played guild wars but want guild wars 2 its worth playing it even just a little bit as a taste of things to come.

so, stop reading and go play it NOW.

Guild Wars, an addict is never cured.

Guild Wars. I have loved that game since the day I first slapped eyes on its loading bar. According to X-fire i have played 1,194 hours of it and that number is way off as for a good portion of my Guild Wars time I was playing without X-fire as for whatever reason it was not detecting the game correctly. whatever way you look at it though over a thousand hours is a huge amount of time for any single form of entertainment.

Recently however i have had some account issues with some mean people hacking my account (nothing was lost thankfully) so being unable to play for a week gave me the urge to play that i had not had in months (even thought without the hacking i would not have given it a second thought). last Night Mr Fish(HangmansJoe), Fleata and i loaded into the game and quested our way through some Eye of the North content (i was in it for Title Grinding) and we had a GREAT nights play.

Its strange that a game as old as guild wars is still a wonderful evenings game play and no one complained about the lack of jumping.

All in all, i think its safe to say that my love of the game ahs been fired up again and i just cant wait for GW2.

Also if anyone does not know, all those accomplishments you have in the Hall of Monuments will not be going to waste as we now know what your working towards in Guild Wars 2 thanks to THIS site.

If you want me in game I usually play ‘Laird Hex’ and am happy to play with anyone who whispers me (and has Skype)

stereo typing, Drama + 2, Truth - 6

Last night I watched a documentary called Dungeon Masters made back in 2008, chronicled a few months in the life of a handful on serious pen and paper role players. It was in short terrible. Like many of these documentaries it made the mistake of making these people appear to be deeply unhappy and obsessed with escapism. There was a documentary about WoW players a few years ago that did the same thing. Strangely the only people who would be interested in this type of film are the exact same types of people that it disparaged.

A long time ago I was a pretty serious pen and paper role player myself (White Wolf World of Darkness games such as Vampire the Masquerade, Mage the Ascension and others) the inability to find a regular group was the thing that killed my love of the games in the end (still have all the books, they are awesome). As I became more of an MMO gamer I took some of these skills with me.

Just last night I was taking on the role of ‘Gabrielleah’ Guarding of Bree while playing LotRO, I play on a Role-play server and some times like to stay in character while playing in the world. In real life I am married, I have a beautiful daughter, a Job, friends (well one or two anyway) and am generally happy in life, so are many of the more serious role players I know. So why do these films make us all out to be crazy?

Even some of the hard core character obsessed players I know are happy people who know the difference between reality and fiction. Role playing is a chance to exorcise your imaginative muscle, it is a creative act no different to writers crafting stories or actors practicing emotion.

How many of us know deeply troubled and unhappy people who use role play in games as escapism? Not very many I bet, I personally know more people with drink problems that are much more destructive than role players getting a little serious.

All these years after the popularisation of role pay from Dungeons & Dragons and the social phenomenon that World of Warcraft role playing is still considered a hard-core geek pass time for the particularly strange and socially inept.

I even created a short You-tube video a while back to see if I could get some feedback on public opinion.

People at work think its strange that I write about video games and record podcasts without getting paid, I tell them its an experience that I find rewarding, would they think I was insane if I told them I like to get inside my character mind while I run around in high fantasy worlds? Yeah, Probably. Are they right in their opinion? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s better than any other interest or vice I could have.

So what if people think it’s strange that I know what THAC0 means and own a bag of dice. I don’t drink and have strong morale fortitude and a love for life, does that matter?

I do however think that the morons who create these documentaries and new articles work against us by melding public opinion in a negative way. Why is there never a good looking well rounded person who also role plays on these films? – Because people love a stereo type.

Am I the only one who thinks its about time things changed?