Guild Wars: PvX Wiki, Babysteps and Ur Doing it Wrong!

The Great Thing About PvXWiki
If you're not familiar with a class, it's a great resource for finding out what generally works. While many of the builds assume you have all three campaigns and access to every skill there is, it's still pretty easy for newbies to look at the builds 'til they find one they can vaguely match, and use it.

Alternatively, if you're not new to Guild Wars, but just new to the class, you probably do have a bajillion skills unlocked, in which case - Skill Tomez to da rescue!

Toddle along in babysteps, learning the class with a decent build, and perhaps eventually becoming able to write one of your own! YAY!

The ARGH Thing about PvXWiki
Unfortunately, some people don't evolve. -_-

It doesn't matter if you've tested your build thoroughly, know its strengths and weaknesses inside out, and know when to use it, and when to bring something else. It doesn't matter if you've done more stuff than them, know the content better than them, or whatever else!

Nooo! What matters is when you link your skillbar, they see that it's, 'ZOMG THAT'S NOT ON PVX! U NOOB!' -_- Even if they haven't the slightest ability to read (and by read, I mean understand) your bar. They'll only feel safe if the build is on PvXWiki because PvXWiki is the be all and end all, and God forbid people might actually make effective builds that they're too lazy to share because they don't feel like signing up on PvXWiki. *whistle to self*

When confronted with such strange people, I usually just change to a PvXWiki bar so they'll shut up and leave me alone. I know some people might view it as cowardice but hey... I can always leave the group and use my trusty Animated Love Dolls (Heroes and Henchmen)! So since I presumably signed up to be social, why not be social. After all, anyone howling at a bar that they obviously haven't a hope of understanding is probably just insecure and new.

And last but not least, the 'I'm So Old I Know It All and Everything Has Been Done So You're a Nub For Not Using PvXWiki' (ISOIKIAAEHBDSYANFNUP!)
Those really annoy me too, since ArenaNet does change and rebalance skills, making some things possible, viable, and even downright sexy, that weren't before. And directly after such changes, it seems not to occur to the ISOIKIAAEHBDSYANFNUPses that things take time to filter into PvXWiki. Time and motivation. Just because someone loves to tinker with builds day and night (like a nugget!) does not mean these people have the motivation or inclination to put them on PvX.

~_o So while the builds I occasionally post may not have made it into PvXWiki, they have worked extremely well for me.

That being said, I promise to post some build love soon. >.< All that RL work, it's getting my batter soggy!



Linear Time: The Solution to Boredom!

Sooo I had a rather interesting conversation with an old friend, whom for the purposes of this exchange, I dub Mr Reasonable.  

Nugget: I dun get it. With the ability to poing from one Multiversal moment to another at will, why do you even bother with linear time? I mean, it's gotta be like having an infinite undo button for life right? Make a mistake? Undo! Wooties!

Mr Reasonable: *laughing* You're assuming that I make mistakes.

Nugget: *glare*

Mr Reasonable: Mm well. Those little sketches you've been doing lately - they're a good thing, by the way... Haven't you found that if you restrain yourself from repeating one particular stroke over and over, until you get it 'just right', that the flaws - if you must call them that - add up to a stronger, livelier piece?

Nugget: Um. Sort of. *Guilty face* I still undo a bit...

Mr Reasonable: I've noticed. *grins* But consider - you only started this lately, and you are, indeed, hitting that Undo button less often. And the pieces are certainly improving for it.

Now - apply that to life in linear time, if you will. For one thing, it's rather difficult to pinpoint that dramatic moment where everything goes to Hell. People certainly claim they can, but when you're able to pick a moment - a locus in an infinite number of outward points, it becomes much harder to see which one, precisely, was the source of the disaster. Not to mention, each fragmentary path starts so close to its kin that there's hardly a noticeable difference until you follow said path a rather long way. With each point along that path being the centre of yet another infinity of other paths, and so on.

What then, if having gone far enough along the diverging path you've picked, you find it isn't quite right in one, or even multiple aspects? Ah, well, you could slip back to that particular point you had in mind in the first place, and pick another path... and another... and another. All of them almost identical at their point of origin. And truly, the idea of ceaselessly repeating a near identical infinity of moments in the hope of undoing something unpleasant sounds like an exercise in utter boredom. 

Power isn't omniscience, sweetness. It's simply a widening of possibilities.

And besides, I'm allergic to boredom.

Nugget: OMMMMM. XD




Ze Weekly Nuggetsketch

This week's random head started out as Eurydiche from Tanith Lee's Faces Under Water, and ended up as... well, what you see here.

I find that for every piece that turns out the way I initially envisioned it, there's another 20 (or more!) that turn out nothing like what I had in mind in the first place. This, of course, is one of those 'nothing likes'. For one thing, Lee does mention that Eurydiche, when she wears a mask, wears a huuuuuuuuge butterfly. But I just couldn't get the butterfly to work. Alas!

ToME: Troubles of Middle Earth - Screenshots

via t-o-m-e.net

This is one of my favouriteststestest games ever. =) Trouble of Middle Earth - or T.O.M.E is based on Zangband the way Homo Sapiens are based on the Australopithecus. >.>

It's got its roots in Zangband, but it's a very, very different animal.

So much gamey goodness about T.O.M.E. that my nuggethead splodes when I try to think of where to start! XD

So instead I shall settle for the ravings of a Perfectly Normal Nugget.

Some highlights:

  • Epically cursed weapons (a-la Elric's Stormbringer) do really feel epically cursed.
  • You can play an Ent, a Death Mold (yes, a fungus!), a Quylthulg, and a whole bunch of other odd things, together with your normal High Elves, Men, and whatnot.
  • It's purely turn based - very much of a strategy RPG game.
  • Unlike many Angband variants, it has an overarching storyline.
  • It's the whole of the Middle Earth in ANSI!
  • You only get one life per character.
  • Unique character classes - lots of games claim this. T.O.M.E. is the only one where I've been able to play a class that can abandon its own body permanently, take control of a marilith, then wield a sword in every marilithy hand. Yes, you take on the gear slots of your new body.
  • Still not sold? >.> You're the symbol @, and your mission is to kill all the other letters of the alphabet. (I don't know who said that, but it rawks!)

Dragon Age Origins, aka The Bad PUG You Can't Get Out Of

I feel guilty. :(

A friend bought me Dragon Age a while ago, which was a big deal to me because it's the first non-work-colleague-given-present I've received in years. (Yes, I is a patheticnug.)

But to my horror I found that despite having played RPGs for years, once I started playing Dragon Age, I found that I just didn't like the game much.

I know this game has garnered rave reviews from lots of places, and good friends are raving about it too. They assure me that the bickering is funny, and that it 'gets better'. (I'm now... actually I have no idea where I am. I've forgotten because I've been avoiding playing the game. I do know that the last time I could bring myself to play it, I had just picked up that big brown party member with the white hair...)

I think the problem is I don't like ANY of my party members except my dog. XD The bickering isn't funny to me. I wish they would just shut up, permanently! And I wish I didn't have to pussyfoot around all their likes and dislikes, even though they can be bribed with gifts. In short, when I prod myself into playing Dragon Age, I feel exactly the way the title of this post says. AAAAAAAAAAAAGH I'm in a bad PUG and I can't get out!

And so I avoid The Bad Dragon Age PUG. And feel guilty.

Friend-who-bought-me-Dragon-Age, I'm sowwy! :(

Ze Weekly Nuggetsketch

One thing I've noticed about Asian games vs Western ones - Asian games have boys that are sooooo much prettier! (At least, to my tastes, anyway. ;))

It's rather interesting really. If you had, as a random example, a Western-based game with a guy who looked like Final Fantasy's Seifer Almasy, or, God forbid, Sephiroth, it would be a general joke that they just had to be gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. ~_o Being gay, that is.)

Just take WoW's Blood Elf guys, for example. It's pretty much a given that they look 'gay'. It just seems that when it comes to Western-made games, there's this impression that, 'If a guy is beautiful (yes! I used that horrible word to refer to a male specimen, ohnoes!) then he must be gay. And if you play such a fellow, you're either a gay guy, or a chick.'

Yet when it comes to Asian games, that issue rarely comes up, if at all.

And you know what? As a girly, I so, so much prefer the male eye candy provided by Asian games. It just seems to me that in Asian games, there's an understanding that when it comes to looks, while you can certainly pack a guy with so full of muscley macho cues that his whole look just screams, 'GWARRRR ME SMUSH!' (Street Fighter's Zangief, for instance,) there's still the understanding that speed, grace and elegance can also be masculine. (See other examples above, or Balrog/Vega, if you prefer more Street Fighter stuffs. XD)

For me at least, the argument that, 'If I have to stare at an avatar for hours, I want it to be cute!' rings totally true. Unfortunately, this means that in MMOs, I tend to play girl avatars. Not because I'm a girl, but because the boys look horrible or strange or unappealing.

But in Jade Dynasty, for example, that I play on and off (mostly off), I have 3 male toons and counting. Why? Because they're hawt!

WTB, moar hawt boys in games please!

Fine, fine, nuggeet, but what does this have to do with today's sketch, you rambling chunk of batter-covered chicken goodness?

Well... after all that raving about the wonder of Bishonen, I must confess...

I don't really like Manga style art. I think it's mostly because it gets Mang(a)led way too much. It seems some take 'Manga' as 'I can throw all knowledge of anatomy, proportion, and everything else right out the window, because after all, it's "my Manga style"'. That being said, I do like some very specific Manga artists - those like Yoshitaka Amano, whose abstraction of anatomy obviously comes from a sound knowledge of it.

So! Nuggeet likes the whole Bishonen thing, but she doesn't like manga, oh noes! Wut to do!?

...make my own I guess. XD

And that, my nuggets, is this rant's rather convoluted link to this week's sketch.

(Oh yeah, and so far it's  only heads cause heads come really easily to me, and I'm a really lazy nugget.)

 

Virtual Homesickness

A while back, I bought a beautiful illustrated edition of the poem Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney and John D. Niles. I plopped down on the couch and stuck my nose into my lovely new book, with all the wonderful heft and flop that only good paper has. I hadn't gone beyond the first five verses before I was hit by a terrible wave of homesickness... for LegendMUD.

I could suddenly see Hygelac's mead hall, with women of the Geats wandering about. I could hear the songs praising Hygelac as a gold-giver. Vivid memories of crawling along a ledge above the lava to peer down at the dragon Fadhmir, with death just a mis-step away (thanks to that deathtrap in the lava...) washed over me. And I abruptly missed the world of LegendMUD so much my heart felt like a stuffed toy clutched by a distraught child. =/

Very often, when people talk about virtual worlds, they say that it's the people that contribute to them sticking around. That the social connections and people they meet mean more than the world, in the end. In terms of MMOs, I think it's certainly true. But for me and LegendMUD... I'm not so sure. The things I miss so much, that my nuggetty heart fills with longing to see again, that - honestly, if melodramatically - I'm still brim-full with love for, are not the players. If I had a chance to mosey around a LegendMUD empty of people, to visit all my old haunts, and just totally sink into that rich world again - I'd take it in a heartbeat. Oddly enough, it's very much the fact that I might still know some people there, or even worse, that they might know me, that makes me certain I'll never go back again.

Don't get me wrong. I love LegendMUD very, very much. For a newbie, the community is superb. I've been saying for years to anyone who'll listen: if you only ever play one MUD, make it LegendMUD. It's that good. And having played at least 750 MU*s over my MU-ltiverse hopping nuggetlife, I'd say I have a fairly decent gauge of which MUDs are worth playing. LegendMUD is the best MUD I've ever played. It may be one of the best games I've ever played. It is certainly the best digital world I've ever lived in. I'd go so far as to say it's the only digital world I've ever lived in.

I'll recommend LegendMUD to anyone and everyone... but I also tell the recommendees that I simply cannot and will not go back. Not even to show them around.

This, naturally, leads to a certain amount of, 'Uhh, but nuggeet. If it's so great, why won't you go back and play wif me?' =/

And then it gets hard to explain. But since I've spammed this much, struggle gamely on I shall, and without any regard to political correctness!

To a nugget, LegendMUD is like the girl you thought you would spend the rest of your life with... until she broke your heart into so many teeny tiny pieces that even crazy glue + an OCD sufferer could never be able to put it back together again. You still love her so, so much. You want only good things for her. And you can never stand to see her again.

I left LegendMUD just over 5 years ago, after playing for 8. And you know, I think I'm still not over her. Maybe you never get over that girl. You might grow wiser, older, and more peelosopical... but there's always an empty room in your heart where she used to be.

...so this nugget can't go back.

...but she can sure feel homesick down to her very bottomest batterbits. :(

Which leads to the pondering - could it be that people so often cite the 'community' and 'social ties' as reasons that keep them to a world, especially with regards to MMOs, precisely because those worlds are so hollow? Comparing MMO worlds to LegendMUD (or any decent MUD) is like comparing Twinkies to a full course meal. The difference in depth and richness is that great.

If we had more digital worlds that our minds could live in, instead of just chasing achievements and pretty graphics, would there be more people citing the world as a thing to love, and a reason to stay?

Or is this nugget just Not Normal?