Ten Years of Guild Wars 2

Omg, it's been 10 years since I made Spiral Madheart in GW2??? WHOA.

Spiral Madheart is 10 years old!

I took a looooong break from the game, as you can see from my posts. I came back April of 2021 and caught up on all the good stuff in Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire, and then joined a WvW guild and got really into that on my warrior, Flaxi. In fact, most people who know me in-game now call me Flaxi, not Spiral. Took a bit of getting used to!

End of Dragons came out in February of this year, which added more content and excitement to the game. The Canthan zone of Seitung Province is one of my favourites! 

I have all of the mounts now, including this furry sweetie, the Tundra Grimalkin, that Flaxi rides around on in World vs World.

Flaxi Everafter on her Warkitty

I have 14 characters and an alt account with 5 more. I have no gold cuz I keep making legendaries, including Exordium, Bifrost, Moot, Quip, Juggernaut, Conflux, and a full set of heavy armor. #flex 😏

I still hate PvP. I still do a weekly key farm. I still stop and gawk at the scenery. I'm still finding things I've never noticed before.

I didn't know I would love WvW so much but it rocks...especially with a great guild of crazy folks who make me laugh every day. Shout out to Battery Operated Boyfriends [BOB] of Yak's Bend!

Hmm, what else? I guess it's neat that I am still having fun in a game that is 10 years old. I think ArenaNet is going a great job of keeping GW2 fresh and interesting. I still feel like I have so much left to do! I haven't perfected all the new classes, haven't done all the achieves (lol), haven't completed raids (though we tried), and haven't unlocked all the fashion. GASP!

So that's my 10-year update on my GW2 adventures. I hope everyone is doing super swell and enjoying their lives both in-game and out! 😘

I Made The Moot!

I'm super excited to present my first -- and probably only -- legendary, The Moot!

If you've made a legendary, you know how your heart pounds at this point!

Just curious, I looked to see how much it would be worth if I sold it.

I gave it to Flaxi Barnborn, my Norn Warrior, to try out.

But since it's The Moot, I had to change her clothes! HA HA!

So shiny!!

Flaxi just hanging out in fishnets, holding her legendary. :)

So the story goes that I got The Energizer precursor a while back, like months and months ago, when I was doing a daily that required you to put crap in the Mystic Toilet. I was shocked to get a precursor and debated selling it. Instead, I stuck it in the bank and left it.

Well, recently I've been playing more GW2. Okay, like a LOT more. 😊 So I decided I might as well start focusing on getting the mats needed to make The Moot.

Long story short, made it today and really love it ... but I hate mace skills! I gave it to Flaxi for now but will probably also use it more on my Guardian, Mouseskin. I guess the only other mace wielder is Revenant. I barely use my Rev but perhaps this will give me incentive.

Anyhoo, thought I'd come out of hiding to tell you all about this milestone event!
Here's a video from a funny guy about him making The Moot, and it shows the animations and footfalls. Have fun out there!

Happy Wintersday 2016!

I've been back playing GW2 since about Halloween. That's my favourite holiday in both real life and virtual life, so and I wanted to be sure I didn't miss any fun Mad King stuff!

Since then, I bought the Heart of Thorns expansion and I'm working my way through all the new living story. Got stuck for a looong time on the Mordremoth fight cuz I'm too stubborn to ask for help. :)

Guild Wars 2 is still such an absorbing game with so much to do! I get caught up with the obsession of doing the dailies, plus doing events, plus now that I have a precursor -- the Energizer that I got from a random dump of items into the Mystic Toilet on a daily quest -- I have been trying to focus a bit more on collecting what I need to complete it. I finally finished my Mawdrey as well. I still have to get all my masteries and maybe try out some fractals and finish all the new maps and collect all the hungry cats!

Anyway, I hope you're all having fun doing whatever you're doing, even if it's not in Tyria.
Happy Holidays from Spiral!

Tried to get a nice picture under this pretty tree but there was a teensy bit of snow!

I want a giant quaggan stuffie!!  :D

Twitch Expansion Announcement - Heart of Thorns

For those of you that didn't get to watch the PAX South GW2 live stream on Twitch, here are my notes. I was going to make them all neat and coherent, but screw that. I've got gaming to do!
Spiral OUT!

NOTES:
Jennifer Hale awkward hype build
MUCH CRINGE, MANY AWKWARD, WOW
audience -- cosplay girl & people with commander tags
polite nerds listening so attentively

who were the bloggers at the beginning?
Super fast chat... spammers, !key?? eventually just tuned out chat

Mike's smile as he announced Maguuma Jungle Expansion

Mike O'Brien of ArenaNet

"in it together" where you're "always happy to see another player"

"the journey is the reward"

Expansion is typically: New gear, new level,

Mike understands new gear invalidates old gear, leaving behind a "wasteland of old content", same with new level cap.

"I think you need new challenges." -- Mike

72,000 watchers on Twitch

"Masteries"
--in jungle, master skills and abilities that you need to succeed in the jungle.
Vertical environment.
(was hoping Mike would fly off the stage on cables)

new professional specializations
customize your existing professions
new guild support and progression

"HoT is our new vision for character progression in GW2." - Mike

Colin is so adorbs and awkward and his goofy grin

Colin Johanson

[ME: My face hurts from smiling. I love my game. I love my "people".]

The Heart of Maguuma -- name of new area

3 biomes - core (floor), roots (under), canopy (high)

audience never knew when to cheer
friendliest gaming community is actually quite shy  :)

MASTERIES - account-based pve
available to level 80s
complete content to get mastery points
points spent on abilities on any character
"no-grind philosophy" (clapping)

--exploration mastery - climbing... don't fall!... get to highest point... "What do we do?" Crowd yells: JUMP!! (Laughter) "then the epic journey to meet the ground and splat", then swarm of rezzers come out of nowhere. (laughter) ... but now... mastery points to hang-glide!!
HANG GLIDE!!!!

--lore mastery -- understand languages and will access secret locations (applause)

--combat mastery -- sketchy details about this

--collecting, crafting, building mastery -- "legendary weapon is the ultimate version", what is hardest to get? -- Crowd: "Precursor!!" Mastery will allow you to build collections to send you on journeys, once completed, will give you precursor weapon! (much applause), PLUS new legendaries!

-- skills & traits - specializations system allows each proffesional to master a new specialization (UGH lost stream)
--> "rich druidic history" RANGERS will be able to grow themselves to become a DRUID. use staff, could never use before. access to new heal skill, new elite, new utility skills, new professional mechanics
--> necromancers with greatsword (laughter) causing much debate... why was Marjory learning? Necro specialization means they can use greatswords. (won't say more!)

LAUNCH DATE -- awww... he won't tell... "When it's ready." infamous GW2 quote

HEAVY ARMOR PROFESSION! Colin's smile...
omg omg omg
THE REVENANT!!!!
Rytlock!!! is one
"ability to channel and control the powers of the Mists"
channels power of great legends from the past
--king jalis ironhammer, great dwarf, his powers will be available
--demon malix, power of conditions

PVP - "it's time for me to go kill another person" (Laughter)
WvW -- "inside an RTS game" (what is RTS?), new WvW Borderland map! each keep has distinct theme and defending and controlling keep will give you special abilities and features, eg. fire keep will make magma pools for fast travel... holding objectives rather than just taking them will be a bigger component of WvW

PvP - "STRONGHOLD" game mode, fight for control of supply, spend supply to hire troops, you and troops assault enemies, kill Guild Lord to win, can win over heroes to help you,

guild teams and competition

GUILD HALLS!! (amazing cheers, extended!!) - only sketches to show us

Point of No Return

I just finished the Living Story, Point of No Return.

EPIC. Epic epic epic!

I don't want to give anything away, so I'm going to the forums to barf praise on ANet! (Here's my my reply to the common feedback thread.)

If you haven't done it yet, go now!

Are you still here?
Get going! Go! Naow!