If the Bazaar of the Four Winds and that weird election represented a low point of my recent interest in Guild Wars 2, then the combo of the Queen’s Jubilee and the Clockwork Chaos represent a rebound of tremendous proportions. Of course, maybe that’s the good thing about this “every two weeks with the new content” strategy — like everyone is fond of saying of their native state/country, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes.” So if you don’t like the content, just wait two weeks.
It’s not that these recent releases have really upped the story oomph any. I mean, to give it credit, there have been a few interactive scenes that were entertaining while I went, “Hey, who’s that character? Who’s that? Oh, I guess we have a new villain now that nobody knows anything about. Makes sense that it’s a plant-elf, tho. Probably Tremaine’s long-lost sister or something.”
What’s made me happy is that the activities of these two updates have played to GW2’s strength: Getting people together in big, happy, chaotic groups and unleashing them on bosses. It’s exactly the same thing I love about RIFT, what with the dynamic world events and all.
Maybe they don’t require a lot of hard strategy and careful maneuvering, but I prefer these messy battles where craptons of stuff is going on all at the same time and everyone’s pulling together to accomplish something. Even a year after GW2’s launch, I still see players rezzing each other almost constantly, and that does make me happy. And amid the rezzes and zergs and land-rending battles, I’m a happy clam. I’m getting to play alone together as much as I like here, and I don’t have to worry about letting my team down so much as just chipping in and doing my best.
Plus, the loot. Oh my goodness, the loot. I got hooked on these invasions after the first time through them, seeing how my bags grew to bursting from 45 minutes of play. Guild Wars 2 does loot right in a weird way. I mean, a lot of what I’m getting, no, I’m not going to use. But it’s fun to get it anyway, and occasionally you get the cool consumables or exotics or hugely valuable mats that make it worthwhile. And you get LOTS of it. I’m running around these invasions with my trusty flamethrower, vacuuming up loot, hoping for champions, and just really enjoying the madcap mayhem of it all. Reminded me a lot of the maze from the Halloween event.
Fending off an invasion and downing Scarlet felt like a good accomplishment (and it’s nice that ArenaNet still rewards you with a consolation prize if you can’t go all the way), and I’m not complaining about all of the achievement points I’ve been getting. But the best part is after an invasion is done, I zip over to Rata Sum and spend about ten minutes sorting through all of the goods I won and selling them through the trading post and a vendor. I do keep the skill scrolls (I got about 30 of these from five or so hours of play this weekend), karma potions (um… more of these than I can count), black lion chests, and queen’s gauntlet tickets (I’m hoping that we’ll be able to sell those to a vendor after the event is done), but the rest goes on sale.
I made it a goal of the weekend to raise funds to buy enough gems to afford a magitech armor set that I thought would look awesome for my engineer. Even with a spike in gem prices, it became really doable as I was pulling in 3-7 gold with each invasion. Before I knew it, I surpassed my 800 gem goal to rake in 1224 gems, and the fancy new outfit is mine (see above right).
So a great weekend based on my satisfaction and accomplished goals. I’m sure that these nonstop invasions will get old after a while, but I wouldn’t mind a couple more weeks with them to pad my bank account.
Bio Break 
But is is really ” everyone’s pulling together to accomplish something.” when the same thing would be accomplished with 1 or 100 people there, regardless? And without communication?
That’s my big beef with GW2 “group” content.
To this day, I say the best way for Anet to introduce raid-type content that DOES require coordination is to instance an entire zone, or large part of one, with highly tuned versions of champions and world bosses available for guilds to take down.
Leave the open world stuff in place, and this would give the best of both worlds.
I just started a GW2 character again after stopping soon after release, and I am thoroughly confused. My starting zone… empty. Is everyone in Lion’s Arch? is there a level requirement for all of this?
You’ve been very lucky if all your big chaotic groups were also either “happy” or “pulling to together to accomplish something”. I’ve done around 20 of these now and I’d say that describes about half of them. The rest were irritable, bad-tempered, whiny or (twice) almost completely silent.
As for people rezzing others, I’ve seen some of that but also plenty of yelling in map for “lazy” players to release and run back.
I’m enjoying it too, but it’s having a generally detrimental effect on the community, at least on Yak’s Bend. Overflow servers have better spirit most of the time.
How are you making 3-7 gold per invasion, I feel like I’m nowhere near that?
@Ocho, try Queensdale zone. Everyone that is level 80 is problably farming the invasions, but players that go to Divinity’s Reach for the living world event too are going to Queensdale. That zone is active in TC server, so I think too will be active at other servers.
@Kirk yes, it is 3-7 gold per invasion. Bring big bags and when full sell the green and blue loot.
“everyone’s pulling together to accomplish something.”
More like everyone’s zerging together in order to spawn as many champs as possible to farm. It all started out like how you describe, but once people discovered how many champions you could get from the aether events, people are zerging for loot.
Also, rezzing has become a big problem. Firstly, it can be downright dangerous to rez someone depending on where they went down (like in the middle of one of the aether’s lightning fields). Secondly, people are so desperate to tag champions and do enough damage to them that they ignore downed people. I will agree that if you’re dead you should WP and not wait for people to endanger themselves whilst reviving you.
It’s interesting that this has peaked your interest in GW2 again and that you feel loot is being done right. I play GW2 a lot so obviously it’s going to be easier for me to burn out. Also, I like loot and the money since the pavillion patch has been incredibly good. I agree that champions must reward properly. But I still don’t feel loot is right. The champion farms (whether they be in Orr, Frostgorge, Queensdale or these new invasions) are destroying the community imo. I place that blame on ANet given the only way to get the most special item is buy amassing money.. which isn’t easy to get unless you’re a TP player.
So these last two zergy living story installations.. yeah.. they’ve made me force myself to take a break from the game as a whole. It would be too tempting to join invasions and then get caught up in the money again. And that will completely burn me out.
@Kirk Preston, yeah I was definitely making around 5-7g per invasion. The trick is the bags you get from champions. Basically if you stick with a large enough group of people, you can force the Aether events to spawn 2-3 champions at a time. Then when the champion captain event happens, you’ll find people holding out on killing him since that event will spawn 2-3 champions at a time as well. Then hone in on the champion molten shamans. It’s a fine balance to farm all that and succeed with the invasion. But I generally walked away with at least 30 guilded coffers, a few of some other guilded sort and 5ish of the bags from the shaman.. plus the end reward. Also the blues/greens that drop add up. If you have level 30-50 blues have time, either salvage those or TP them as often the mats you can get from them are worth more than the blue itself.