I am pretty much done working on the my Guild Wars Hall of Monuments. I am at 35 points, and while I would love 40, I just don’t have the will to grind those last few. Recently, I’ve been going through archives of this and interviews of that. I had the sad task of cleaning out my burgeoning RSS feeds of some of ye ol’ dead blogs. So I’ve been re-thinking much of what has been promised or mentioned in Guild Wars 2 that is far from being the topic du jour. The link that ArenaNet created for players between its two games is one of them.
I love my time in Guild Wars, and I love that ArenaNet thought to honor the players in the sequel. I don’t believe we will be getting any “pay-2-win”-type rewards, but it will be neat stuff. Everybody must want an Orrian baby chicken, right? Yet, the chicken is part of the new hotness. The few items that strongly remind me of the original Guild Wars are the Fellblade, Fiery Dragon Sword, Black Moa, and Black Widow Spider, and a scattering of others are reminiscent of my time there. I know that the Wayward Wand and Ice Breaker are in the original game, but they just don’t hold that this-is-Guild-Wars tone.
The history I am going to miss the most are the holiday masks and costumes. They represent a piece of my gaming history and the Guild Wars history in a way that seems deeper than a weapon or pet. I daresay that in Guild Wars, the armor of my character was more meaningful than any weapon I wielded. The weapons and pets seemed so disposable by comparison.
The costumes especially resonate because they were artistic offerings from ArenaNet. The costumes were not meant to be as utilitarian as armor. They were pieces of art. A bit for the collectors. They felt like treasures. The ArenaNet artists took the time to distill all of the essence of some bit of Guild Wars history, and they painstakingly turned it into a costume. Rarely are dev teams allowed to create such artifacts after the dust has settled. It is pretty special when they do.
Sadly, as far as I know, my costumes are going to miss the Hall of Monuments ark. They probably won’t be in Guild Wars 2 as costumes, given the different modeling technologies. If they counted towards Hall of Monuments points, the fan rage would hold us well until launch. It feels like one of my favorite parts of Guild Wars will pass on when I start playing Guild Wars 2. All the Kodak Moments of my, my costumes, and the epic scenery won’t compare to the in-game model, and I am pretty sure I won’t have it in me to load up Guild Wars just to sadly pass the time holding my costumes.
I wish that perhaps my costumes could at least be exhibited in the museum-type instance for the Hall of Monuments. I go there to pick up another undead chicklet, and I see the amazing art I added to my old collection in the new game. Stories of Guild Wars would echo from the set pieces. It’d be good motivation to fill a bit more of my costume collection too. I am sure that eventually the new armor telling tale of vanquishing foes in the Guild Wars 2 dungeons, and new costumes available will push thoughts of old Guild Wars costumes back to the attic. I am just not ready to let go yet.
–Ravious
Yeah the costumes are all very human-centric, mostly human gods and human history, it’s really only the halloween costumes that could be more universal, it would be little unfair to the other races. Maybe a museum in Divinity’s Reach displaying the costumes as historical artifacts.
Ooh, that’s a good idea!
I’m sitting at a comfortable 13 points right now. I loved the game but like many of my other games didn’t really accomplish a whole lot. I did enjoy all 500 hours although :)
I’m just glad I got the Centurion’s Claw for my Asuran Thief.
I’ve spent 2000 hours on Guild Wars mostly doing what I wanted and not aiming for titles. Once the calculator came out, I then decided to see what I could do. I found getting to 45 to be easy but getting to 50 to be way too brutal (finally stopping at 47.) The Honor section is much harder to do because none of those can be bought no matter how much gold you’ve farmed.