Allamorph

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[font=Calibri]I confess I find myself somewhat puzzled at the latest posts in this thread. Not so much in the way of content, really, but rather how it seems as if there seems to be a continual focus on the more negative aspects of these stories. (I hesitate to call them "role-playing games" because the better ones focus not so much on a single player playing a single role, but portraying multiple roles continuously and consistently in tandem with other players, and thus become less game and more story.) Like, I don't see much in the way of answering the question [i]"What makes a good RPG?"[/i] as much as I see examples of how good stories can run aground. Which, to be fair, is still due consideration. You can't really learn from success, except in a general sense, but failure grants you the opportunity to find poor choices or bad circumstances and make adjustments for next time. But I think saying only that making a good community-driven story is difficult and leaving it at that sells the discussion rather a bit short. I also see a lot of dancing around a tenent on which it seems we all agree, but which no one really wants to come out and say. So here's my best summary: [i]a good RPG requires careful balance[/i]. Obviously a story won't work if everyone is granted [i]carte blanch[/i][i]e[/i] to write as they please, with only the setting and scenery as guidelines. There exists then almost an infinite potential for sheer unbounded creativity, and as a writer that's really enticing, but such endeavors quickly degenerate into a big steaming mess, as [color=DarkRed]Shy[/color] previously noted. And then the participants get bored with their sandbox and move to the next one, and the cycle restarts. But this extreme is at least entertaining while it lasts; the other, where the leader offers players no creative freedom as he tells his story, essentially using their characters as premade imaginary friends for his own creation, is arguably worse. No one wants to be part of a story where they're constantly told that they don't know their own creation as well as someone else and are denied input on the matter at all. So the issue becomes one of balance. Without any sort of leadership or direction, a story like this can't survive. But in the immortal words of Leia Organa, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." And this is where everyone seems to be content to stop. We all seem to understand the basic problem, but we don't appear all that eager to proffer any possible solutions. For my own part, since being here I have been a player in both successes and failures, and I have been a leader in both successes and failures. So I'll try to disseminate what I can. As I see it, a good, successful story [i]requires[/i] leadership. Not necessarily a strong oneâ??in fact, I think it might be a mistake to think of it in terms of firmness or laxness at all, but rather in terms of [i]presence[/i], or involvement. A story leader must, I feel, be able to provide direction, so that all that chaotic creativity has some common goals on which to focus, and they must be able to make this direction enticing. I mean, point somebody at a garbage heap and tell them to have at it, and they're most likely not going to go anywhere [i]near[/i] it unless they think there's a pile of ******* diamonds underneath. This means that a good story leader must be willing to drive, and take control, however briefly. Direction won't provide itself; the leader must actively add it to the story. Examples of both good and bad directional leadership can be seen just by browsing the Auditions forum. Ideas that sold well typically made it at least to the main Theatre, while ideas that weren't enticing enough died there on the Audition floor. While this isn't the only example, it's the most readily observable, and serves the purpose well. But just providing direction doesn't necessarily mean the leader can't incorporate creative input. Rather, a leader with good presence can back off of the control throttle and still remain solidly involved in his story, assuming the important role of Final Sounding Board. But to explain what I mean, let me expound a little first. As a player (not a leader), I find the lack of boundaries somewhat irritating. Sure, there's boundless creative freedom, but my pleasure comes from the challenge of seeing the rules that limit my ideas and finding a way to make them work for me. I like to toy with rules, actually. I like to take a preexisting concept and play it up, waiting to subvert it. I like to look for unseen implications of existing boundaries. I like to compound rules together to achieve an end result that indivudually was impossible. In essence, I like to create what I want out of what I [i]can't do[/i]. This is probably why I like science fiction so much. At core, if you'll allow me to temporarily oversimplify (I know how well that usually goes over =P ), science fiction and fantasy are basically identical. The only discernable caveat between them, as I see it, is that in science fiction you are required to at least partially explain your craziness with something at least partially believable, other than "it's magic". For example, both fantasy and science fiction allow people to breathe underwater without limit; science fiction fills its characters lungs with Freon, or some similar fluid. Both fantasy and science fiction allow beams of light to be shot from one place to another; science fiction uses charged particle emitters. Both fantasy and science fiction allow for instantaneous travel between two places; science fiction uses wormholes, the Tesseract, or some other multidimensional concept revolving around folding space-time. Fantasy simply says that with magic anything is possible. Science fiction says that there's a whole lot of impossible, but with science anything is possible, within reason, and with enough time and finances to do the R&D. And they're both fun in their own right, but sci-fi is more challenging in its approach, so I tend to gravitate more readily to it. On the flip side, as a leader (and a player), I find it interesting to remove some of those boundaries and see how players react. Just recentlyâ??well, relatively, looking postwiseâ??I tasked a couple of players in a game of mine with a meeting with a new character, where the only constraints were his appearance, his actions at the moment of meeting, the general type of implement he was using at the time, and a healthy dose of batshit-insanity. I must have fielded nearly two-dozen questions relating to those couple of posts, and aside from one or two, my typical answer was "It's completely up to you". I wanted to see what the players would do with the situation, and how they would interpret it. Reacting to that willing loss of control as a leader is just as interesting to me as reacting to those same control boundaries I came up against as a player. An involved, present leader, then, is one who isn't content to settle into a comfortable vein of control or lack of control, but instead continually shifts around boundaries and limitations. That's really the core of being involved with one's game. A good leader should always view outside creative input with the attitude of [i]how can I make this work and still keep the story headed where I want it to go[/i]. Sometimes this might require a slight alteration of the end goal. Generally, I've noticed, it instead feeds into another avenue to work towards something the leader has already set in placeâ??or, failing that, can be cleverly and carefully manipulated towards that end. But a good leader also has to possess the willingness to say [i]no, this isn't going to work[/i]. That can be a hard thing to say to somebody, especially when one isn't sure how the specific player will take the rejection. The sign of a poor leader is an over-reliance on this particular Ban Hammer, but if it's abandoned entirely for fear of someone's hurt feelings, the story will eventually go the way of the Freeform City Fight. (Or, as it were, those silly Finish The Paragraph games.) All this requires that a good leader stay active with his game. And, again, that isn't necessarily saying they need to be constantly posting. The Death Card series is a perfect example of a relaxed leadership role that was still intrinsically involved and constantly providing needed direction. The majority of the posts were made by the individual players, who created and destroyed their world within the minimal confines set out for them. But the leader kept the game moving with occasional motivational posts and with the creation and distribution of clever twists that players were required to somehow incorporate, whether it be a character's death, a location swap, a fate-binding, or what have you. What I want to know now is this: are there any other games or stories which you think qualify as good, successful endeavors, and what in particular do you think gave them this distinction?[/font]

[FONT=Calibri]I'll see if I can get my Mesmer there by the end of the event.[/FONT]

[url="http://www.arena.net/blog/announcing-the-next-guild-wars-2-beta-weekend"]http://www.arena.net...-2-beta-weekend[/url] [b]Beta Weekend Event 2[/b] will begin on [b]Friday, June 8[sup]th[/sup], at noon PDT (GMT-7) [/b]and will run until [b]Sunday[/b], [b]June 10[sup]th[/sup], at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).[/b] [font=Calibri]And I no longer have to stand weekend duty days. See you all there.[/font]

Dna ts. Rednum or F. Raf In the night above the city, the ancient reaper hung, arms crossed, suspended as if by a wire run to his back. The night air was still save for the barest of currents, and the spirit drifted in it, silent and unmoving. Closing his eyes, he extended his senses slowly outward, feeling the lifeforces of the city emerge and coalesce in a gradually expanding aura, a host of individual existences webbed to each other in patterns only his kind could sense. He touched each one in turn—brushing it with his thoughts, noting its sameness and singularities, tracing its connections—and moved on, neither interested nor satisfied. Ever outward he spread his ken, calm and yet restless, until his limits of perception were reached and the aura collapsed, fruitless once more. Nathan stared peevishly at the pavement. Three days he had been at this search, he thought, as he hovered near the roof of some office building or other. It didn’t matter. Though it was a sprawling city, his first flying sweeps hadn’t taken even half a day to cover all of it. All his efforts since then had been monotonous variations of the same basic patterns: active sweeps, passive probes, roves; and he had yet to feel anything even remotely out of place. It made no sense, and that made him uneasy. And being uneasy made him irritable. He could set aside the story about a shinigami-slaying firearm. Preposterous as it was, it wasn’t the part that concerned him. He had realised while the younglings were spilling their tale that if a Jian copycat had researched his source so thoroughly that they would create a vampire freak legitimate enough to con even a werecat’s nose, it was certainly possible that they knew of the Jian’s penchant for sending pairs of messagers to harry their targets. It was, for him, a well-known and well-crafted routine: one of their lapdogs, usually expendable, was sent openly with the initial taunt to draw the target’s attention for a hunt, and a second loyal retainer came quietly into the background to set up the force of coercion, should it prove necessary. Alex and Phaidra would have no way of knowing of the tactic; their inexperience gave their frightened account a somewhat stronger, if unwitting, merit, and the reaper felt he would be a fool to outright ignore it. If anything, action now would serve a double purpose. On the one hand, prove to the children that their fears were entirely unfounded, and on the other, preemptively eliminate a potential actual threat. If only there was a threat at all. Nathan’s teeth ground together. If there was another foreign vampire in the city, Nathan should have felt him by now. The man couldn’t be hiding in Victor’s establishment, either. Victor would have known of an intruder or a stowaway almost immediately; his sense for imbalance was uncannily accurate, and despite his genteel exterior the vampire was unbelievably territorial. A vampire of foreign allegiance inside his domain would have been rooted out and destroyed within a matter of hours, if one had even managed to infiltrate in the first place. He felt movement at the edge of his field of vision: a mere junkie Nathan had noticed on his approach, using the roof as a haven to shoot up. Ambitious, perhaps, but irrelevant—and the human barely registered to Nathan’s ken. The incorporeal reaper ignored him. Beyond that, though, both children’s description of the vampire mentioned an unusual aura; Nathan had almost chalked the young mage’s words up to frazzled nerves, but Alex had supported her, and if there was one thing that kid possessed it was a level head. But from what they had told him, this mysterious vampire should have been noticeable from at least a half dozen blocks away without Nathan having to try to feel him, and in three days he hadn’t felt a single thing. To Nathan, this situation meant one of three things: that the freak had been blowing smoke the whole time, which was entirely likely; that the being the children had encountered wasn’t a vampire at all, which was somewhat less likely but still possible; or that the vampire really did exist and had already left, which was unusual as far as Jian tactics went but worrisome if true. A Jian covert messenger only left when his job was done. If that was the case, and this meeting offer was genuine, Nathan had only a day left to figure out what on earth the man had done before running into Alex and Phaidra. More movement. The junkie was waving his arm at some drug-induced vision. Nathan hoped he didn’t overdose; he didn’t need the stupidity right now. No, he thought, he was about ready to call this whole search thing quits. He had started believing he was going to find nothing back in the middle of yesterday, but he had kept doggedly hunting for this vanished or nonexistent vampire out of a small respect for young M’ashala. Respect had its limits, though, especially without any sort of real reputation to put behind it. Nathan’s mood was fraying, as well, so to continue this exercise in futility would begin to skirt territory he would rather not tread. He didn’t know what he would do about this supposed ultimatum, either. He knew that, real or impersonated, the Jian only issued threats relevant to their targets, but how was that to be interpreted when the targets were individuals? He had hoped to pry some information out of this annoying specter after pinning him down, but obviously that hadn’t worked out. Right now, he was of half a mind to let this next gambit play itself out, and take things from there. What he really needed was a Trance. That and maybe some cobbler. He wondered if he could hornswoggle Phaidra into making him some.... “Dude. You look...like...so weird up there.” Nathan glanced at the junkie—and turned slightly in puzzlement. The red-headed punk’s eyes were fixed on his position, as if he could actually see the blue shinigami. “You’re like, a little alien spaceship,” the man was saying as he lay sprawled against one of the rooftop air handlers. “Just...floating around, all invisible, and...stuff. Stick out your little radar antenna. Beep,” he said, lifting a hand and waving in a dazed circle. “Beep...beep...beep.” He laughed, a short bark that turned into a helpless giggle. Nathan’s brow furrowed. He was invisible. The man shouldn’t be able to see him in the first place, let alone feel his aura-sweep. No human could, naturally; not even those shamans and psychics who claimed to contact the dead. It could be just another hallucination, Nathan thought, but that was just uncanny. He reached out, just to be sure. Nothing. “Whoa, quit that,” the man griped. “It’s weird.” Nathan’s eyes widened. Nothing. That was it; there was nothing there. The man simply didn’t register at all, as if it were Nathan hallucinating instead. “That’s impossible,” he whispered, and he reached out again again, this time fully focused on the man’s being. The junkie lurched to his feet, his clothes jingling. He jabbed a finger at Nathan, wobbled, caught himself, and said indignantly, “Okay, seriously. You are, like, all up in my personal business. You are ruining my chill. Like ... quit.” Now Nathan’s eyes narrowed. There was something there, all right. It was masked, hidden—he didn’t know how—but underneath the taint still lay. “Freakish cur,” he spat. The man was a vampire.

[font=Calibri]Paper is dead without words; Ink idle without a poem. All the world dead without stories, Without love and disarming beauty.[/font] [indent=1][font=Calibri]â??Tuomas Holopainen[/font][/indent]

[quote name='chibi-master']STEPH NO YOU ARE MAKING A MISTAKE[/quote] [FONT=Calibri]Posts like this are why we need a Dislike button. Except for [COLOR=DarkRed]Boo[/COLOR]. He would just dislike everything.[/FONT]

[quote name='Stephanie']The only kind of peanuts I can stand to eat are boiled.[/quote] [FONT=Calibri]ahhmagawd[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]Do I know you?[/FONT]

[quote name='Boo'] [center][size=6][font=impact]Bosoms, melons, milk factories, busts, funbags, knockers, balisties, boobies, jugs, nipples, jublies, STONKING GREAT TITS.[/font][/size][/center] [/quote] [font=calibri]Fixed.[/FONT]

[quote name='Petie']Actually, Amazon has a [url="http://www.amazon.com/grocery-breakfast-foods-snacks-organic/b/ref=sa_menu_gro11?ie=UTF8&node=16310101"]Grocery & Gourmet Food[/url] department now.[/quote] [center][IMG]http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z158/Allamorph/Misc/lolz/reactionz/uhhh.jpg[/IMG][/center]

[quote name='Silver Mech'] [quote name='chibi-master']Macadamia nuts are really good! They have an odd texture, but the flavor is really light. They're good alone, but are best in cookies because they get even softer when cooked that way.[/quote] I should look for ome on [u][b]Amazon[/b][/u], then.[/quote] [quote name='Silver Mech'][size=5]I should look for ome on [u][b]Amazon[/b][/u], then.[/size][/quote] [quote name='Silver Mech'] [size=6][u][b]Amazon[/b][/u][/size] [/quote] [center][img]http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z158/Allamorph/Misc/lolz/reactionz/1336812246294.jpg[/img][/center]

[FONT=Calibri][url='http://www.anuts.com/images/P/Pecan%20Halves-01.jpg']Deeze Nutz[/url]. [url='http://deliciouslyorganic.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/pecanpie2.jpg']Because[/url].[/FONT]

[quote name='Revelation'][font=verdana][size=2][color=#660000]Push-buttons...psh. How are you liking it so far?[/color][/size][/font][/quote] [FONT=Calibri]Easy, now. =P We go through some ridiculous crap for our crows. Three years of college in just over one is incredibly mentally and emotionally taxing. I'm enjoying the opportunity to work, though. It's something I've been needing for a long while, and I really gel with the whole perform to advance deal. I think the only thing that regularly bothers me is I won't be getting out to the fleet until probably the beginning of 2014, maybe the middle depending on how long Grad-hold stuff is. I don't even care that I'm probably going to be running trash and scrubbing bilges for the first year or so. I just want to be out there doing something, you know? [quote name='Revelation'][font=verdana][size=2][color=#660000]I'm not exactly on a shore tour. It's on a shore-based facility but we have sea-shore rotations. I'm still on sea duty. I recently got my PTS approved so once I find out if I made Second-Class or not, that'll let me know how many more years I can re-enlist.[/color][/size][/font][/quote] How long are you looking to stay in for?[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]I hear this a lot, and I feel it worth pointing out that those are not the same kinds of respect. "Respect your elders" refers to what is known as [url='http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deference?s=t']deference[/url]. You are expected to defer to their decisions based on their age and (supposed) greater depth of experience because, hey, you might not yet have seen all the crud they've seen, and they just might have an insight or two that your youth hasn't allowed you to gain yet. This is given regardless of whether the person is a total dirtbag or notâ??and it's also why people often get bent out of shape over seniority-related issues. It's like saying "I respect your opinion" even when you are convinced the opinion is worthless. "Respect is earned (and not given)" refers to actual measurement of the quality of a person's character, and more closely resembles [url='http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/honor?s=t']honor[/url] or [url='http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/esteem?s=t']esteem[/url] (the noun versions). It ties directly to the idea that actions speak louder than words; when you see someone acting in a way that you approve of or look up to, you begin to respect them in this capacity. So, same word, two totally different concepts. And that leads to the two phrases suffering what we call here a "fusion of knowledge". Remember: just because you need to do the one (more for your own benefit than theirs) doesn't mean you automatically do the other.[/FONT]

[quote name='Revelation'][font=verdana,geneva,sans-serif][size=2][color=#660000]Glad to see I'm still known around here. And it is great being back. I'm stationed in Camp Pendleton, CA. It's a Marine base but I work with the hover crafts there. I work as a GSE and I did hear that Raiha is in Virginia. What are you going Nuke for?[/color][/size][/font][/quote] [FONT=Calibri]Ahai, so a shore tour for you as well. Because that was what I was getting interested in during the last real semester of college I had. Well, power systems in general, and kind of more the geothermal side, but power systems are power systems. Only thing different is how you heat the water. Love the simplicity. And it was either that or Crypto for linguistics, but since recruiters were being told to push Nuc hard, Crypto sort of got dropped by the wayside. Graduated A School in mid-April, so we're a whole detail of Third Classes, it seems. =P[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]Dude, I was just talking about you the other day. Good to see you around. Where have you been stationed? I got out of Boot in December, am at Joint Base Charleston right now going through the Nuclear pipeline (for probably the next year and a half), and I think [COLOR=DarkRed]Raiha[/COLOR] just got orders to an ISM school somewhere close to Virginia Beach.[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]Did not drink enough water yesterday. Side was stitching up during the run today. New minimum: at least two full canteens, which is about 80 fl oz. And this here Gatorade, which was apparently NOT on sale but was the one I wanted anyway, dagnabbit. Shut up and take my money. =P 0815 is not my favorite time for PT. Much rather be doing it at O'Dark Early, so I can eat breakfast at a decent time afterwards.[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]If by "something I haven't heard about" you mean the part where I am currently a Machinist's Mate Third Class in the United States Navy, then yes, it's entirely possible. =P[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]PT at 0515. Real early. Ran about a mile and a half in basically total darkness with the smoke from the controlled burning obscuring even that limited vision and filling my lungs, following only the glint from the reflective NAVY on the back of the gold jersey in front of me. Accelerated on the back stretch to sort of a loping run, a much faster pace than I usually take. About threw up afterwards. Two hours later and my brain says it wants to run again. What is wrong with me.[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri]Right, so. First open beta weekend has come and gone. A good few of us have now had a taste of what's soon to come in the full release. Seems like a good time for opinions and takes on the aspects we each sampled. Shall I kick us off? Once the initial crush of server-crashing prepurchasers finished screwing with ANet's equipment and things settled down, I settled into some casual waters-testing. Didn't really know what I was looking for right off the bat, just wanted a chance to get used to the system and how it worked, and see what the general offerings were. I ended up creating three characters, one of each race, and dabbling a bit with each one. My work schedule didn't really allow for a whole lot of time invested in playing, so that seemed fair. First up was a Human Elementalist. At the time, I hadn't been planning on playing one immediately when the game released, so I felt that the class would be a good place to start fooling around, since I was already somewhat familiar with what I thought was going to be the playstyle. And it wasn't too bad. As far as the class goes, the Ele packs a decent punch, and being able to swap between element attunements essentially at will and still be full power with them was rather enjoyable. Being able to see the actual area of effect of the AoE spells was a good touch, I think. Means that the player no longer really has to worry about centering the nuke and hoping it has full effect or memorising the area of each spell and firing it off hoping people will enter it, and can instead pop and drop and keep casting. And to that effect, Meteor Shower is absolutely insane. I cackled the first time I used it. Almost wish I had screencapped it. I did have a couple of gripes with the class, though. The first one wasn't so much against the class specifically as it was the time I was able to play, but I was only able to test out the skills for the Scepter, Focus, and Staff. The Elementalist has a few more weapons available to it, bringing a skein of new skills along with it, and I did want to see how the playstyle varied between them. Other than that, I was sort of underwhelmed by the Air and Earth magic lines. The Air Skill 1 slot for the Wand specifically bothered me; it's a skill similar to the Force Lightning power used in the KOTOR games, and does moderate damage over time instead of a large single packet of damage, but while in more frenetic combat situations I found myself unable to cast other spells until my character was done with the entire duration. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but the Skill 1 slot has been universally adapted to an auto-attack skill for all classes, and I prefer to be able to interrupt my auto-attacking to cast more potent spells at will instead of being required to finish the full motion. Now, I do think that the auto-attack skill is a vast improvement over the weapon damage from GW1. As a caster, I dislike simply sitting there and wanding out a maximum of 22 damage (before mitigation) every second and a quarter. It's always felt supremely useless, and I can generally do more productive things, like kiting to survive, or casting spells. This mechanic gives the caster something to do while kiting around and still contributes to the damage being done. Another bothersome aspect of the class I noticed is that there seemed to be far too many skills dedicated to utility, and not enough to direct damage, let alone area nukes, which is what the profession is pretty well known for. And, again, I have no experience with what the Daggers (main and off) bring to the gameplay, but I cycled back and forth between the two weapon sets (Scepter+Focus and Staff) that I had, and I found myself being forced [I]once again[/I] to rely on Fire to get anything done. This pigeonholes me as a caster, I think, and I do not like the idea of being mostly restricted to one particular element in order to cause serious pain. Additionally, I thought that while [url='http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Tooth']Dragon's Tooth[/url] was a neat skill to have with the Scepter, I began to dislike having it auto-target an enemy on casting, because if the enemy was moving, the tooth invariably dropped harmlessly behind them. I consider this skill to be an AoE skill, and I would like the option to lead my targets with it like I can with my other AoEs. The second class I rolled was a Charr Mesmer. This class has intrigued me ever since I first started looking into Guild Wars, but its highly specific usefulness and lack of versatility in general PvE make it a very difficult class to play and enjoy, so I was curious how ANet adapted it to the new system while retaining the same craziness that interested me in it to begin with. I was not disappointed. Because of the race I chose (I believe), I was started out with a sword as my primary weapon. Right away I was intrigued, because now obviously I'm a Light Armor caster profession running headfirst into the majority of the damage. The immediate feel that I got was almost exactly like the feel of playing Marth in SSBM: up close all the time, dodging, moving, and staying just out of reach of the enemy. The Slot 2 skill for the Sword is almost like a Counter, even; you unleash a flurry of strikes at your enemies and seem to [url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggFKLxAQBbc#t=0m25s']move like an Agent[/url], evading blows directed against you for a short time. Eventually I was given a choice between Pistol and a Torch as my secondary weapon; I chose the Pistol, and soon was darting around the field of combat, slicing my foes, bouncing bullets off of one target to hit a second and a third, and making continual copies of myself that would alternately slash or barrage my target in my stead. And if I wished I could destroy the copies, damaging or stunning or confusing my foes. It was absolutely insane and I loved every second of it. I didn't play this character long enough to get a different weapon to fool around with, so again my playstyle experience was somewhat limited. I think right now my only contention is that, as a Light Armor class, the increased damage the class takes compounded with the decreased health compared to other classes makes such frenetic gameplay much more high-risk than it initially seems. Squishy casters have to be a lot more careful with how they open themselves to damage simply because not only do they take more damage but they have much less damage they are able to take. I much prefer the universal health bar that the GW1 character system had. I did notice that the previous distinguishing characteristic for the class had somewhat vanished. In GW1, Mesmers are known for their ability to drop small spells in at just the right times, and have drastically-reduced casting times. That wasn't present, as far as I noticed, in GW2. Instead, the ability to create, sustain, and destroy multiple Illusions of oneself now took that aspect. And, honestly, I think between the two, I prefer the Illusions to Fast Casting. My third character was a Norn Warrior. I'm not typically a frontliner, and almost never a Warrior in the first place (the combat style doesn't mesh with my thought patterns), but I decided that since I wasn't really likely to play it to begin with, it deserved a test run as well. And I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Started off with a sword and, eventually, a shield for combat. Play seemed pretty straightforward. Fast, constant damage from the Slot 1 Auto, an unexpected but very useful charging leap attack in Slot 2 (which I generally used to open with), and a sort of utility skill to keep foes from fleeing too quickly while you laid down the pain. Shield was used to block all incoming damage for a short time or to knock foes senseless so you could .... continue knocking them senseless, as it so happened. I mean, you're a warrior. That's what you do. I also got to test out the Rifle, which was enjoyable, if somewhat dangerous in large groups until you unlocked Slot 5, and the Axe, which I was given to dual-wield when I briefly tested PvP (which was a bit crazy itself, but will not be discussed just yet). As far as combat with the Warrior goes, I think a lot of my problems came from not being familiar with the up-front playstyle, and knowing when to tank-and-spank and when to back out and not die, or how to keep up with a fleeing enemy when using melee weapons. I got very familiar with the Rifle while pursuing enemies in PvP, at which point my skill level seemed to jump dramatically, but whenever I was up close I tended to get my rear handed to me. Same with PvE, actually, except that enemies in PvE tend not to kite as much, so I could make up for incoming damage with outgoing damage from my Sword Burst skill. Kill them before they killed me was how I tended to survive. I actually played the second-most with this class, and was involved in a pretty intense mini-dungeon where we went in, killed a bunch of Dredge, stole a bunch of ore, destroyed a bunch of equipment, and put a bunch of hurt on their big leader dude. Since we ended up with at least fifteen to twenty people (if not more), the enemy spawns were utterly ridiculous, and often I found myself completely surrounded and flailing away, hoping something died so I wouldn't. I think I unlocked my entire set of Rifle skills just in that one instance. It was nuts. I was going to lay a few gripes about being able to quickly close to an enemy's position and start dishing out hurt right away, but that Slot 2 Sword skill, along with one of the Utility slots ([url='http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge']Bull's Charge[/url], I think) pretty well solved that complaint. I was a bit confused at why equipping a Shield didn't raise a player's armor, and instead functioned as a weapon, but since there is a Shield Bash skill I suppose that makes some sense. I didn't really play much with the elites of the classes I chose. I wasn't nearly high level enough to unlock them in PvE, and so in PvP I tended to forget they were there. I did like the passive effect that Signets now have; equipping one on your Utility bar now provides you with a constant benefit, and then you can basically sacrifice it for a much better instantaneous benefit, and you get the constant one back when your skill recharges. When I took my Warrior and later Elementalist to the Mists, I also played around with the Traits panel a bit, and I think that adds a good bit of the variety back that the limited skill bar of GW1 had, which first intrigued me. Even with the same weapon equipped, you can gear your character up to favor one playstyle over another, and the more you focus in one line the more passive benefits you gain. For instance, Elementalists can explode with fire or healing rain when attuning to Fire or Water respectively, depending on what lines they focus in, and a particular Trait in the Arcana line increases the radius of their AoE spells. There are a few other things I have thoughts onâ??specifically PvP, Story quests, Race-related details, and general environment impressionsâ??but I think I'll save those for later discussion. What are some thoughts you guys have?[/FONT]