OK, so to make up for the extended posting absence I present… TWO Guild Wars shots. :-)

The first is a brutal ping time of over 30 seconds…

and the second is LTJ's current status on the KoaBD track

A lot of people who play GW use GuildWiki. Recently I saw that GuildWiki has an annoying ad at the top for GW2. So being the sucker that I am I looked at the link. There's some info and a few videos but the bottom line is, well… it doesn't look so great. The graphics are better but fer Chrissake it's been half a decade, they HAVE to be better. Actually, they look a lot like Aion don't they?  The gameplay videos are short and do not show the UI. The gameplay videos also lead me to believe that players will make audible smartass remarks when they cast or kill. Now if you can't turn that off it'll be annoying as all holy hell. Looks like just more advertising to me with no substance to back it up. Fumble!

It was good to see DO back in GW this week, he is even in [DEAD] now.

Booyeah

Just a few short minutes ago LTJ maxed out the Kurz title giving him a dozen maxed titles (People Know Him). This weekend is Sunspear and Lightbringer weekend (double points) so I'll see if I can get him up to 14 titles this Sunday. LTJ, you rock. As soon as the dungeons are done I'll see about capping, guardian, and mapping. Come on Wack, git 'er done! ;-)

I have been wanting to make a private Guild Wars server for a long time now, and it does seem like that'll never happen.  The concept of intellectual property rights already bugs me, but NCSoft or ArenaNet or whatever name they want to use… is dipshitted if they never release the code (or at least the ability to run private servers).

First off, one myth I would like to put to rest, is the statement that there is no point in running a private server because the game is free. If you search for "guild wars private server" or mild variations of it, you'll find a few people asking how to make a private GW server. You'll also typically find multiple responses to the question stating that it is pointless to make one. These responses sometimes go on to say that the game is really cheap (followed by quoting 20 or 30 Euros to buy it). The responders are quick to point out that there is no monthly fee for Guild Wars and as such you wouldn't be saving any money by using a private server. What they fail to mention is that Guild Wars is very much divided into PvP (player versus player) and PvE (player versus environment). The people who play PvE are playing through a storyline and are following quests that lead them towards the end of the story which each campaign has. The PvP people are playing against other humans (almost exclusively) and battle to control faction in the second game.

In the case of PvP it would only make sense that the more people you have playing, the better. A private server with only a few hundred people playing would not make sense because large Alliance Battles take 24 players and the ladder of the top ten teams (or guilds) would ultimately involve hundreds of people on it's own. However, the people who play PvE don't need a lot of other people to play with. Obviously if there are other people to interact with it can be more fun but it is not necessary most of the time.

NOTE: there are some folks who claim that it is not possible to complete the PvE storyline with heroes and henchmen. There are a few missions or areas that are tough with H/H but if you couldn't finish the storyline then you are seriously a PvP pussy who got PWNED by the environment. Go back to PvP and trash talk all the other little 15 year olds chump.

Now, the mere fact that PvE does not require the help of others does not mean that a private server makes sense. The real reason I would like to have a private server is because I don't want to hear the bullshit trash talk of the 15 year old goofs who think they are tough. Honestly, it's a fuckin' video game and there are kids running around flapping their gums about how bad they can beat everyone else. Those are the fucks I don't want to play with. While it might be possible to turn off the All and Trade chat channels that isn't very effective if you are trying to buy or sell something. And ArenaNet has done a mostly half assed job of limiting Trade and All channel spamming.

Finally, why would the makers of Guild Wars want to allow people to create private servers? Well possibly a few reasons, how about these?

1. They make money from the sales of account codes. The game software is free to download, the only thing you pay for is the key code to make a new account (or add to an existing one). If they were to allow private servers, people could simply download the game for free and play on the private server for free. No more money for them.

2. Security flaws could unbalance their economy. They spend a fair bit of time and effort trying to keep the economy of the game balanced. It's funny because they add rare (valuable) content to the game and then have to police the potential duplication of the items. Minipets and rare weapons are extremely expensive and throw the economy off balance. Anyways, I have no trouble imagining that ArenaNet would be worried about players being able to quickly advance on a private server and then finding a way to migrate their character or inventory to the live GW servers.

3. Intellectual property rights hoarding. People who support IP concepts basically believe that as long as they have the ability to claim ownership of anything, they should. They believe that everything has the possibility of becoming very valuable (even if that possibility is very low). So they claim complete ownership of anything and everything they can, so that on the off chance that a dollar can be made form it, they want to be the ones to capitalize on it. The bottom line is that this kind of attitude keeps "property" in the hands of people who typically have no fucking clue what to do with it.

OK, I am tired of pointing out the greedy shortcomings of corporate Korea. Why should ArenaNet realease the ability to make a GW server? Well, they have already released Aion (it's crappy by the way) and claim to be getting ready to release Guild Wars 2. Once GW2 is out it would appear that a lot of players will be buying it and moving on. And if it is as good as they claim, then nobody is going to want to go back to GW. The population of GW will dwindle and the game will become a ghost town. PvP will eventually hit a threshold at which it will no longer be fun because there isn't enough competition (imagine an NHL with 4 teams). PvE will eventually die as well because of people who can't finish with H/H in addition to the fact that games with better graphics will continue to be released. When that starts to happen, ArenaNet should allow the creation of private servers… but I bet they won't.

Seriously, I think that vanquishing Talus Chute in 80 minutes is pretty sweet.

That's right, 80 minutes.

ATI is now owned by AMD and they fucking suck. I have an ATI (well, Sapphire) video card that used to work just fucking fine. Now it barfs when I perform certain actions and it just gives me a blank screen. It actually looks like it is entering powersave mode, and I can still hear audio from the application so I know the machine hasn't hung. So I reinstalled my fucking OS recently and the card was working fine again. I just assumed it was shitty fucking garbageware that got on my PC from marketing and advertising cocksuckers who think that things like "popups" and "javascript" are there for the purpose of broadcasting bullshit instead of being used as actual features. So today I tried again and it fucked up. Nothing changed from yesterday, no new software installed, no registry setting changes, no fucking shit. So I went to Sapphire and downloaded the 50 Fucking Megs of drivers that they offer, with the bullshit Catalyst drivers that claim (during the install process) to be over 100M in size. There's no fucking way drivers should be anywhere near that big. No fucking way! So I shove the shit into my nice clean install and when I restart it tells me that I need .NET 2.0 to run the fucking Catalyst crap. No mention of it before or even during the install, just wait till I have your fucking shitty-ass trashware on my box and THEN tell me that you depend on Microsoft's answer to wanker programmers. So believe it or not I put fucking .NET 2.0 on this fucking thing and oh boy, the Catalyst memory whore starts up. The settings in there are of very little use and ultimately the card is still unable to display screens it had no problem displaying earlier today. Way to do a shitty job ATI and AMD and Microsoft and Sapphire! That's the last piece of shit ATI card I plan to buy. Fuck you.

Fuck you ATI!

So not too long ago I saw a message in GW telling me that there is a new build and that I should exit and restart GW to get it. A lot of players don't like to pickup updates 'cause half the time the point of the update is to nerf some skill or farming build. I ended up getting the new build and when I restarted GW I was greeted by this big red announcement.

ArenaNet warns GW players to change passwords

Now doesn't that look classy? They recommend that ALL players reset their passwords immediately. Sounds to me like some fucker had a serious security leak… possibly gwguru?  Or possibly even NFSoft? Fuckin' tragic, nice job.

In GW (as everyone knows by now) there are certain titles that can be achieved and displayed on characters. One such title is the cartographer title which is obtained by visiting every inch of the map on all three continents. In order to visit every inch of the map it is necessary to "scrape" walls of the map in many explorable areas and it can be quite annoying and tough to find all the little nooks that exist. To help with the cartography title, it is possible to use an application called Texmod (frequently misspelled TextMod) and a template file to show you where you have missed. Here is a screenshot of a section of map to show you how it appears.

GW screenshot showing how the map looks when you are using Texmod.

The map shows where you have been, where you need to visit still (in gray), and where you can not map (the black areas). This makes the cartography a hell of a lot easier and can save hours upon hours of scraping walls looking for missed areas.

NOTE: there has been much discussion over whether or not Texmod violates the ArenaNet End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). If you press F10 [in game] and type in "texmod" and search for it, you will be brought to a page on the official GW wiki for modifying in game graphics. Frankly, this means nothing. ArenaNet will do whatever the fuck they want, to whoever they feel like… and Texmod is not at the top of their list of shit to deal with.

Now that you know ANet doesn't care, how do you get this fine program? Better yet, how the hell do you make it work? Seriously, I don't know why it has to be this complicated but it is…

01. Start by clicking HERE to download texmod.zip
02. Save it to your GW directory [probably C:\Program Files\Guild Wars]
03. Browse to your GW directory
* Start -> My Computer -> C: Drive -> Program Files -> Guild Wars
04. Double-Click the texmod.zip file [you should see a texmod.exe file and a readme.txt file]
05. Right-Click the texmod.exe file and select Copy
06. Click the Back button at the top left of your window to return to your Guild Wars directory
07. Click Edit in the menu at the top of your window and select Paste
08. Right-Click on the new Texmod icon and select Create Shortcut
09. Right-Click on the new shortcut and select Rename
10. Type in Snork Rocks and hit Enter
11. Drag the Snork Rocks icon to your desktop and drop it there
12. Close the window with your Guild Wars files and this should return you to your browser window [still looking at my website]
13. Click HERE to download the map file [need to have cookies enabled for some reason]
14. Save the map file to your Guild Wars directory
15. Close all windows and Double-Click the Snork Rocks icon on your desktop
16. Click the folder icon at the top left of the Texmod window
17. Double-Click the GW.exe file [the little helmet]
* You should now see the little helmet where the folder icon was
18. Below the helmet you should see two boxes with a vertical row of four buttons between them, click the top button [also looks like a folder]
19. Select Browse on the menu that pops out
20. Double-Click on the Cartography map file which should return you to the main Texmod window again
21. In the left hand box you must highlight the Cartography map file so that it's description shows up in the right hand box
22. Now click the Run button and Guild Wars should start
23. Logon and press M to see the modified map

You will need to perform steps 15 through 23 each time you want to use Texmod. You may still start Guild Wars the way you used to if you don't want to use Texmod. These instructions are not terribly forgiving and if you miss something or fuck something up then it will probably keep you from completing the steps. The best way to avoid problems is to print out these instructions and do them word for word, step by step.

That's right, I have the three necros and they are all runed out. I'd like to get some nifty weapon sets for them but I don't feel like paying 5k plus crafting materials for them (so I guess I'll wait for drops). Not sure what is next on the agenda… possibly EOTN, if I can get Legendary Master Of The North then the three full campaigns should seem like a fucking joke after that. It'll also get me some bitchin skills as well. Bah, we'll see.

I seriously should have posted this days ago but it's been a busy week. I found that the last few levels for LTJ were really not as bad as I had expected. Maybe I am just getting used to being at the shrine? Anyways, it went well and I hit level20 like the champ I am. Since then I have picked up the three necros and got myself to the desert in Prophecies. I have Dunes Of Despair done (with bonus) and Thirsty River (though no bonus on that one).  As soon as I can get Elona Reach done I'll be all set to ascend and start pounding! I am currently trying to get a Drok's Run but it would appear that "I Am man Of Steel" and "X Soul Dervish X" can't make it. I think if you are going to charge full price for a run then you should probably have a decent success rate. We are on our third try and neither of the two runners can make it past the first part of the run (not what I would call a good success rate). I'll pickup SS outside Camp Rankor and that'll help to fill out my necro team a bit too.

Legendary Top Jimmy Achieves The Legendary Defender Of Ascalon Title

The last two nights (well mornings) in a row I have encountered a GW bug in which I am unable to cast any spells with an error message stating "Not Enough Energy"… even though I clearly have enough. And if I ping my energy bar it says I have 0 of 36 energy. This is pretty annoying when you wake up and find yourself with only bane Signet to kill off the Charr that leveled up while you were sleeping. The thing I changed recently is that I started death leveling with a -20 health offhand… I think I'll stop doing that and perhaps send it to post to see if that happens in post as well.