Gunk and Guild Wars 2

Once upon a time I picked Thursday as a day for blogging, thinking that I would have something to say because I would have one class to attend on Thursday. I foolishly assumed that would give me material to talk about. Well, it might have, but it turned out we did not have that class this Thursday. I have been at home all day. I did clean, but I doubt that you are interested in hearing how much I'd neglected my room and how I found mysterious dust covered gunk on my floor. It was like sticker glue. But not.

Enough about gunk. I've been up to very little things that I actually want to include in a blog post so I'm just going to go with something related to what I was doing today: I have been playing plenty of Guild Wars 2, especially in World vs World mode, in which servers are pitted against each other.  So, players against other players. The main goal is to capture camps, keeps, towers and such from enemies. It can be pretty fun, especially if there are a lot of people around, and if there is a commander around (a player who has purchased the commander ranking and works as, well, the commander of the troops). That's when the large group of people will follow the orders of this commander, usually running very close to them - this large group is often referred to as the zerg and running with it is usually the best for your own survival. The commander is often on Mumble, a audio chat service like Skype but less user friendly and for large conference calls. It's good to be listening in on the conversation because that's when you understand what the plan is better and the commander can issue quick orders.

Running with the zerg feels like running of the bulls really, if you were one of the bulls - you stampede across the hills with dozens of people and if anything gets in your way, you destroy it if you can. If you are that unfortunate lone player out and about and happen to be on the way of the enemy zerg, though? Well, it's like being Simba in the middle of the wildebeest stampede. If those wildebeests were actually hungry for your blood, and kind of a bunch of dicks.

A portion of a small zerg I was running with tonight just to give you some pictures. 

I'm pretty sure I'm somewhere in this picture, dunno where

It is exhilarating though. You work as a team, a large team, listen to the commander's orders (which can sound like a fast-talking auctioneer in a auction with plenty of bids when there's a lot of action going on), prepare, reply and resupply, while trying to defend and avoid. There are scouts - people who follow the enemy's moves or keep an eye out on locations. Sometimes there are groups separated from the main zerg doing any number of important tasks. And the commander or commanders are at the center of it all, trying to keep everything together, trying to win, trying to get all the intel and sort out what is needed while running around.  And it's exciting when you feel like the commander has a plan and that plan is to do something big. So yes, it is kind of addictive, even when you are on the losing side, die a lot, and things get frustrating. It's a nice change of pace to the main game and it's what I've liked doing for the past few days.

Guild Wars 2 did an April Fools thing, turning almost every character into a bobble-head. Made emoting about 90% more fun!

One of my characters, making a face, as a bobble-headed dork