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pruning-the-minds-garden · 2 years

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Reasons Nerdy Hypnokinksters Should Play Guild Wars 2

Are you a nerdy hypnokinkster, specifically of the variety who likes to play MMORPGs? Do you have a bit of spare time this holiday season to try out a new one? Well, I have an entirely self-serving list of reasons for you to try out this one! Lets get on with the list! I'm going to put it under a cut because I'm polite like that.

By the way, this list WILL contain spoilers for "Heart of Thorns," "Path of Fire," and somewhat for the Living World and Icebrood Saga. That is just not avoidable at this point, if I want to talk about the selling points I want to cover. If that matters to you a lot a lot, then you'll just have to take my sales pitch on faith and try the free-to-play base game without reading the rest.

Lets start with the reasons most particular to hypnokinksters, and then work outward to reasons that are more general, ending with the things that just make this a really good game. Also, there's a bonus one at the end that's just a reminder of their Black Friday sale which is thinly-veiled FOMO that I'm lampshading now so that you can ignore it when it comes up if you're not already bought in. Aaaaaaaanyway!

1. The Mesmer Profession

In GW2 Character Classes are Professions, and the Mesmer is something halfway between an Enchanter and an Illusionist. They summon illusory clones of themselves, phantasms, and they also confuse and ensorcell their enemies to various effects. So, basically, they are the dream class for a hypnokinkster. They are also a light armor-wearing class that can wield a Greatsword (shown in the picture) and Staff (not pictured but also cool), as well as other weapons with really pretty versions (like the Sword known as The Shining Blade), and as a result can have some of the snazziest looks in all of Fashion Wars 2 - er, Guild Wars 2. It also happens that the Mesmer is one of the more unique and well-liked Professions in GW2 and so it tends to get the nice end of the nerf stick, most of the time, though on the whole GW2's balance actually stays remarkably tight.

2. Mordremoth and the Sylvari

This dude is one of the Big Baddies (called Elder Dragons) of Guild Wars 2. The are the existential threats of the world, and there's only a handful of them in the world. Each of them is themed around two things - one aesthetic, and one function. Mordremoth's aesthetic is plainly obvious, he's the planty/viney dragon, and so there's a lot of plant vibes that go on with everything to do with him, his servants, and so on. His function, though, is Mind. He inadvertently gave rise to one of the playable races of Guild Wars 2, the Sylvari (pictured below). He did that because he sort of exudes mental energy, and he can capture and control minds that are compatible and in his vicinity.

In fact, one of the sub-plots of one of the expacs is that some Sylvari become corrupted by Mordremoth when they get too close to him, and turn against their own friends and allies - that is, get mind controlled - and have to work to break free and gain back their own minds. The player never has to go through that, but they are present for others who have to go through that.

3. Jormag

Another of the Elder Dragons, this one is themed around Ice and Snow. You might think that has nothing to do with mind stuff, but you'd be wrong. Jormag's function is "Persuasion" and so the long section of story where you are tracking him down and making ready to defeat him, you are going through ice caves and trekking through tundra, and all the while you can hear increasingly loud whispers in your mind telling you all about why you should work with him instead of against him. And, at the same time, he's recruiting an army of weaker-willed but stronger-armed minions to fight for him. I KNOW, RIGHT?!? Anyway, I'll be in my bunk. This is really just a repeat of reason #2, but in a new packaging, and is yet more evidence that ArenaNet (the company that makes GW2) hired some hypnokinky people to write their story.

4. Kralkatorrik and Aurene

Okay these last two are purely for the aesthetic value, but I think that still has value for a lot of you. The first picture is Aurene, an ally you meet later on in the story. She has a veeeeeeeery shimmery-shiny aesthetic to her that you can model your character after eventually. Those rainbows in the lens flares aren't just rendering artifacts, either; they show up all the time around her and in graphics to do with her, so if you want rainbow crystals, she's your go-to gal.

On the other hand, if darker and more angry crystals are your thing, Kralkatorrik is your Dragon Daddy. His breath weapon is to turn everything into crystal and make crystals grow from the ground, and wherever he flies purple crystals grow in his wake. He is the Dragon of Anger, though, so he's kinda powered by being eternally pissed off and unpleasant. So, y'know, ups and downs.

5. It's LGBTQIA+ AF

See the two pictured above? Yeah they are two of the core NPCs that you work with through the whole post-base game storyline. Also, they are in love with one another, and in a textually sexual (no nothing NSFW but it is made textually clear) relationship. And, that's not the only instance. There are gay characters and trans characters and ace characters, and I can't really think of a game that I've played that has gone to the same lengths while at the same time not feeling "token-y" about it. For instance: I'm disabled, and I personally appreciate the way they included a disabled character in the aforementioned list of core NPCs, both in her strengths and in her flaws. She is not made to be morally pure or perfect (she's annoying AF sometimes), but she's also highly competent and it's your ass if you condescend to her. Both Marjory and Kasmeer have their flaws, but they also clearly love each other and you can see how their relationship organically grows over the course of the story in a way that is very... human. It's nice. I like it a lot.

From here the reasons are not focused on hypnokinky folks, but on reasons why it's a good game in general -

6. An End to the Gear Grind

In GW2, there is an actual end-point to the gear grind. Once you get a set of Ascended or Legendary gear (the former of which is doable with a few months of time, and the latter of which will take considerably longer but only needs to be done once as it can be used for all of your characters who are eligible to use a given piece of equipment), then that gear stays as the top-tier gear forever. I got my first piece of Ascended gear on my Elementalist eight years ago, and it is still top-tier gear today. It doesn't do the thing that a lot of MMORPGs do where the iLVL goes up every time a patch or expac is released and that makes all of the current BiS gear obsolete. It might happen that a mechanics reshuffling might slightly alter what stat combination is best in slot, but changing one Ascended piece into another is pretty trivial and changing the stats on a Legendary piece of gear is literally just a matter of clicking a button.

7. The Mounts are Fucking RAD, Y'all

See those 8 guys up there? Those are your mounts. Four of them are relatively easy to get, another two take a modest investment of time, and the last two are a GD grind (I want to be honest with you so you aren't shocked later). However, even just the base 4 are fun as HELL to ride around the world in and they make traversing the world SO MUCH MORE FUN. One of them (the Raptor) makes horizontal leaps and runs fairly fast. One of them (the Springer) makes big vertical leaps. One of them (the Jackal) teleports short distances and turns on a relative dime. The last (the Skimmer) floats above water and ground hazards and can hover higher over obstacles for a bit if needed. The combination of the four can get you through 99% of the terrain in the game.

The experience of flying on the two flying mounts (the Griffon and the Skyscale) is also AWESOME, although they take a real investment of time and resources to get. In exchange, though, you get something that is legitimately entertaining all on its own. Something similar can be said for the beetle, which is basically "Guilds Wars 2.5: Tokyo Drift." World of Warcraft is said to have borrowed the Skyscale and Griffon mechanics for their latest expansion, and regardless of the truth of that I completely understand. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then this is a mechanic that is highly deserving of that flattery because it's awesome. I wouldn't fault them if they did. If they didn't, then reinventing that wheel was a brilliant move on their part.

8. No subscription fees and the base game is free

This one speaks for itself. If you want to try it, then there's nothing financially standing in your way. the base game is free, and there is no subscription required to play. Just download it and get started.

9. The game respects your time

This one is intangible and I understand if you don't follow me here, but having played the game for years I feel like GW2 respects my time far more than WoW ever did. If I'm not able to play WoW for a few months, then when I come back my character is woefully out of date, my equipment is miles behind, and I have no idea what's going on. I stopped playing for two or three years in GW2, and when I came back I started up again with almost no issues. My gear was still as good as when I left, and although I later had to shuffle some things, I was still in a perfectly fit state to get around and do what I needed to do. The game also went to pains to tell me what I needed to do, to give me guidance on what the next steps were for whatever was going on in game at the moment, meaning that I didn't have anything like the lag time I might have had in WoW.

10. Bonus: Black Friday Sale!

And here's the sales pitch! The expansions are bundled for this weekend going through to Tuesday, and the bundle is on sale, so if you wanted to download the base game, give it a try, and then if you decided you wanted to buy the expansions... now would be a good time to do it!

If any of that interests you, here's a link to the GW2 website and you can make an account and/or download the game:

#Guild Wars 2 #hypnokink community

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i-mybrunettelady · 2 years

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A couple of friends were helping me beat Tracking the Scientist instance in season 4, which is one of my least fave instances ever. I soloed it only once and never again, and that was only because I had no people to help me at the time (I didn't have any gw2 friends like I do now.)

So, we're doing the instance and one of them is just starting out, is on season 1 chronologically bur doesn't seem mind spoilers, and they comment that the sneaking part was kinda easy. How quickly they changed the tune by the end of it (A kindness repaid) where they said, "I'm going to cry when I solo this" and we offer help when they reach that instance ofc, we're not mean

But this truly is a hellish nightmare of an instance and I am willing to pay for the therapy bills of whoever designed it

#gw2 #nero's random thoughts #i hate that one so bad #rest of season 4 i can solo #but this??? god no

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whiskeyworen · 4 years

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Thoughts on Kralkatorrik

Fair warning. Gonna be dealing with lots of spoilers from Season 4. These are just my musings and thoughts, so feel free to reject them. Most of this is coming from mulling a lot of stuff over and over in my head to make sense.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Kralkatorrik lately, and I’m starting to wonder if he’s possibly one of the most utterly tragic entities we’ve ever encountered in Guild Wars 2. The Elder Dragon of Rage and Crystal...being the most tragic, pitiable, and sad beings I’ve ever seen. I was thinking about how Glint mentioned that at some point in the past, Kralkatorrik had approached her, driven by a vision he wanted her to confirm or deny. It was the vision of a world without Elder Dragons, without him. She claimed that the concept terrified him and drove him into a rage, and whatnot. But I’m wondering about that, simply because of what we know from War Eternal, from his final confessions to the Commander and Aurene. About not fearing death, not fearing anything. So why did Glint say that he WAS afraid? It made me wonder.... when did he have that vision? Was it shortly before he spoke to Glint about it? Or was it further back in history, in the forgotten, unwritten ages? Which made me think further; Glint had the gift of prophecy. To look through the skeins of fate and see particular outcomes and work towards them. But she couldn’t see past a certain point, because that point did not include her in it. In fact, from the memory crystals we find in Path of Fire... when she met Destiny’s Edge, she was surprised: “These heroes are...not what I expected. Do they have the courage to endure what's coming? The will to drive it back? “ I think that’s because the group she DID expect was Dragon Watch...from further down the timestream. She knew it was a group of mortals coming, with a sylvari, a charr, a human, and an asura...among others perhaps...but the group before her didn’t look quite right. She misinterpreted her own vision, and as a result, Destiny’s Edge tried to fight Kralkatorrik too early. Glint and Snaff died as a result. But... Kralkatorrik, for all his size and power, could have easily smeared or branded Destiny’s Edge. He didn’t though. Rytlock talks about having been close enough to ‘blow kisses’ to Kralk, but Kralk didn’t end up killing them in the end. Because that wasn’t part of the grander Vision. Back to the point, we know Aurene has prophetic visions, and looked through multiple outcomes to try to find one where she and her allies didn’t die against Kralk. And failed. Because that was a historical point that HAD to be met and bypassed by something not shown. Which made me wonder... if Aurene is prophetic to a degree, and Glint moreso, to the point of seeing decades, centuries down the road with some degree of accuracy (not perfect but pretty good)... did that mean Kralkatorrik could as well? Could he, by extension, see extremely FAR down the road, but perhaps not have the refinement to see any other paths? I suddenly had this idea that Kralkatorrik, in the far ancient past before he became the Moving Mountain Range of a Dragon, possibly when he first evolved up to a more powerful state, had had the greatest, deepest, and longest Vision. One that he saw all the way to the end of his own life, so many millennia down the road. And that it didn’t terrify him. It didn’t anger him. It just was. It was unavoidable (because he didn’t know HOW to avoid it, without wrecking the balance of the world himself, which he would have been very aware of), but it was tremendously far off. He could do almost anything and easily avoid it... but yet he didn’t. He took on the role that had been set for him. Perhaps he’d been granted a vision of where someone referred to him as the Elder Dragon of Rage and Crystal. Seen his own, enraged actions in later millennia. So he put that on as his image, projecting a false rage, but one honest enough to convince generations of mortals. Maybe even mixed in a bit of actual rage, because who likes being shackled to a fate they can’t alter? To be denied choice? With his Brand, over the passing of years, he could have easily reworked all of Tyria every time he awoke. But we see little if any of his influence other than in the Brand itself. And the Brand is a pretty permanent mark on the landscape. Pretty sure something like that doesn’t fade in a century or two. There should be entire swathes of landscape still bearing Brandmarks from the previous Risings, but there doesn’t seem to be. What if, just maybe... he was following a long list of events he had to make sure happened, to ensure that particular future came to pass. The one with Aurene, the Commander, the Pact, and Dragonfall itself? Every other Elder Dragon (barring Jormag, who claims to want only to be left alone, just ignore the ice minions) when they awoke tried to expand their territory as far as possible, and conquer and devour all in their path. But when Kralkatorrik awoke, he only burned a path straight south, and parked himself near the Tomb of the Primeval Kings. For YEARS. He drove south, and then sat somewhere. The only time he left that spot was to ‘confront’ Destiny’s Edge. As the Long Vision said he must, because he HAD to. He had to let Glint be un-linked to him for years, only to be forced to re-take her and her ending up dead because of it and the resulting battle. He had to watch as essentially his daughter died, knowing he could have left her alone and alive. But having to do it because if she lived, the Vision would go off-path, and the end result would be less-than-acceptable. So Glint dies, Snaff dies, and Kralkatorrik nurses a long, painful hurt that he knew was coming for ages. Imagine knowing that someone you cared about would turn on you, and you had to kill them. Imagine knowing, even worse, that that was the GOOD outcome. The one that HAD to happen. Mortals knew of him as the Crystal and Rage Dragon, because that was the image he had to plant in their minds. They HAD to hate him. They HAD to fear him. Fate needed them all bound together in a force strong enough to take him down, and he was the needle that sewed it all together through dozens of smaller, unseen movements over the years. Towards the end, after he’d absorbed all those toxic magics that he had no hope of containing, no hope of filtering and releasing in the ways that Aurene had been taught, because no one had ever taught HIM how to do it in ages past... He’d been almost insane with pain. But even then, he was still trying to follow the script. He knew he had to do...things... even if he wasn’t truly sure what they were. After such a long life, there must have been moments of ‘is this the part where I....’ by the dozens, but he probably knew his time was up, and knew he HAD to resist hard enough for everyone to be fully convinced of it. He had to fight back against us, because the script demanded he do it. So that there would be enough anger that we (the Commander, Aurene, the Pact) would not hesitate, not pull any punches, show no mercy.... Because it was the right thing to do. Kralkatorrik knew ages before that he was going to die, where, and how. Maybe not When, but one only needed to look to the events that would unfold to pick the proper time. He knew he would be hurt every stage of the path. From the loss of Glint, and possibly Vlast (the grandson he’d never properly met), to having to Brand Aurene to set her on her proper path. From Branding Ascalon and countless living beings to make the Charr, and by proxy Tyria hate him enough to fight him hard enough to make the Future possible. To facing down Balthazar when he frankly didn’t need to, even knowing Aurene was in that Warbeast, and being injured by it. Even chasing Aurene through the Mists, and into Thunderhead Keep, and then retreating back into the Mists to recupe some strength...that was only so there’d be time for Aurene to recover and gain her true abilities. He could have easily levelled the mountain, and instead he left...because Fate demanded he do so. There was no anger in him at the end. Only love for Aurene, regret for Glint, and possibly even those he’d Branded (I’m interpretting it that way because it’s very possible he did like Mortals, but because of his role in Fate, he HAD to kill and Brand them, and that hurt.), relieved resignation that he was at the end, and gratitude. In a way, all the horror, all the pain he caused... all the destruction, as oddly limited as it was compared to other Elder Dragons... was all FOR Tyria and the world. He played the role of mindless villain, because it was his destiny, and he could not shirk it. Could not see another way out that was beneficial to the world. So he took up that dark mantle, and wore it, and never let anyone else know, not even his own kin. Right till the end. Even Jormag never caught on. That’s how well he played the role. It’s impressive...and haunting. To knowingly do horrible things even though you don’t want to, but because it’s absolutely, 100% necessary. And to know it’s going to cost you Everything, right down to your own life... but everything will come out better for it afterward. I’m not even sure I’ve explained the scope of this thought properly. But it digs at the back of my mind now when I play through PoF, and Season 4. I can’t un-think these thoughts, not after hearing him at the end of Dragonfall. Hearing that he KNEW, and had always known, and was unafraid of it.

#gw2 #gw2 Season 4 #gw2 season 4 spoilers #War Eternal #Kralkatorrik #Fate #Personal thoughts #musings #LONG POST WARNING

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bioluminescent-obscurity · 2 years

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scion and sylvari champion

the commander was the bright-eyed child of a dragon minion, raised to defeat the elder dragons. they are one of hundreds of their kind, never intended to be more than mindless thralls. mordremoth is their mother’s creator, but mordremoth feels no affinity for the sylvari. it tears their minds apart and repurposes them as it sees fit. the commander retaliates, tearing it apart from within. all the way until the bitter end, mordremoth refuses to acknowledge its fate at the hands of the child of its child.

aurene was the bright-eyed child of a dragon minion, raised to defeat the elder dragons. she is the only surviving one of her kind. kralkatorrik is her mother’s creator, and kralkatorrik recognises her. he sees her potential. as kralkatorrik is being torn apart from within, he talks calmly with her. sympathises with her. asks gently for an end to his suffering.

as kralkatorrik is dying, he says to aurene:

“Child of my child. I only hope you never have to kill what you love.”

after finally leaving behind the trauma of the maguuma campaign, just to be shown how gently a meeting with one’s elder dragon creator can be resolved... i feel like this would utterly break the commander’s heart.

the commander never receive the closure that the scion did, but the scion will never know her own siblings. at the very least, they have each other.

#guild wars 2 #heart of thorns #living world season 4 #being a dragon minion is pretty heavy stuff #i gotta get back into making art about this wow #gw2 spoilers #guild wars 2 spoilers #hot spoilers #lws4 spoilers #<--JUST IN CASE #can never be too careful with spoiler markers #ok now for my own markers for blog organisation reasons #i am posting about guild wars 2 again #maunder tag #gw2 #lws4 #(this post is ABSOLUTELY about trahearne btw. the commander did have to kill what they loved)

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anwenevergreen · 2 years

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It would be said that, in the days before the end of the world, the Commander vanished.

That the Brand had stolen her heart and shattered her soul. And that, as the star guiding them faded, she slipped away.

Anwen recalled nothing, safe for the weight of Meryw on her shoulder lifting as one much greater replaced it. She had vaguely heard her own voice echo weakly in the crystal cavern, a whisper dying in a hush, heralding the end of the world. She had felt through a haze Trahearne's arms lifting her from the floor to bring her broken form back to the surface. And in the blink of an eye, a dreamlike state drawing endlessly before the inevitable fall to the nightmare, a week had passed.

#anwen evergreen drabbles #anwen evergreen #living world season 4 spoilers #lw s4 spoilers #living world spoilers #gw2 spoilers #gw2 lw s4 spoilers #a glimpse in the future #death of aurene #i have a lot of feelings about that scene #praise joko she's alright in the end #but #damn that scene was heavy!!#slight trammander #trahearne is 12' tall and definitely uses it to lift his tiny 6' girlfriend from the ground #angst #angst with an eventual happy ending

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sylvaridreamers · 2 years

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I continued on to “The End” and I genuinely cried oh my gosh. This game. I can’t believe it did this to me again.

#living world season 4 #living world spoilers #gw2 spoilers

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frolicinq · 3 years

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GW2 TUMBLR! MAJOR story spoilers ahead! [On mobile sorry]

Me and my friends need help. In our canon, our dragon [aurene, vlast] champions can already understand Aurene and Vlast. Thus, we were wondering what we should do with Caithe. Should she still get Branded by Aurene? Should she not?

#gw2 #gw2 spoilers #gw2 living world season 4 spoilers #spoilers #guild wars 2 spoilers #PLS WE NEED HELP

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red-catmander · 4 years

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sometimes i think about eir rocketing out of the afterlife to see her mourning, hurting son, looking at him and going ‘omg you’re still sad about me dying? lmao’ then immediately leaving to have a ghost house party with snaff

edit: time to post this again

#guild wars 2 #gw2 #hey subscribers this is eir stegalkin welcome to my son crying cringe compilation 17 #guild wars 2 spoilers #season 4 spoilers #poor braham!!#I neglected you in life and so help me son I WILL neglect you here

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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 3 years

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"Commander of Death" Part I: A Meeting of Souls

POV: CEERA

TL;DR - The end of Ceera's story - or perhaps the beginning of a new chapter. (We'll see if I feel like continuing it.)

A Meeting of Souls

Ceera is not in Pact Command on Dragonfall, like she is technically supposed to be. She is in the Mist Warden camp. She’d already led several expeditions to recover mist essence and even managed to revive a few fallen soldiers. No point in adding to the ghosts populating the camp.

Once, upon return, she’d come face-to-face with the Pact Commander, who had seen her frigid stare and turned away without a word.

Now she marches in to the camp, orders a wounded Vigil recruit into a makeshift bed in a tent, and is overseeing the distribution of mist essence, when she hears her name.

“Ceera? Are you Ceera?”

The voice comes from high above her. Ceera turns and looks upward to a norn. “Yes, I am.”

“Someone’s looking for you. Ah - a ghost.”

A terrible, motionless agony seizes Ceera. She can’t speak. She hardly dares to connect the dots. Finally she manages to rasp out, “where?”

She follows the norn through the camp as if only her steps and the path to her destination are real. Everything else is frozen, irrelevant - she’s walking through another world.

And then she sees him.

Tonn.

Her husband.

Her love and her life.

She flies into his arms, but he is incorporeal; but she holds his hands and tears fall down her face and he is speaking to her gently, softly, repeating words she hadn’t heard for eight years.

“Tonn,” she murmurs, just to hear his name on her lips again. “Tonn.”

“My Ceera,” he replies, and she hadn’t heard him say her name in so long, even the slight distortion of his voice is irrelevant - he is here. He is speaking to her. “I found you.”

Ceera closes her eyes and just revels in the sound of his voice. “Yes,” she murmurs.

“I won’t ever leave you again,” he promises.

“Can you?” she asks wonderingly, opening her eyes to look into his face. “Don’t you have to go back - after?”

“Not if I don’t want to,” he smiles at her. “Now, tell me what you’ve been up to. News of big things comes in to the Mists now and then, but I’ve only ever heard bits and pieces about you.”

So she tells him. The mist essence distribution can handle itself for a few hours. Or days...

~oOoOo~

Next (Pt 2)

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