Mad King Thorn Returns – Again

You might remember that in Guild Wars every major holiday (such as Easter, Halloween and Christmas, Chinese New Year and more) is celebrated in the game in different cities. Chinese New Year celebrations take place in Shing Jea Monastery while Christmas, Easter and Halloween take place in Lions Arch and now Kamadan. All the major cities get dressed up for the occassions though. Its a bit of a big deal in world. :-)

So this year, with Brooke’s indulgence and massive understanding, I managed to take the time to get in and participate in the celebrations of Halloween.

You might remember the last time I talked about Mad King Thorn returning back in 2005. I missed last years events because of all the big upheavals happening in our lives at the time. I just simply forgot about it in the madness. Well, things haven’t really changed to Halloween a lot in that time. The scripts are pretty much the same, but with a few additions that take into account things like the new games (such as Nightfall and Eye of the North.) But for the most part, the pattern and the event is still the same it was 2 years ago in 2005.

The event is still a whole lot of fun. I managed to get a video of Mad King Thorn in Kamadan this year. In 2005 I only managed to get a video of the decorations in Lions Arch. This time around I went one step further. I got a video of both Lions Arch and Kamadan decorations. I also remembered to take another trip over to the Tomb of the Primeval Kings to get the traditional screenshot. (If I call it a tradition, Brooke might let me do it again next year) ;-)

Of course, I couldn’t do it with just my Warrior tank this time round. So I got a few screenshots of my lovely Dervish while I was at it ;-)

The video of Mad King Thorn in Kamadan is a little on the large side at the moment. So I’m shrinking it down some and turning it into a nice small FLV to make viewing easier. I’m leeching all the quality out of it but it is encoding as I type this. In fact, the quality is now so bad you can’t read it :-/ 640×480 @ 15fs with 22k/16b stereo sound. Meh, any better than that and its too big to be worth the effort. Its 30mins long :-P

Its a little boring as I don’t play with the game music going. So all you hear are the game effects sounds.

Its 3 Halloweens that have been past since I started playing Guild Wars. I did a /age today and realised that I’ve been playing Guild Wars for 30 months. 31 months in November. Technically its longer than that because I was also playing the betas and pre-release previews.

Lots of people give Guild Wars hassle because its different from most other games out there. One of the biggest things I hear people say is that because theres no monthly fee, it must suck. “Not good enough to charge for” is commonly heard. But Guild Wars has won more awards than most other MMOGs out there (including Evercrack and WoW) and is consistently getting more hype and buzz around it in the gaming magazines I’ve seen and read. I challenge anyone to play the game for 10 hours and not enjoy themselves and the game.

But most of all, the game is good enough that it keeps my attention and Brooke is probably often rolling her eyes as she puts up with me babbling on about it. :-) More than that, even though its not due for release until at least 2009, there is this massive undercurrent of excitement thats building for Guild Wars 2. Not just from me, but from a lot of people I speak to that know anything about it.

Guild Wars is a great game, and events like the Halloween celebration make it a whole lot of fun and definitely worth the wait. Bring on Winters Day and the battle of Spring vs Winter! :-) Will Grenth yet again get to keep winter around a while longer as he did in 2006? Or will Dwayna win this year as she did in 2005? The beauty is no one knows because you, the player, decide the outcome. :-)

Unfortunately, I’m going to miss the Winters Day celebrations this year. But for a very good reason. I’ll be on Vacation over the Christmas period. :-P Oh how hard the trade offs are in life ;-)

As Blade said, “So Exciting!” lol :-) Here is that poor quality video of Mad King Thorn in Kamadan.