I've not been doing WvW as much as I used to, which is a sad fact. It's not that I dislike it, neither is it that I dislike the new maps (in fact, I really do love them). The real reason is because there's not much of a tangible reward for doing WvW... and there never has been. WvW rewards tend to be very WvW-centric. The reward for doing WvW is that you get to do... more WvW.... This is in stark contrast to PvP, which now has PvP reward tracks that give great, general use rewards. I don't like PvP, but I wind up playing it every day simply because I like the PvP rewards. If only WvW, an activity I like, were the same...

At any rate, I did take out Molina on a WvW romp recently. Went out on a massive golem rush with Maguuma WvW favorite son Xushin/Zushin. It was a friggin' blast, as we tramped all over EBG taking everything in site.

Afterwards, I went and did Dragon's Stand. There, I encountered a truly awesome bug.

That's the central tower boss Diarmid fighting outside the tower. Not outside of the center in the circular lane, but completely and legitimately outside the tower.

In Dragon's Stand there are three towers. Everyone on the map splits into three zergs, and each zerg fights their way, escorting the pact, up the three lanes to the towers (North, Central and South). It's a long and drawn-out process, and you can expect to spend 1 to 2 hours completing the meta events in the zone.

Once at the towers, each zerg then promotes a smaller sub-group for fighting the boss. The main zerg runs in a circular path around the center of the tower. Their task is to kill the Preservers, a special mob that can protect the boss, as they spawn. The zerg must be quick, and run through scads of enemies hell bent on their destruction.

Meanwhile, the boss group must defeat the boss (they also have to kill the pods protecting the boss, but I'm glossing over that mechanic). Each of the three towers has a specific boss with different moves and abilities. Central's boss is Diarmid.

Ideally, the boss group fights the boss on the platform at the center of the circular track that the zerg is running around. This is where the boss spawns, and the platform is free from other mobs. Occasionally, the boss will wander down into the lane. If they are there, they become incredibly difficult to beat as they will be surrounded by an ever increasing number of evil mobs and they will invariably be distracted by the roaming zerg and meander about the circle haphazardly. If a boss is stuck in the lane, you're pretty much guaranteed a loss. When a boss is found in the lane, the boss group will try to pull them back to the center, which can be tricky.

Well, on this day the boss meandered into the lane while the boss group was killing the pods. The boss group (which I was a part of) tried everything we could to pull them back into the center. But the boss seemed to be stuck on a little ledge near the ramp up to the center platform, and nothing we could do would make the boss come back up the ramp. Additionally, the boss kept aggroing the zerg, and roaming further and further down the circular lane away from the platform. Ugh.

After a few wipes of the boss group, I jokingly suggested we should just try to lure the boss back to the start instead of trying in vain to get them back into the center. Well, they took me seriously and that's exactly what we did. The above screenshot is us fighting Diarmid at the entrance to the central tower. That was where we finally beat them, and we managed to turn an almost certain failure into a success. It was mad...

[SAND] has been leveling up the various buildings and features of their guild hall. It's been a fun process to watch and be a part of. Recently, we leveled up the Workshop, and I took pictures of it.

Here we are gathering together for the big event.

Here's the before image of what the Workshop looked like. And here's the after shot of the completed building:

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I finally got a precursor to drop from the Mystic Toilet. Well, recently I managed to complete the forging of that precursor into a Legendary! Trix was there to share in the joy.

Here I am placing the final components into the Forge:

And here's my Frostfang fresh from the Forge:

Finally, here's Meso equipped with re-skinned Ascended axes using the Frostfang skin:

So there was a new glider on the gem store, and I had to get it. It's so damned pretty...

Speaking of pretty, I've been doing the HoT missions finally, and man do some of the locations in the missions look fantastic!

As I mentioned before, I've been going and re-doing all the dungeon story modes. I'm doing this to unlock the associated PvP reward tracks. Here I am with Trix on an ill-fated run. In that run, most of our group did not speak any english, and without auto-translate phrases (man, FFXI did this one aspect so well), we had a hard time coordinating. Additionally, near the middle of the mission (in that screenshot) one of the NPCs glitched out and blocked progress. So we failed, lost all of our members, and Trix and I had to try again. Our second time was more successful, and we managed to complete the story mode.

Finally, I went and did CoF story mode with several people from [SAND]. I already wrote about this last month, but here's a screenshot of us doing the pre-events necessary to open the CoF gate.