Tower of Nighmares

It's been quite a weekend here in my own little nerd hovel, what with the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special and just all the Guild Wars 2.

You see, in GW2 there's something called the Living World: a series of worldwide events that change every two weeks or so, generally flowing as an overarching story. Our current predicament began on the game's first birthday, with the introduction of the delightfully insane Sylvari named Scarlet. With her Aetherblades, Molten Alliance and other minions she's been carving a crazy scar down the middle of Tyria.

Her most recent plot lines involve the Tower of Nightmares, a shoddy skyscraper made and inhabited by Krait, a rather nasty race of evil glow worms. The tower itself is a three tiered gauntlet, where one's only hopes are that the zerg aren't far ahead or behind, for when your ass inevitably hits the ground.

Glow worms aren't know to be particularly talented architects...Their talents tend to be more centered on fish acquisition.

Seeing as the Living World achievements will be finished up with the newly released one on Tuesday, my party decided to wrap up any lose ends in one go. Up the tower we climbed, stopping here and there to revive a fallen loner, or demolish a hallucination brought on by the tower's toxins because it gave us a funny look. We dodged exploding plant pods and giant champion wurm AoE's, we slaughtered Krait and Twisted Nightmares alike.

And we waited. Holy cow we waited. See, several of the achievements required one to enter and clear various chambers within, themselves consisting of instances with two rooms to fight smaller foes, and a final boss, usually taking the form of an ally (you know, with all the hallucinogenic bs in the air and all). However, you can't simple run up to a chamber and hop in. No, you had to wait for it to open first! So there we would stand. 20 minutes sometimes, waiting. Sure we'd pass the time, run to get a drink, fight a nearby baddy, but mostly we just stood there. Talking. or having drinking contests (Thank you, Aaron, for bringing the Belcher's Bluff table!).

All was worth it in the end, for now I am the proud owner of an awesome gas mask helmet skin I'll probably never use that will take up precious bank space and a seriously cramped thumb (from using it to steady the keyboard as I frantically whacked at the WASD and number keys for god knows how long...)

Ah gamer problems.