Gaming

I switched back to my thief-fellow in Guild Wars and bashed a few more centaurs. I ended up doing that grog protecting quest again at the monastery. Apparently I didn't quite finish it the last time before getting distracted by that previous death, so I got it all completed this time and lingered a little while longer to help someone else who was doing it, just in case they needed a bit of healing/resurrection. Yes, I was being a good guy today.
Then I went off into another swamp to battle some shades and deal with some tortured spirits. I was there on my own but it wasn't difficult. Then after I'd finished, there was suddenly an influx of players with names...



...and the crowd seemed to grow a bit more....



Hello, hello, hello. Something's going down here.
Everyone was just standing around and waiting. Waiting for... something.
The anticipation was killing me.
Come on! What is it? Bring it on! Let's have it! Me and you and everyone else.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
COME ON!!!

I waited with the crowd, waiting and waiting until....

My streaming hour was up and GeforceNow kicked me out before "It" happened.
Whatever "it" was.
The build-up was very exciting though.

*ignores Banj's Gwent boasting*

I've been in plenty of group quests in GW2 but the only big battles I've experienced are with the Awakened Remnants and I always arrive late right at the very end of the fun. Being there before the start feels very different and this seemed much larger than that moment I found a "team/party" waiting around.
In the screenshot you can see the map pointing me to a nearby view and I did take a few minutes to sneak off to climb that little hill and when I got back there were even more people arriving and waiting. By the time I got booted there were floaty names everywhere.

Obviously they all knew something that I didn't.
I'll have to do more research to try and find the schedule for these events.

I've experienced them in both the human world and the "tree person" forest world (still can't remember what they're called. ) and when the event kicks in they seem to appear at various different places at the same time rather than in just one area. You can see them as big red icons (like crossed swords?) on the little map and it usually takes me ages to get there which is why I only catch the end.

In the final seconds before I got kicked out last night a load of those big icons did appear on the map, but they were yellow rather than red so maybe this was something different.
I think that something was escaping from the Underworld.

I also got one of those "message" type quests which mentioned something about the remnants so maybe I'll learn more from that if I can work out where I'm supposed to go.

I've found a list of Awakened events but the times/locations don't seem to match up to my last session so it must have been something else.

Edit: But seeing as that's an old page it may be out of date now.

Edit2: I now believe that we were all waiting for the Shadow Behemoth.

Well, exactly 24 hours later, here we all are again. Fancy meeting you lot here.



I timed my GFN session to not miss it this time. The eventual crowd wasn't as big as the previous night but a crowd is still a crowd, and there seemed to be a lot of Germans there from what was appearing in the chat window. A big Wie Geht's to all who understand such things.
So we just need the Shadow Behemoth to show his face....



Hmmm. Bigger than I expected.
And look at my character there running away in a cowardly panic.
But bring on the chaos and carnage....



And I must now confess again... I was absolutely useless... again.
Even though I do have a pistol, my character isn't that great in ranged fights. I got close to it and did nothing at all with my big bash sword so I then ran around like a maniac, firing off the odd shot here and there in whatever direction I happened to be facing. I think I managed four or five pitiful hits on it but thankfully everyone else was much, much better. And this time I was grateful that you couldn't tell what was going on because no-one there was able to see how utterly ineffectual I was.
But never mind. "We" killed it and there was a very big chest at the end.