Sometimes Games Do Evolve For The Better (Guild Wars 2)

Posted on 2015 May 13 by Ed Park — 37 Comments

In February, I was pretty burned out from World of Tanks (WoT) and decided to take a look at Guild Wars 2 (GW2), which I hadn’t meaningfully played since 2013. Most of my 2014 gaming time was spent on WildStar (WS) and WoT.

Why I stopped playing GW2 back in 2013

The following things collectively made GW2 unattractive to me:

I believed Ascended gear was not aligned with pre-launch expectations from ArenaNet (AN) regarding progression
To make matters worse, the acquisition of Ascended gear was extremely grindy. I despised the random daily quests – they were a tedious waste of 30 minutes of my valuable time – and each gear piece was for a particular stats mix for a particular character (soulbound). The Ascended gear system was a disincentive for me to commit time to alts, and alts are fun
There were aspects of the UI that I found irritating, e.g. how small the boon and buff icons are
The combat mechanics in WS looked much more attractive to me. I love aim-based action combat, because it’s engaging and requires skill

Upon picking up GW2 again in 2015, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the things I disliked had been meaningfully addressed, and that other quality-of-life improvements had been implemented. It’s worth mentioning the value of the GW2’s B2P monetization system – it cost me nothing aside from disk space to patch up to the current version of GW2 and play again.

Posted in Game Design, Guild Wars 2, PVE, PVP

“Road to Unicum” Tank Guides & Reviews for World of Tanks

Posted on 2015 February 19 by Ed Park — 44 Comments

Updated: 2025 December 6, Update 2.1

When I read the World of Tanks (WoT) official forums and sub-Reddit, one question comes up more than any other: how do I improve my gameplay?

This is particularly challenging for players who have hit a ceiling in terms of their measurable performance (e.g. win rate, WN8 rating, WNX rating, etc) and are not sure what to do. While players can download replays of highly-skilled players, those replays don’t capture the thinking process of the player behind the tank – you see their actions but don’t necessarily know the how’s or why’s behind them.

Therefore, in this video series I share what I learned as I progressed towards account Unicum rating (top 1%) with silver ammo only. I talk through how I’m reading the battle as it unfolds and discuss key decisions and mistakes. My hope is that these videos meaningfully help players improve their gameplay.

Posted in Guide, Heavy Tank, Light Tank, Medium Tank, PVP, Tank Destroyer, Video, World of Tanks

Guide to the ELC AMX in World of Tanks

Posted on 2015 February 8 by Ed Park — 25 Comments

This guide covers the wildly popular ELC AMX, the tier 5 French light tank in World of Tanks (WoT). In my opinion, the ELC AMX is the most consistently incorrectly played tank in all of WoT, because players fail to adjust to its unique characteristics.

I’ve had very good results playing the ELC AMX as described in this guide, and hopefully it will help you improve your gameplay.

My ELC AMX stats @ 465 battles: 61% WR, 818 dpg, 2.31 spg, 1.35 kpg, for a 3.6k WN8 (Super Unicum). Note I use silver ammo only.

Posted in Guide, Light Tank, PVP, Video, World of Tanks

Cherry MX Red vs Brown Switches, Red vs Blue O-Rings Review

Posted on 2015 January 3 by Ed Park — 14 Comments

About 6 months ago, I bought my first mechanical keyboard, the CM Storm QuickFire Rapid with Cherry MX Red switches. As I wrote in my review, the keyboard worked great for gaming.

A short while later, I read an article that strongly recommended Brown switches for gaming. I wondered whether I’d made the wrong decision in choosing Red over Brown, given that I hadn’t tried either prior to purchasing the keyboard.

Given that I care about my gaming performance, I decided to conduct hands-on testing of Red and Brown Cherry MX switches to better understand the experience of using them and determine which worked better for me. I also wanted to test the switches with and without Red and Blue O-rings.

Therefore, I tested the following products:

CM Storm QuickFire Rapid keyboard with Red switches
CM Storm QuickFire Stealth keyboard with Brown switches
Red O-rings by WASD Keyboards
Blue O-rings by WASD Keyboards

Posted in Product Review

Two-Thirds of the Top-Rated Players in WildStar 2v2 Arena are Inactive

Posted on 2014 October 12 by Ed Park — 40 Comments

I’ve been wondering how accurately the WildStar PVP Leaderboards reflect the current meta and player activity, so I compared the 2v2 Arena Leaderboards from September 25th and October 10th.

You can find my analysis in the following spreadsheet document:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EwC3bmWEUWjK78hBZET5svynTnNrpGwkPDY9SIWgVIw/edit?usp=sharing

There is a summary tab with calculations and two tabs for the Leaderboards. I sorted the Leaderboards by name – you can easily move between the tabs to see the changes for each player.

Here are my conclusions:

The highest number of active classes who gained rating or joined the top 250 on October 10th were Warriors (16) and Medics (13), followed by Espers (9), Spellslingers (8), Stalkers (5), and Engineers (3)
A whopping 65% of the 250 top-rated players in 2v2 are inactive. Meaning they have either stopped playing WildStar or they are still playing but not participating in 2v2 anymore