On Guild Wars 2 and Tanks

If I’m playing a game, and there’s a tank option, I go straight for the tanks every time. To those of you that know me, this comes as no surprise. I also have a tendency to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the damned things. Whether it’s perching a Scorpion in your sniper position in Halo or shooting around corners in Combat!, I’ve been annoying the Hell out of people with the things for two and a half decades now. So when I was given a chance in my Guild Wars 2 personal story to lead a tank company charge against a dragon, I pounced on it. (Literally, I play a Charr.)

If you’ve been paying attention to the game, you may have seen one of these bad boys floating around the world of Tyria:

Imagine my disappointment when I was assigned these things:

That is no tank. That is a smallish canon mounted on back of an armored dune buggy. By the way, no, you don’t get to control one of them on the quest, either. The closest you get is standing around outside shouting firing instructions at the crew while it parks far too close to the battle and refuses to move come Hell or high water or fifty-foot tall zombies hurling rocks the size of Volkswagons.

The quest in question is buggy as fuck, too.

Remember when they told us that the personal story would be a top-notch single-player RPG? It ain’t. There’s exactly one NPC you will give half a damn about, most of the ones you’re supposed to like, you will hate instead, and while your choices have tactical impact and put you on different story branches, you have zero control over your character’s personality. It’s basically a slightly less compelling version of Age of Conan’s main quest.

Luckily, it’s stuck to a damned fine MMO.

Authority and Responsibility

I was having a conversation a couple of days ago and a subject came up that seems to be a bit of a recurring issue with our culture. A person of my acquaintance has caught a bit of shit at work because, when her boss was gone, things didn’t get done. Not things this person was supposed to do, mind, things other were people supposed to do. See, she didn’t make them do their jobs, so she’s getting more crap than the people who weren’t working. Somehow, it was her responsibility to make those people work. How was she supposed to do this? Fuck, I don’t know. She doesn’t know. Her boss doesn’t know. It’s not like she can do any sort of reprimand. Hell, the most she can do is report them up the chain, which is exactly what she did, which is exactly why her boss even knows.

She was given responsibility without the attendant authority. This is, in a word, bullshit.