Guild Wars Anniversary - Hekla

Last but not least...

Hekla is tall even by Norn standards and is a fierce warrior who has been busy forging her own legend. Her spirit animal is the wolf. When she is not chasing after the next big kill (armed with her trusty axe) she enjoys recanting the myriad sagas written about Jora; another famous warrior who just so happened happened to fight alongside Maribella back when they fought the Great Destroyer together 250 years ago.

Up until now she has spent her time hunting down prey in the mists but, with the waking of Jormag the ice dragon, she is heading far north in to the Shiverpeak Mountains to stop the spread of its corruption. This journey has taken her in to areas that Jora herself once called home and she has enjoyed following in her footsteps, getting to see the real landscape described in the tales of old.

If she manages to put an end to Jormag and reclaim the land for the Norn, it will be her biggest achievement to date - a feat worthy of many songs and stories to recall at the alehouses back home over a good keg or three of ale. Hekla is no stranger to a good beer (after all, she has been known to hold an audience all night whilst simultaneously drinking the place dry) so there are probably some very nervous bartenders out there!

Hekla was the third character I created, again primarily to play through the Norn storyline. Until recently, most of the playtime with Hekla was doing daily achievements, participating in the festivals and playing in the competitive World v World. However, the the new Icebrood Saga (a story that promises to have some significant Norn lore exposition) has seen her gain more playtime. 

The Norn have a very Norse/Viking feel to them. As it happens, that's one of my favourite periods and places in history that I like to study. As such I enjoy role-playing as a Norn probably a little too much!

Guild Wars Anniversary - Anton

The Sunspears Return

Not many people know this but Anton is actually a descendant of Elliana. Nobody quite knows why she upped and left so suddenly but she left her child with a good family of traders. These traders trod a vital supply line from Ebonhawke to the Crystal Desert until the passage was blocked by the increasingly influential tyrant Palawa Joko. The family were stranded in Ebonhawke where they waited for the gates to reopen so that they could go home.

It was well over 250 years later that the opportunity finally arose and Anton was ready. He had been a member of the Ebon Vanguard - he sympathised with their cause - but the yearning for his former homeland was much stronger (the tales of which were a staple of his childhood and had almost become legends in themselves).


When he boarded that airship he had no idea what to expect. When he saw Amnoon Oasis he was awestruck at the size of the place but he soon found out what darkness Palawa Joko had wrought and it broke his heart. How could the nation be so different to all of the stories he had heard as a child? Where was the nation that his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother fought so hard to protect?

By the time he found some surviving Sunspears his mind was already set on using his experience in the Ebon Vanguard to help rebuild the Order of the Sunspears; and that is exactly what he is doing to this day.

Anton was my second character in GW2 and was created primarily to go through the human starting story. However, his story kept growing and the Path of Fire expansion (and subsequent living story) provided the perfect opportunity to flesh out his backstory some more and the new staff-wielding Daredevil specialisation turned him in to some sort of acrobatic ninja which is a lot of fun to play!

Guild Wars Anniversary - Leofdaeg

250 years later...

A new species emerges, plant-based lifeforms known as the Sylvari. Leofdaeg is "born" in to a world that is dominated by the waking of the Elder Dragons. He is curious about the world and whilst exploring ends up getting sucked in to the battle against the Elder Dragons.

Throughout all of Leofdaeg's adventures he has used his engineering prowess to invent new things, saved the day with his trusty flame-thrower and explored every nook and cranny of the world in a bid to see everything that there is to see. The saving the world stuff is just a distraction and, besides, he really doesn't like having to kill people.

He is currently in the far Shiverpeak Mountains trying to find a way to neutralise the threat posed by the elder dragon Jormag. He is not enjoying living in the cold nor having yet another dragon invading his mind but he can't stop now, the world is depending on him.

When I finally gave in to peer pressure and bought Guild Wars 2 I wasn't sure what I was getting in to. So I started a new character who was a different species with an unfamiliar profession. I had a lot of fun with this character and even had some limited success in the competitive modes of the game. 

He has been my main character for the last 7 years and there's no sign of that changing any time soon, especially since that flame-thrower is so damn fun! As such, his story is predominantly that of Guild Wars 2 itself which is far too detailed to recap here but he has been there every step of the way.

Guild Wars Anniversary - Maribella

The Fallen Kingdom of Ascalon

Maribella's journey started in the beautifully lush and green kingdom of Ascalon. She had no desire to be involved in anything other than her parent's farm. She loved looking after the chickens and could sit for hours watching the sun set over the rolling green hills.

Then came The Searing. Almost the entire kingdom was obliterated by the species called the Charr. The ground was scorched and lifeless. Her family had been wiped out. There was dust where her farm once was.

The battle was lost before it could even begin. The few survivors were rallying.  Those who could, stood firm against the Charr who were now invading. They managed to buy some time to evacuate everyone else through the mountains and to the neighbouring human kingdom of Tyria. Maribella picked up the nearest sharp pointy thing and joined in without a moment of hesitation.

Her greatest accomplishment was helping in that evacuation and getting her people settled into their new homes.

Soon though, she received word that a group of humans were heading north to take on the Charr in their homelands. Again, Maribella didn't hesitate. By now she had upgraded her sharp pointy thing to a proper sword and had got quite adept at its use. She used those skills to butcher as many Charr as she could get her hands on but no matter how many she slaughtered, it never took the pain away.

The third campaign I purchased was actually the first that was released, Guild Wars: Prophecies. Again, I created a new character for this campaign; this time a Warrior which was my first experience of a melee type character and my goodness did I suddenly feel powerful! As I finished Prophecies, Guild Wars: Eye of the North released and Maribella was the character I played it with. As it happened, this perfectly fed in to the existing backstory of the character!

Guild Wars Anniversary - Elliana

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elona - Land of the Golden Sun

Sunspears were revered on the island of Istan and, indeed, across Elona. From that small island they protected peace and order throughout the three kingdoms of Elona. As someone born and raised there, she was not unusual in wanting to play her part and join the Order of the Sunspears.

Elliana quickly rose through the ranks as a skilled archer. When the prophecy of Nightfall came to pass, the Sunspears were called upon to defend the world and undo the damage that had been caused. Elliana was at the forefront of those efforts and was valued as a skilled negotiator.

After Nightfall and after normality had returned, Elliana travelled the world to tell people about the events that had transpired back home. She felt that there were important lessons to be learned but, alas, nobody was interested and nothing changed.

She was last seen exploring the Maguuma Jungle with her pet lion, Polynesia.

After Guild Wars: Factions, the next campaign I bought was Guild Wars: Nightfall which is where most of Elliana's story takes place. I had created a new character to try out a new profession and loved the Ranger I had created. It was more ranged combat but was more reliable for those situations when the bad guys didn't have physical bodies to exploit! I spent a lot of time playing Elliana and she even played through some of the other campaigns.

Guild Wars Anniversary - Jaime

This is where it all began...

A short-arse called Jaime who was studying necromancy under the renowned masters at the Shing Jea Monastery.

She had travelled many miles from the petrified forests of the Kurzik territories to study at the monastery to hone her skills. It was a discipline that she had been drawn to for many years. Some people found that quite alarming but she didn't see it that way. She saw it all as part of the natural cycle of energy - recycling the deceased into something to help the living.

However, a plague had broken out and was only getting worse so she was forced to leave the monastery and embark upon the long and perilous journey to put an end to Shiro Tagachi, who was causing this plague.

During this quest she taught herself to be a master of undead minions and gained a reputation as a formidable foe, one who only got stronger as her enemies died.

After successfully tracking down and killing Tagachi, she travelled to the other human kingdoms. Jaime often found herself defending the weak and defenceless despite wanting to stay off the radar.

While she was away, her homeland had grown increasingly isolationist. A new ministry, the Ministry of Purity was hell-bent on expelling all who did not meet their expectations. Jaime heard about this, by chance, from a passing traveller who had family over there. She felt like she had no choice but to leave the shadows and take a stand on behalf of those who disagreed with the Ministry of Purity and the last we heard of Jaime she was helping refugees flee Cantha to the other human kingdoms.

Jaime was my first character and remained my main character for Guild Wars: Factions. While I didn't actually play Guild Wars: Beyond with her, she still participated!

Guild Wars 15th Anniversary Special

15th Anniversary of Guild Wars

Yes, it has been 15 years since Guild Wars first started! I didn't start playing straight away though, my journey started 13 and a half years ago when some friends from work (at the time) invited me to join their in-game guild.

It was my first MMORPG and I had so much fun! I loved being part of a team and working together to solve problems. I spent hours and hours exploring the rich environment and delving in to the story.

Then Guild Wars 2 released. For a while I continued in GW1 but I eventually switched to GW2 7 years ago. The sequel was a very different beast to the original. Set in the same world but 250 years later, we are continuing to revisit the sites of GW1 and it's always so interesting to see how things have changed; some areas more drastically than others!

I remember a couple of moments, during the Path of Fire story, where I knew exactly where I needed to go just because I remembered those areas from GW1!

So much has changed in that time (new jobs, buying a house, reproducing) but Guild Wars has been a constant for me and a great place to escape to that is so rich in different things to do (it's not all fighting!).

Anyway, while I could go on for some time about what I like / dislike or what the differences between the two games are that has been done to death by a plethora of other content creators. I'd like to share some of the amazing experiences I've had over the years but so much of it falls in to the category of "you had to be there" that I fear it wouldn't make sense to anyone.

So what I'm going to do instead is release a series of fairly short posts about my six primary player-characters and their stories. Hopefully you'll enjoy learning about them and their adventures - they've all led interesting and sometimes intertwined lives!

I'll release a post each day this week. Hope you enjoy!

This series will contain some spoilers for the various Guild Wars stories and by definition leans on the lore set down by them, to which ArenaNet clearly own the copyright. Both games are still very playable and purely as a fan I'd encourage you to play them too and experience all this for yourself. The official sites are here: Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2

What happened to the new content?

"I was promised new content, Lee - where has it got to?"

 That, my friend, is a very fair question.

I made a lot of progress in planning out videos. I had 3 documentaries roughed out in a sort of storyboard of what I wanted to show and highlighting what location filming would be needed.

I then started testing the videoing process. I bought a tripod and did some test recordings but the video quality just wasn't up to modern YouTube standards.

The on-screen graphics were going to look better than I feared but were still incredibly amateurish.

Then there was the matter of safety while filming - the three hidden bits of history I'd identified were all in fairly rough areas; did I really want to take my equipment and stand in the middle of these rough areas early in the morning with nobody around and no one to help me?

So that's where it got left. I still believe in the concept, I think it's an interesting idea. I'm just not sure of the format or my equipment / skill level - is a documentary at the quality level I envisage even achievable?

It's probably not worth doing but that's not a problem for me - I'd have fun doing it. So if anyone with a fancy camera wants to join me and guard my body as I film, then I'm open to offers!

New Content

So this post has 2 purposes...

1. I'm fed up of seeing the previous post after 6 years of no updates
   
    
2. I've been feeling increasingly inspired to do a few YouTube videos related to local history.
   
   Had a go at using YouTube after *cough* 7ish years and while I don't have much in the way of resources, all of the "new" features look useful. So it shouldn't look too amateur! 

Anyway, that's it for now.

Teachers' Pensions

Even after hearing a lot of the debate about teachers' pensions (and more generally about their pay and conditions) I still found myself feeling like I didn't have enough information to reach an informed decision. My general point of view was that if public sector pensions are being brought into line with private sector pensions then, in principal, I am not opposed to this. If however the public sector workers are getting a raw deal then I would be opposed.

It was for this reason that I spent this morning with a paper and pen going through the figures myself to try and quantify what was being proposed. The results are presented below.

Pension Benefits
Under the present arrangements for a teacher in the TPS (Teachers' Pension Scheme) who has 38 years until they retire and who earns the top rate of pay at retirement (U3 on the scale which is equivalent to £36,756) will receive £23,279 per year in retirement.

In documentation for the proposed scheme (since 2nd November 2011), the pension received per year for the same circumstances is given as £23,000 per year.

I am happy to believe that these two figures are the same (just with the latter rounded to the nearest thousand). My basis for this is that the unions appear to have negotiated an accrual rate of 1/60th rather than 1/65th as originally proposed. The accrual rate is 1/60th in the current TPS calculation. The original proposal would therefore have seen pension per year drop to approx. £21,500.

Pension Contributions by the Employer
These contributions remain at a rate of 14.1%.

Pension Contributions by the Employee
The tax-break on pension contributions remains but instead of a flat rate of employee contributions (set at 6.4%), the contributions will now be tiered with high earners contributing more whilst lowest earners see no change. I'll reproduce the table provided by the government's consultation document to demonstrate:

Lower Salary	Higher Salary	Contribution Rate in 2012-13	Increase (against 6.4%)	Membership	% of member-ship
	14,999	6.4%	0%	1,400	0.2%
15,000	25,999	7.0%	0.6%	116,000	17.1%
26,000	31,999	7.3%	0.9%	117,000	17.2%
32,000	39,999	7.6%	1.2%	271,000	39.6%
40,000	74,999	8.0%	1.6%	172,000	25.2%
75,000	111,999	8.4%	2.0%	4,000	0.6%
112,000		8.8%	2.4%	600	0.1%

So a teacher earning less than £15,000 will be asked to pay nothing more but once they hit that threshold they will be asked to pay £90 more per year.
From the above table I would say that the average teacher salary is about £35,000. In this case, they would be asked to pay £420 more per year.
At the top end of the scale teachers earning £112,000 would be asked to pay £2,688 more per year toward their pension.

Putting it into Perspective - the Private Sector Situation
We have already seen that teachers are being asked to contribute 6.4% to 8.8% toward their pension. The employer (i.e. The State) pays 14.1% toward their pension.

In my private sector job, I contribute 2.5% toward my pension whilst my employer contributes a further 2.5%. I consider this pension arrangement fairly typical.

I did some calculations but since I don't want to reveal my earnings and pension value you're going to have to trust me on this (or try it for yourself)...
If I put my current salary into the pension calculator on the TPS website I would get back about 3 times more pension than the forecast from my private sector pension scheme. Since I'd be contributing about 3 times more in the TPS, I think that this is about right.

In Summary
Employee contributions for teachers does seem high when compared to the private sector however the resulting pension is proportionately better. So you're getting what you pay for as I see it. The changes, in my opinion, do not greatly decrease the value for money being received.

Employer contributions for teachers are very generous when compared to the private sector. Whether this is appropriate and since it is not proposed to be changed, I will leave this open for debate - for instance, it could be considered that since we ask so much of teachers then the state should say 'thank you' in some way. I'm undecided.

Had the value of the pension reduced while contributions increased then I would have definitely opposed the proposals. Now, I'm not so sure. Some more perspectives would be useful...