Muhahahaha….. Happy Halloween. And this is actually pretty scary. I don’t know if this is a recent change or if this has been there for some time. In the past when I’ve been doing a story quest, which is an instance, and it fails, then I get a message “Do you want to leave the instance or retry from a checkpoint.” I usually pick check point, and in some of the Heart of Thorns [HoT] story quests, it actually doesn’t take you back, it just rezzes you out of the way and you get back in the fight without losing any ground on the story. For example, all the mobs that have been killed are still dead. But tonight, I was taking a new toon into the HoT story and I saw something new and got some pictures of it. This is Spooky, so in honor of Halloween, here’s the story.
The Story So Far
The opening instance of HoT is an instance, where you may find other folks oddly enough, and where there seem to be several things going on at once. It’s an escort where you need to meet up with your party members [NPCs in the story] and then continue on to join the main group after the failed assault. But here’s the thing. The other things that may, or may not be going on, can be really fatal. And there is no one else, or may be no one else to help you out. And there are no way points to revive. So, the NPCs apparently are smart.
After a few checkpoints where you meet up with the NPCs that are with you in the story, you come to a fort that may, or may not, be under attack my Mordrem forces. In some of the cases when I’ve done this, it was or wasn’t under attack, but I ran past it and left the instance in the normal way after meeting up with the NPCs the last time past the fort.
But this time, I died in the battle, and just laid there to see if someone might come by.
Here’s one of the NPCs in the battle. The odd thing is that it has no health. ZERO. See the top of the screen. I selected the NPC and it shows no health. But it’s not dead. Now watch the next frame.
It healed itself to full health. See the top of the screen. That’s it’s health bar and it’s full again. Now watch what happens.
The NPC, Priory Explorer, is healing me. But it gets interrupted by the attack, and doesn’t finish.
So it goes back to fighting. And then more Mordrem forces attack and
Another of the NPCs shows zero health. But finally, the battle ends, a real player shows up and finishes healing me and I finish the story by meeting up with the NPCs in the cave beyond the fort.
We’ve seen lots of news lately about AI and how it’s going to hear us and play us music. But these things are getting spooky smart. Maybe this is where the singularity is going to break out. From NPCs in video games.
Trick or Treat
:ww
Windy Weather 