RPS Community Update: What You Did in Blood Bowl, Cities: Skylines, Dirt Rally, Guild Wars 2 and PlanetSide 2
How To Get Involved
Hi folks!
Here's what happened in May in the RPS community.
In this alliterative edition: Blood Bowl [official site] brethren batter and bludgeon in preparation for the new game; Cities: Skylines [official site] succession games subsequently succeed; Dirt Rally [official site] roadsters rack-up a riveting league; Guild Wars 2 [official site] troopers take to hammering out their differences; and PlanetSide 2 [official site] players participate profoundly in another smashing of servers.
Blood Bowl
One of RPS' oldest gaming communities belong to this extremely violent, turn-based fantasy take on American football. Going strong since at least 2011, brazen Bowlers have seen many leagues during their time together and are currently preparing for the game's sequel. While the older leagues are still active, prospective players who don't yet own the game may be best waiting until the second title comes out, as many current participants will be making the switch.
That said, there's still plenty of room for existing Blood Bowl players to join in the current leagues just by having a look through the threads. Even if you're not an owner of the original, you can still help decide the rules and format the leagues of Blood Bowl 2.
If you're still torn on whether Blood Bowl or its sequel is right for you, have a look through Kieron's Campaign Diary from 2009. Not only is it where I nicked all of these glorious screenshots from, but it's also a really good read.
How to join: Check out this subforum to see the active threads. The RPS ReOpen is a safe bet for players of the original Blood Bowl, and the Crest of the Earl is the primordial soup from which the leagues of the sequel will be born.
Serial Cities: Skylines
Adventures continue in Cities: Skylines with the twin cities of Westvalley and Endless Springs. Over the last month, the two maps have been passed around and grown from 50,000 cims each to almost 100,000. This expansion has resulted in some impressive unlocks (like monuments) and intriguing infrastructure decisions...
If you thought the cities had progressed too far to participate last month, then you'd be glad to know there's a third that was started just last week. Tralalee is based on the coast and is positioned to use the European buildings that were brought in the newest patch.
How to join: All activities are being organised in the Skylines thread, so post to say you're interested and you'll be slot in the playing order of whichever city you've picked.
Dirt Rally
Do you like driving cars? Do you like driving dirty cars fast? Do you want to participate in a Dirt Rally league that has a cool wordplay on 'Rock Paper Shotgun'!?
Well join RallyPowerSlide, a gathering of drivers that's just hit off their first set of events. Monaco was the starting track, with a bonus based in Monte Carlo. There's going to be other events coming up over the next four weeks and you can help decide which will be used. The game's going to be in Early Access for a while, but while interest remains high then RallyPowerSlide will continue to kick up dust for a long time to come.
How to join: The league is located here, so you can click the relevant button and be involved pretty sharpish. There's instructions on how to send event suggestions to Grizzly, the league's owner, here.
Guild Wars 2
PvP antics continued this month with RPSers piling into their own arena to clobber each other on Skyhammer, a map notorious for players being able to punt each other off the edge. 9th of May's 'Hammer Time' was a unique event based on this very mechanic, a way for us to revel in the map's peculiar design. Instead of the control point-capping madness that PvP generally descends into, we focused fighting on the elevated platform overlooking the battleground. Matches were decided through the amount of kills each side held by the round's finish, rather than territory control.
I brought a warrior with a hammer and a rifle, and for those of you who don't play Guild Wars 2, this combination makes you a specialist in knocking enemies back. The loadout is particularly good for these situations, making you a formidable contestant and rightly feared by the other team. Well, that and the fear ability.
Hammer Time was lots of fun and if you missed it, there's still a weekly PvP meeting every Tuesday that anyone's free to join. There's also a big, open PvE night at the start of June. See the details at the end of this post.
How to join: The guild's still open to anyone so follow the instructions in this thread to be enlisted. Tuesday's PvP is organised in this thread.
PlanetSide 2
This month, the 'siders slid into action again in a ServerSmash on behalf of their home Miller (EU). The three RPS PlanetSide factions fielded a small force between them to represent the community and fight the hoards from Emerald.
Unfortunately, the day did not go in favour of Miller, with numbers lost to Eurovision and the Emerald air force showing some real dominance. That's the last ServerSmash of the season, but there's talk of training sessions over summer, alongside the regular nights held by each of the outfits RPS field across all factions. This means there's openings for any keen player who wants to help carry Miller to victory.
How to join: The PlanetSide 2 subforum is always active with people wanting to play. If you're after a specific outfit, then pick from the Vanu, Conglomerate and the Terrans. All choose all three!
Coming Attractions
Not only did Challenger2uk create this nice thread with all of the active RPS communities included, but he has also created a calendar detailing all of the existing, planned events put on by each of the games. This also includes cool one-offs that may (or may not) have crossed over with this post, like the competition in RPS' PlanetSide Terran Republic outfit on the 26th or a night with Guns of Icarus on the 30th.
There's also a Guild Wars 2 event coming up on Saturday the 6th of June. All of the details are available here, but if you've never attended a PvE gathering ran by the RPS guild before, I'd highly recommend it; they're pretty huge.
Any Questions?
A lot of information about how to get involved in the community can be found here. For denizens of our clubs who haven't had their games featured yet - don't worry; there's still time in future instalments! Anyone is free to ask questions (or plug other games) in the comments below.