My ISP, TM Net, apparently deeply concerned that its customers might find its service satisfactory, has decided to screw things up again.

At its best, my connection has a 400ms ping rate to Guild Wars servers. The ping has now gone to hell in a handbasket. A very laggy handbasket.

(By the way, I’m really glad ArenaNet decided to add that performance statistics icon; it makes troubleshooting so much easier.)

Despite the awful ping rate, I’m still playing Guild Wars in brief sessions. It’s nerve-wracking, though. Nothing like a three-second lag spike during battle to make the ol’ ticker BOOMBOOMBOOM away in the chest cavity.

The good news is I finally earned the Survivor title. I had accumulated 130,000XP through missions and quests but feeling impatient, I decided to get the final amount through elite skill captures. (Each successful capture confers a whopping 5,000 or so XP.)

I bought two Signets of Capture at Yohlon Haven, hunted down the elementalist bosses Lonolun Waterwalker and Bosun Mohrti and hit level 20 along the shores of the Marga Coast. After almost 23 hours of play over the past two months, my Elementalist had his sparkly new Survivor title.

Achieving the title was simpler than I thought it would be but that’s because I had several advantages. Having unlocked a huge amount of skills (including elite skills) with my other characters, I could provide my Heroes with effective skillbars. I had enough gold saved so I could upgrade my armour immediately and had scrolls which sped up the levelling process. All that meant my Heroes and I were rarely at a serious disadvantage. Finally, I had played through the game with my Mesmer and my Paragon so I knew what to expect.

Still, no deaths after 23 hours of play. Not too shabby.