Guild Wars

Tipster, level 15 Asura thief I’ve been in my Guild Wars 2 guild a couple of days, and I’ve come to appreciate just how ironically named the game is. Sure, it’s just a spam invite guild – Ranger Rabble or something like that, even though I’m not a ranger – and (not for lack of trying) haven’t spoken to anyone else in the guild and am really just in it because otherwise, my game time isn’t contributing to any larger effort. Ironic because this is a game that really doesn’t need guilds (lampshaded perhaps by GW2 allowing you to be a member of multiple guilds, changing between them at will). ...

Yeah, I like TV. I can say that now; for years I refused to watch it. Rotting my mind and all. But having just come off a marathon 30 Rock Season 2 bender, I find I really want to get back to playing MMOs because they are LESS addictive than television. With MMOs, you chat with people, group with them, make friends. With TV, it’s just sitting with the cat and a bowl of popcorn on a lonely couch. So, you know, on the scale of pathetic leisure time activities, MMOs are way above television. ...

Guy just keeps popping up everywhere, don’t he? I am playing Runes of Magic now because, hey, WoW is coming out with a new expansion that I probably won’t play, so why not reminisce about good times in WoW by playing some other game? Runes of Magic only allowed me to pick from two races, Elf and Human. I thought they had some short folk in the character concept art, but I guess those were just meant to be children. It’d be kind of cool, by the way, to start of as a child in an MMO (optionally, anyway), and play children’s games of crafting, socialization, war and magic while slowly aging and learning more of the wider world and your place in it. ...

Hey, everyone ELSE returns to WoW…. And why not? Rumor has it that Blizzard is definitely going to introduce the Worgen and Goblin races as new playable races… something ever World of Warcraft player has been expecting since before Burning Crusade was announced. With news of the new expansion and the Starcraft II delays already making the rounds, Green Armadillo asks what else could Blizzard possibly have in waiting to surprise Blizzcon attendees? ...

I’ve renamed the Web Log to the Daily Blogroll, just because I like the name better. Also, in the Shameless Self Promotion dept, look for the last Adventures in Monopoly scheduled for later today. There’ll be more adventures with Dire Bear, Scottie and Car, when they have another story to tell. It’s server merge time in EQ2 again. This time, the US PvP servers Nagafen and Venekor (RP) will merge after Fan Faire in June. Most PvP players seem okay with it, but some are taking it really hard. ...

2008 has been an absolutely amazing year for MMOs, and my personal progress through them. Last year at this time, I’d just found the absolutely most perfect EQ2 guild – they were great raiders, loved grouping, and were fantastic people besides. With Clan of Shadows, I managed to do every flagging raid for Ruins of Kunark and was ready to step in and do my best to help the guild as they conquered Veeshan’s Peak. It wasn’t to be; I didn’t make the full membership vote. It wasn’t even close. That disappointment, along with other things to fill my evenings, eventually led to the end of raiding. Without raiding, though, I didn’t have much incentive to log in anymore. I tried to make things work with another guild, Delusions of Grandeur, but it just wasn’t CoS. I guess if I couldn’t make it in CoS, I didn’t want to settle for a lesser guild. ...

Well, first of all, I’m not playing WAR because I’m at work. But even when not working, I have a bunch of games I’m already playing. And its exciting stuff for all of them! EverQuest – Nostalgia FTW. You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had an official group xp night in the same zone twice. The only time we revisited a place was Sol B and Permafrost when we were farming the dragons. And we have still only seen a small fraction of the zones in the game. Friday, we grouped in Plane of Storms, Warslik Woods and Dagnor’s Cauldron for various things – all new zones for us on a group night. Small fraction of total zones. It’s wild how big EQ is. ...

Okay, this is skipping ahead a bit, but I’m so mad. I basically manage to single-handedly hold the Sunspears together after Spearmarshall Kosmir became demon-chow. Veshta totally killed us. We fled to some caves – caves filled with vermin! Huge bugs! Koss was kidnapped! So I pretty much had to do it all myself. Afterward, I was totally the hero. It was MY place. MINE. So WHERE THE HECK did all these OTHER players come from? I didn’t invite them! ...

So before Guild Wars kindly implored me to log off after a mere four hours playing (and how kind of it to be so concerned for my health!), I had cleared out every single quest, aside from the main storyline quest, in my quest journal. Monuments had been protected. Salads had been made. Sentient seeds had been traded. A guild invite had been rejected (after I did some research in how to reply to tells… was the first time I had ever spoken to someone in the game). Forlorn lovers, brought together. Wayward children, found and brought home. ...

In search of… Ancient Erudites… When a bunch of the most knowledgeable people in MMOs suggest to me that I should probably look into Guild Wars because it sounds like I need something different, well, I buy the game. And yeah, even though the game could be best compared to Dungeon Siege II with massively multiplayer cities, I do consider Guild Wars an MMO. Every city, town, hamlet, guard post and quest hub I came to were filled with people, selling stuff, looking for groups, looking for escorts to far away places, offering 100% no fail inscriptions – it was alive in a way that only MMOs manage. ...