Well, as I said earlier, I was done with MMOGs for a while. I enjoy them but I just can’t justify the time I would want to put into them. But I saw a post on Tales of a Scorched Earth (great name for a gaming site, by the way) about Guild Wars, another fantasy entry into the MMORPG world. I had heard mention of GW among the EQ2 and WoW chatter but never paid much attention to it. But, since they are talking about zero subscription fees, I was interested. I downloaded the free client last night and gave it a test drive.
I took on the role of a ranger (character generation wasn’t very customizable, hopefully they’ll add more content there with the full game) and gave the game a go. I will say right off the graphics look fabuolous, run smoothly on my PC and everything looks great. It’s been compared to a Diablo 2 MMORPG. That’s a fair comparison, but a D2 MMORPG would have been a killer app. We played too much D2. I made money selling D2 items. We were D2 addicts. I would have paid for an MMORPG version, no questions asked. Building a house on the Outer Steppes for my Necromancer would have been sweet. Anyway, back to Guild Wars. It played okay, your basic point and click, but it wasn’t doing it for me. I was having conflicting responses. Part of me felt like it was a chore to click on yet another monster. The other part of me couldn’t stop thinking about the lure and curse of MMOGs – just one more level and I can do/use/be X. It’s video game smack. You think you can stop cold turkey, but you’re just deluding yourself. You’ll be back. So I decided to stop after an hour or so, preventing the needle from getting too close to the vein.
So I may not be the most reliable source for impressions of the game, but I’m not going back to have a second look. I’ll be content knowing I may be missing gaming excellence but I’ve staved off addiction for the time being.
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