Guild Wars 2 Initial Thoughts

So I am not just a table top gamer. Like many other table top gamer's out there I also love video games. I am a bit of a collector,been playing since I could hold a controller. I am also one of the luck gamer's that have grown up with video games as part of our lives from day one I am talking Atari 2600 on up through modern computing. I enjoy a wide variety of games but over the last few years I have been increasing drawn to Massive Multi-player Online games. It started with Ultima Online and I have played just about every game since including all the major players. Recently  I have been playing Guild Wars 2 and I have to say I am impressed.

Now let me qualify that I loved the original Guild Wars but it was always a secondary game partly due to to its subscription model and partly due to the fact that it wasn't your typical MMO with a persistent world. Basically every time you left the city you got your own private version of the world which was great but didn't offer much in multi-player aspect. Guild Wars 2 changes this up, it still has the buy the box player for ever for free business model which is excellent but it also adds a persistent world making it like every other major MMO out there but that is just the tip of the iceberg. 

For the outside Guild Wars 2 looks like any other MMO out there but its the subtle details that make the game great and dare I say a WoW killer(lets be frank here WoW is on its way out anyway).  I can't go into every single detail but I can get into a few that jump out at me. First the game has a lot of polish from the interface to the combat everything works well and looks good. Secondly PvP is a level playing field. Instead of relying on a bolster mechanic where everything gets buffed up to max level like in Star Wars the Old Republic, Guild Wars 2 just make everyone level 80 and give you access to everything you need. PvP is now about how your play and setup your character instead of what your gear is. The game also does a way with the "fiddly bits" that can make and MMO a pain to play, have a bunch of crafting items filling up your bags no problem one click send them to your bank, need to use the auction house, you can access it from any ware buying and selling. Speaking of crafting when you are ready to craft you don't have to make a trip to the bank to pick up your stuff when you go to a workbench it already knows what you have in your bank and uses it like you had it on you.Now this may break the "Role-Playing" experience for some people but the game strives to streamline the tedious stuff so you can actually play the game more. The other major change that I have seen in Guild Wars 2 is the fact that your are not locked into a server like in other games. Yes, you do choose a home server which is used the the World Vs World PvP(Which I have yet to try looks awesome) but you can "Guest" on any server you want so you can play with whoever. They have also put the Structured PvP into its own instance so there are always matches to be played with little to no waiting. Lastly probably the greatest thing about Guild Wars 2 is that I don't feel rushed to play the game. Since there is no gear grind there is time to explore and simply take my time.

Overall I believe that Guild Wars 2 is a step in the right direction that removes a lot of the barriers that people have with other games. Much like Everquest was an improvement over Ultima Online and WoW was an improvement over Everquest I believe that Guild Wars 2 is the next step in MMOs. I also believe that Guild Wars 2 marks the change from a subscription based model to a buy the box play the game model that has already been around for a while with other Free to Play games. This is especially the cane with Star Wars the Old Republic switching to a free to play model in the near future I can also see the Secret World switching as the subscriptions numbers drop because the options for free games are amazing.

I hope to post some more info on my progress through Guild Wars 2 as I can.

Return to Warcraft: or how I learned to Stop Complaining and Love World of Warcraft

Thats a big title but its true. Within the last few weeks I have put all the issues I had in the past with World of Warcraft(WoW) and got back to playing and I can't believe just how wrong I was, and how bad it is out there in the world of MMORPGS.

Now let me give a little context here, I played WoW back in the early days of what is now know as "Vanilla WoW" back them the game was pretty brutal the level grind was slow but if you could make it to 40 and beyond there was a lot of cool stuff to be had. I will admit back then I didn't make it to 40 I don't even think I made it to 30 and that was primarily due to the grind that was leveling. I quickly lost interest and started new characters. This pretty much continued into the next expansion and even up to the Lich King expansion. I will say things got better during the last couple expansions but the grind was still there and the game became more and more like a job that I was paying to do. So I took some time off. I tried out other games both free and play and not and I can't honestly say nothing holds a candle to WoW, the other games just are not polished enough and and just not designed well enough. So when the latest expansion for WoW was announced Cataclysm my interest was peaked it seemed like a good time to get back into WoW.

So now I am back into WoW and loving it. Cataclysm content is dropping and the game is even better than it was before. They have also done a lot to make easier to level a character so that is fun and not a mind numbing grind like the old days. The future looks good and I am really enjoying my time in the game so much that I am going to be starting a new feature on the blog where I can post some of my screenshots that I have taken while exploring the world of Azeroth. The new feature is going to be Postcards from Azeroth and the plan is to run it once a week or more if I have good screenshots to show. The first Postcards from Azeroth is planned for next Monday.

"What do you mean there is an Octopus on my face?"

Dark Age of Camelot Trial: Day 3

Well when it over is over. After playing for a couple hours this morning something began to dawn on me. DAOC is to similar to WoW for me to truly enjoy. Yes, DAOC has is differences but over all it more of the same. Bottom line the benefits of playing an older game with a more dedicated community do not out weigh the benefits of playing WoW in the case of DAOC. Since the objective of this search is to find a better alternative then DAOC is not going to work.

So where to now, well with my new gaming machine coming in a few weeks I am going to hold off on playing DDO and EQ2 because of their righter graphic requirements. So with that said I am going to load up EVE and get my space ship fix on.

The Great MMO Search of 2008, looking for an alternative to the WoW Career

As you may have guessed from the title I am going on a little quest of sorts. A quest to find a better fantasy game than World of Warcraft. So may say it can't be done I personally beg to differ WoW has become more of a career than a game with players having to spend countless hours grinding away for little return.

With that said I have already found my Sci-Fi refuge in Tabula Rasa which is by far the most fun I have ever had in an MMO, but sometime you need an alternative, a side track to prevent burn out. For me normally I have a main MMO and a secondary which I may or may not keep a subscription to or just enough to prevent character deletion. Usually my second game fills some gaps that the 1st has or it just something completely different. In the case of my new quest I am looking for a good Fantasy game that I can alternate with the Sci-Fi game I love.

So Here is the quest, I am going to do as many trials or fantasy based MMOs. I am talking game that are in full release with an established community. I will give each game a full try for the length of the trail post my feelings here and then move on to the next. After a few months I should have a fair grasp on each game and can make a educated decision. For the readers out there I hope to offer and incite into some games that may have been forgotten and new games that people may have written off.

The Great Quest of WoW alternative Finding
Current Candidates and the order in which they will be played

• Dark Age of Camelot--Where WoW got a lot of there ideas on how they do things. To much like WoW to be worth playing for to long
  
• Dungeons and Dragons Online
• Everquest
• Asheron's Call
• Lineage 2
• Everquest 2
• Lord of the Rings Online

EVE Online...Yea I know its not a fantasy game but I have to give this game a full try.

More will be added as they are discovered.