Fresh on the heels of my frustration with Star Trek Online, i've decided to give Guild Wars another shot. I bought the game upon its release just over five years ago, and whilst it was okay it didnt grab my attention- at least not enough to break my then burgeoning WoW addiction. Since then it sat on my shelf gathering dust, until i moved house at which point the physical copy was given away to a charity shop - if anyone bought a copy from the Bebington branch of
Oxfam, my apologies that the CD-key was already used.
So finding myself colossally bored this weekend, largely due to the apparent closure of my local Games Workshop (yes i am a geek), i've been fumbling around trying to find a game to peak my interest. I tried 'Lords of Ultima', EA's answer to 'Evony' sans the boob ads, and whilst initially entertaining, i quickly grew bored watching endless timers counting down. It was at this point an ad for Guild Wars caught my eye and i figured what the heck, i'll give it another try.
Day one of my re-entry into the world of Guild Wars consisted of downloading the latest version of the client followed by several hours of brainmelting frustration. You see in a bid to counter a wave of account stealing, NCSoft have added additional security to the game. This consists of the usual username and password with the new addition of entering the name of a character on your account.
Now i have difficulty remembering what i've had for breakfast several hours later, so to say i was stumped is putting it mildly. I asked friends who i'd played with back when i first tried it to no avail, they couldn't remember either. I did internet searches, looking for old gamefaq posts i may have made. Finally just when i was about ready to smash my skull through my laptops screen i made a breakthrough. I remembered watching 'Crusade', the 'Babylon 5 spin-off, and liking the name of the captain, Gideon, so i was fairly sure that was part of it. A bit of trial and error and i was finally back in the game.
Day two was marginally more productive. Given i couldn't remember the names of my characters, let alone what quests i was doing and why, i decided to start again from scratch. I deleted all but one of my old characters, keeping all the fancy-pants birthday pets on that character, and ventured into the character creation screen. First choice was whether to go PvE or PvP. From what i could remember Guild Wars PvP is largely arena based.
Given my old school noobness i figured it would be best to avoid that side of the game for now, there is only so many insults my fragile ego can take before i give up and go and cry myself to sleep. So PvE it was.
Next was a screen to choose which part of the game i'd be playing, which raised the question - when the feth did the original Guild Wars storyline get named Prophecies? Anyway that confusion aside it was now time to choose my class, and customise my avatar.
Guild Wars' character creation is somewhere between WoW and Cryptics standard. You get a bit of choice, but not a lot really. The warrior, my chosen class, is a fairly standard meatheaded looking guy, the only real choice is how cross-eyed he is and what skin tone.I settled on the handsome devil below The rest of Day two consisted of me running around the start area, trying not to be distracted by the various jumping, spinning new characters surrounding me, and cracking on with the story. Guild Wars boasts a rather in-depth story, closer to a single player RPG rather than the standard WoW influenced MMO fare. The graphics are also less nauseatingly cartoony than WoW and i must stay have held up well considering the massive gulf in time since i last played.
Day Three, today's adventures, continued my efforts to evolve beyond being a noob and to advance my character a tad. I figured i'd best join a guild too, since the games name kinda gives away their importance.
Thankfully a nice fellow named Defasco took pity on my and invited me to [TUFF], a fairly large guild with an alliance with several others. Guild Wars seems to still boast a sizable, active population which is surprising really given the length of time it's been around. Perhaps i am just pessimistic after the dismal spattering of players that Star Trek Online boasted. Either way [TUFF] have made me quite welcome, which i rather appreciate. So thus ends my Guild Wars-ing so far, i'm endeavouring to battle my way through the original storyline before investing in one of the expansions.
If anyone feels like joining me, just look for a warrior named Absalom Stern running into mid-sized rock piles as i forget yet again that you can't jump in GW.
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