Followup: MMORPG

I honestly never expected anyone who played ESaga to reply to my post about it. It was really nice of you! I guess it’s with your first MMORPG as with your first girlfriend: Even though it’s over a long time ago, you never really forget, do you? Or it might just be me who need to get myself a life… Anyway, since that post I’ve started to play a lot of guildwars again. I have been playing guildwars before, actually, almost since the beginning, but I had a long break when everything tied up at the university. I’ve tried a few times to start up, but failed for some reason. Might have been because it didn’t run properly in Linux or because I simply didn’t value my spare time as much back then. I certainly do now. I have realized that when I am at home, I should not think about work. I should relax and have fun. And Guildwars helps me do just that.

Guildwars is no real MMORPG though, but I am happy for that. I don’t miss the tedious grinding to get to level 80 or 60 or what it was. It has 20 levels and you can do that in a day or two – no problems.

It has some limitations to the community though, and I’m not sure I like them compared to traditional MMORPGs.

Two issues that really annoy me are:

– Guilds are limited in size (this has been partially helped with the introduction of alliances)

–  The game discourages role playing by making every toon the same in appearance (not completely true, but your ability to customize your character is VERY limited)

I hope they change this in Guildwars 2, but as of now, you play yourself, not your character, which is a problem because this makes it harder for you to disregard the person behind the character. It is important to be able to do this, in order to let the game be a game, and not be constantly reminded of the immaturity of certain minors in the game.

For me it is very important to be in a guild. Actually, I think being in a guild is the number-one thing for me when playing an MMORPG. I’ve been in some guilds in Guildwars, and I’ve mostly had bad experience ranging from 13-year-old megalomaniacs trying to run a guild as his own fascist army (he would call it role playing, I’m sure) to self-proclaimed saviors “follow me, and I shall save the guild!”. I’m happy in my current guild though. It’s called “Always look on the bright side of [LIFE]”. I came to join it when I was PvP’ing in an Alliance Battle late at night and ended up in a group with three other people from the same guild. They were very friendly and we worked well together, so I quit my guild and joined theirs. It’s a guild with many adults, which is the most important thing for me right now.