Yeah, this again. Look how she’s matured. No more showing her garters, she’s just a lean, mean, killing them slowly while sometimes successfully staying alive machine. I do not have a handle on her skills but don’t really seem to care because I’m having fun. I thought it would be something enjoyable to do while waiting for the expansion. I may have miscalculated here.
I may have to start staying up nights so I can be in three worlds, and sometimes, I’m really phoning it in in the real one. I had no expectations as I wasn’t familiar with Guild Wars. Time will tell, as I have a track record of taking a three or four month break on a new game and then losing interest, but so far GW2 has done so much right, at least for me.
Dynamic events rather than quests, remind me of what I liked about Rift. You’re wandering around out in the wilderness all alone, minding your business, chopping down trees. A call goes out! A location is under attack! You rush off to help, you’re outnumbered, doesn’t look good! By the end you’ve got twenty people helping you take down the big bad whatever. So far these impromptu groups have been fun, polite and stress free.
Grouping with strangers in WoW is not stress free for me. I’m always scrunched up waiting for the insults and accusations to fly, so much so that I avoid most groups of strangers other than quick holiday bosses. For whatever reason this doesn’t seem to happen at these dynamic events. I’m not high enough level for the first instance so I don’t know if this will carryover in dungeons.
There seems to be more of a spirit of cooperation rather than competition. If you help someone out you both complete. The big chest at the end of a boss kill, everyone loots. I don’t know if the quality of the loot is determined by contribution but I love the idea. Same with nodes. If you see a silver node and someone arrives before you and mines it, no problem. It’s still there for you, it doesn’t disappear until YOU mine it. This is so wonderful it’s indescribable!
I haven’t seen much of the world, but what I have is beautiful. I got visually drunk in the The Grove, the Sylvari Capital City. I just sat here irl awed. There appears to be a very vast world to explore and when I go to the areas I’ve outleveled, with level scaling I won’t be running through bonking level 5s on the head. I’ll be scaled down too!
There’s a lot here to like. I’ve downed the Kool-Aid, ate the brownies … whatever … I really like it. I may have to come up with a schedule. Even days there … odd days here … mornings in Azeroth, or no maybe … oh boy, this could get complicated.
Tome of the Ancient 