My Characters in Guild Wars 2: Myn, Cheeki, Zhomi and Ivy
Since my yearly subscription for Rift has run out, and I chose not to renew it until I have an income (or my birthday), I have started playing Guild Wars 2. I think I didn't give this game enough of a chance because it came out right around the time the expansion, Storm Legion, for Rift came out. but this game is a lot of fun to play - and much easier to get into the mechanics of for novice players. Though I am not an expert, having almost a decade of playing MMOs makes me no longer a novice. For those that are curious, I have played EverQuest: Online Adventures (EQOA), EverQuest 2 (EQ2), Rift, Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR), and now Guild Wars 2 (GW2) - why yes we MMOers are fans of the Acronym. :-) No, there is no World of Warcraft (WoW) in there - and there won't be. I tried it, and just could not get into it.
Back to Guild Wars 2.
I am finding that I really like the simplicity of this game. I know in EQ2 and Rift I often had 4-6 bars of buttons to use. 1-3 bars used often, with my main combat button all in my 'hot keys' buttons. Sometimes, when the buttons would get overwhelming, we would set up macros to complete a series of actions, or an action if a given prerequisite was in place. In guild wars, you have just the one row of buttons. Now these buttons would change based on many things, for example: you change the type of weapon you are using (i.e. throwing ax to bow, or mace to staff), you change your environment (over land vs. under water) - which I suppose is just a change in weapons (harpoon/trident are used underwater, not bow/staff), or a change in role or type of magic used (for an Elementalist, that would be one of the elements - fire, water, air, earth)
Whhhaaattt? The game is doing the thinking for me?? SWEET.
Seriously, doing it this way really simplifies the game. No trying to figure out how to write a macro, or what is the best cast order to optimize damage. While I am sure at end game, certain weapons and a limited amount of cast order matter - it isn't as complicated with this game. It is much easier to figure out the optimal order of 10 buttons versus 40. There will be number crunchers that would like to have more control over what spells are used when - but in some games it becomes a 'study in the proper way to maximize DPS (damage per second) for XYZ Class', personally I am happy enough to not even attempt to figure that out.
I am actually surprise the find that Guild Wars has not converted their game to a console (PS2, Xbox, etc.) yet, with the simplicity of the interface I would suspect it would be easier to do than other MMOs on the market. Just a side thought given the interface and ease of combat.
This is just one of the aspects of the game that has me enjoying it, despite getting more and more jaded about MMOs. I will talk about other points in more details in other posts.
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