Guild Wars 2!
Aug. 25th, 2014 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI've been meaning to check out Guild Wars 2 for years, but only recently got the relevant Mac OS and might still have put it off indefinitely if I hadn't seen an ad for a half price sale (now over)
And it's a lot of fun! Overall what it reminds me of most is Final Fantasy games. The MMO aspect hasn't affected me a lot but it is kind of cool seeing other people around.
I'm playing an asura, a kind of science obsessed gnome who care about intelligence the way a warrior race cares about strength. Which can get obnoxious sometimes but I'm still really enjoying my character helping baby asura with their science homework and saying "may all you theorems be true" at the end of conversations. Some of the asura are house-elf-fugly but my Peggy Gage is ADORABLE:
(click for image description and my initial thoughts)
She's an engineer, which means she uses machines and elixers for everything, she even has a healing turret. There's a bunch of ways to play the game, but what I'm doing is following the "personal story", which has a new subquest every few levels, and levelling up in the meantime by exploring and doing whatever random quests ("dynamic events") I encounter during my travels. These are mostly pretty charming, rescuing researchers from their own creations or (in a wood elf village) turning into a dog and playing with puppies. Some are a bit off, like the researchers trapping the clearly sentient (if below asura level intelligence) rat creatures to do experiments on them, and then in another quest asking you to test their intelligence by bugging them with questions until they fall asleep.
Exploring is fun: you get experience boosts for hitting location markers, and there's extra points for getting to certain hard to reach lookout points with a nice view. The world is pretty, too. The writing isn't MIND BLOWING but it's not bad, I'm interested to see how the personal story plays out and the background NPCs have enough thought put into them that I care a little about helping them out. It's certainly a step up from Torchlight.
I was worried I'd have to join a party but I'm at level 13 and still wandering around like an awkward antisocial loner whose only interactions with other players is helping them kill things and, occasionally, heal. It's set up to encourage cooperation: more players means easier kills but no less loot or experience. I did join a random guild I got invited into but it doesn't seem to have had any effect. People aren't super chatty in the public chat but there's the odd question, guild invite, and random hello. I'm on a European server which means some of this is in other languages.
It's not really designed for a laptop, until I found a mouse I kept ending up looking at the ceiling every time I tried to change the view. But I get by, even if everything's kind of small and playing makes my computer sound like an aircraft taking off.
I'd heard good things about the character creator and it is fun. Not much good for making natural hair though :/ Human women can't even be bald or have braids, though most other species/gender combinations can. (Here's some more thoughts on the character creator) Apparently the personal story changes based on your species and various biographical choices you make in the begining but then brings you back to the shared storyline by level 30ish. Background NPCs don't seem to notice much difference though.
And it's a lot of fun! Overall what it reminds me of most is Final Fantasy games. The MMO aspect hasn't affected me a lot but it is kind of cool seeing other people around.
I'm playing an asura, a kind of science obsessed gnome who care about intelligence the way a warrior race cares about strength. Which can get obnoxious sometimes but I'm still really enjoying my character helping baby asura with their science homework and saying "may all you theorems be true" at the end of conversations. Some of the asura are house-elf-fugly but my Peggy Gage is ADORABLE:
(click for image description and my initial thoughts)
She's an engineer, which means she uses machines and elixers for everything, she even has a healing turret. There's a bunch of ways to play the game, but what I'm doing is following the "personal story", which has a new subquest every few levels, and levelling up in the meantime by exploring and doing whatever random quests ("dynamic events") I encounter during my travels. These are mostly pretty charming, rescuing researchers from their own creations or (in a wood elf village) turning into a dog and playing with puppies. Some are a bit off, like the researchers trapping the clearly sentient (if below asura level intelligence) rat creatures to do experiments on them, and then in another quest asking you to test their intelligence by bugging them with questions until they fall asleep.
Exploring is fun: you get experience boosts for hitting location markers, and there's extra points for getting to certain hard to reach lookout points with a nice view. The world is pretty, too. The writing isn't MIND BLOWING but it's not bad, I'm interested to see how the personal story plays out and the background NPCs have enough thought put into them that I care a little about helping them out. It's certainly a step up from Torchlight.
I was worried I'd have to join a party but I'm at level 13 and still wandering around like an awkward antisocial loner whose only interactions with other players is helping them kill things and, occasionally, heal. It's set up to encourage cooperation: more players means easier kills but no less loot or experience. I did join a random guild I got invited into but it doesn't seem to have had any effect. People aren't super chatty in the public chat but there's the odd question, guild invite, and random hello. I'm on a European server which means some of this is in other languages.
It's not really designed for a laptop, until I found a mouse I kept ending up looking at the ceiling every time I tried to change the view. But I get by, even if everything's kind of small and playing makes my computer sound like an aircraft taking off.
I'd heard good things about the character creator and it is fun. Not much good for making natural hair though :/ Human women can't even be bald or have braids, though most other species/gender combinations can. (Here's some more thoughts on the character creator) Apparently the personal story changes based on your species and various biographical choices you make in the begining but then brings you back to the shared storyline by level 30ish. Background NPCs don't seem to notice much difference though.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-26 08:18 am (UTC)Being the innately contrary bugger that I am, however, my Engineer is a Sylvari, and my Ranger is Asuran, as is my Warrior. ;)
Don't forget that you get XP for ressing players and NPCs both, so that's always a good way to contribute to an event.
Shame you are on the .eu servers though, or I'd come join you some time and we could solo together ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-09-06 12:35 pm (UTC)Haha yes as much as I love Peggy I do really like the idea of a tiny asura warrior and nerdy Sylvari engineer.
To be honest I know from glitch that I always feel REALLY SELF CONSCIOUS playing with other people, whether I know them or not, I kind of zone out of social mode into game playing mode and find it hard to combine the two. It's one reason I didn't try to find out what servers my GW2 playing friends were on when I joined (and why I took a long time to dip my toes into MMORPGs in general). But if I change my mind I can always switch servers.