enter the n00b.

i spent a fair amount of the time i would normally have been sleeping this evening playing the Guild Wars: Factions preview event with my brother (who is currently at uni in LA, and 3 hours behind me, hence the late nights)and his friend. i had never before stepped into the scary world of MMOGs, so this was an interesting event for me.

on the other hand, guild wars is not, as i understand it, similar to most of the MMOGs out there in that when you form a party with other players and then go out to slay dragons or whatever, the game servers create an "instance" of the world for you, so it's more like just loading up a LAN game and playing with your friends. it actually reminded me a fair amount of the hours i lost to the first dungeon siege game, except it didn't have the intelligence to back the monsters off if you had less than a full party, so your choices were to either pull up a bunch of NPCs and hope the AI is decent, or party with other players and hope they weren't assholes. one thing guild wars does do nicely that i have heard is an issue in world of warcraft is that when an item is dropped, the game decides who gets it, and no one else in the party can pick it up.

i found out very quickly why you turn off emotes and general chat in the common areas. why do parents let their 12-year-olds play these games?

alternatively, given that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog, how old can you really be if you think trolling around saying you're 12 is funny?

the other thing about MMOGing is that you have to have pretty fluent party communications, especially when one member (namely, me) is new to the environment and has no idea what's going on. so after a couple false starts, i got ventrilo working. they very kindly walked me through the interface and the distribution of various specialities of my class so that i would be a help, rather than a hindrance, in the whole monster-killing thing.

the preview allowed everyone to start characters at the level cap, which i initially thought was pretty cool, for a number of reasons: i wasn't at a disadvantage because i didn't have time to grind, and it allowed you to pick up any mission because everyone was at the highest level. they pointed out some disadvantages to it though, namely that you're given all these spells and "elite" moves, and not having level-ground your way up, you actually have no idea how they work or how to strategize with them.

it was pretty fun, all-in-all. guild wars does get rid of one of my main reasons not to play a MMOG, that is the monthly fee. once you buy the client, GW is free to play whenever you want. on the other hand, i'm hardly all that social in meatspace; i'm really not about to group with a bunch of grinders or griefers just so i feel i'm getting my money's worth. also, factions appears to be heavy on the PvP (player vs. player), and the whole reason i like RPGs is because i'm not interested in deathmatch. i did also spend a fair amount of time this weekend waiting for my brother to be done eating, or playing raquetball, or doing homework. i'm not sure i'd like to make this a weekly event. so i probably won't end up buying the game. but at least now i'm no longer a complete n00b.