New Worlds

Big bad shopping day was a little short today because, for some strange reason, neither mom nor I had to go to Target. Apparently, Target is the big time waster of our shopping. But, I'm quite happy with that.

On the way home yesterday, dad and I picked a really bad day to stop at the dreaded Walmart (everyone in my family really doesn't like Walmart, probably because all the stores around here are trashy). Both of us had a gift card to use, and I did have something in mind to get. Did you know that you have to register at their website just to fine out the balance of a gift card? Talk about crap! I had to do that yesterday (I did a fake register) and it really pissed me off. Yet another reason to hate Walmart.

Anyway, we went to a store that was on the way home, fought through the crowds, picked up my game, fought to the register, spent my gift card, and that was that.

My game, I'm not sure I've talked about it here, is Guild Wars. Fox was given a copy and telling me about it. I really like that there are no monthly fees, so I don't lose any money after I've bought the game. It is highly Player vs. Player-oriented, which is not the kind of gaming I like, but you can still play with only a few forced instances of PvP combat. It has similarities to EverQuest, but I can already tell you what it seems to be lacking that I wish it had.

There's no /consider command. In EverQuest, you could "con" your enemies to gage how strong they were compared to you and how much they hated you (i.e. how likely a mob is to attack you if you were to get close). I really miss that function. There isn't a /who command. In EQ, this command let you search your zone, or the world for people, and you could enter parameters. For example, /who all ai would bring up the names of every character that began with "ai" across all zones; tell you what level and class they were and what zone they were in. This command would bring up level 3 Ranger Aidan in Greater Faydark and level 50 Paladin Airiana in the Temple of Veeshan. While useful for finding if people were online, it was also fun to see if your friends adventuring elsewhere were gaining any levels and where they were hunting. It'd be cool to have something like that. As I play more, I'll come up with more, but that lack of a /con system is what I miss the most.

There are many things that this game does right. When you're out in the world, where all the mobs are, you get your own little copy of it (you, and your party if you have one). This eliminates spawn camping and kill stealing, both were big complaints in EQ. The downside is that it also eliminates people being around to help you if you get overwhelmed. But, dying isn't so bad in this game. You don't have to go running for your corpse or anything, and if it's just you, or if you and your entire party get wiped, you (all) get resurrected at a special place in the zone. This is nice because you no longer have a need to run, completely unequipped through tons of dangerous mobs who want nothing more than to have you for breakfast, to get your things back. I've also learned that I seem to naturally outrun most of the baddies in the world. This is great! That means I can most likely get away if I need to! Zoning still works like it did in EQ; there are distinct borders to the area that you're in, and if you get into trouble, you can run for one of those borders and load into the next area. Whatever was chasing you can't follow. I don't think they call it zoning here, but that's exactly what it is.

All in all, I like it. I've only played a few hours, but I'm going to start over. There is a point at the beginning that changes the world and you can't go back, and I realize I missed a ton of things by getting to that point too quickly. That's ok. Do over!