Veteran's Hindsight

I've been captivated by GW:Factions. It's amazing.

For some reason, I'd always been under the impression that it was going to be a faux cheesy blend of Eastern cultures (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) treated with the same lack of respect and horrible attempts at accents that we've all come to expect from Westerners.

That, and the fact that I'd run aground in GW: Prophecies at Thunderhead Keep - making me one miserable puppy, suggested I would get more of the same scenery and level of gameplay out of Factions, except that it would be set in fake China (ugh!)...

Well, I've been very pleasantly surprised. Part of it is good design. (And when people are saying the Factions team wasn't as good as Nightfall, it makes me really drool at the prospect of the third campaign.)

For example, I really dig the fantasy setting. Yes, it's an odd blend of Chinese, Korean and Japanese cultures, but it seems to work. And they've really gone over the top and created some beautiful building facades, staying more or less faithful to the source but adding that 'fantastic' touch.

I do like Eastern architecture, despite my complete inability to even pronounce a single building-related word in any of the mother tongues. And when colored with a 'fantastic' palette of strong acrylic shades, and stacked floor to ceiling, end to end, the cityscape is glorious.

And I'm glad they didn't stop there and rely back on the same Ascalon-type backgrounds which covered all the terrain. On reading the Lore part of the manual, I'm excitedly anticipating arriving at the petrified forest and the petrified sea... One made of stone, and one made of jade...

The feel of the missions have changed slightly because they now stick a pretty much compulsory jaunt through an explorable area to get to the next mission. I'm undecided on whether this is good or bad, but certainly, it makes it different from Prophecies.

Anyhow, I suspect the other part of why I'm enjoying my jaunt in Guild Wars is that I've matured in my MMO game understanding.

Two years in CoX and a stint in other games have helped to refine my preferences for certain character types. I'm also more open to the idea of reshuffling my build and min-maxing for efficiency. And I'm armed with generic 'name-types' and understanding as to where they fit into patterns of killing - that is, Enhancements are 'buffs', Hexes are 'debuffs' and so on...

The first pointed me to try a melee class for Factions. (And also suggested why my ranger/monk bogged down.)

The warrior just looked better than the assassin (whose starting clothing is like a poor down-trodden street waif's) so I went with that.

Deciding on a secondary class was much trickier. Ranger was tempting. There was the whole "lookee a pet tiger fighting alongside me" deal as well as various blocking stances - which I now knew was pretty important for tanky survivability. Thing was, I didn't want to repeat myself, I was probably going to take the Prophecies ranger through Factions some day, and I wanted to unlock skills... The gotta collect 'em all factor was a serious pull to restarting Guild Wars - since GW2 is around the corner of next year and all.

How about a new class? The ritualist seemed awfully immobile. More suited to rear support and probably spellcasting. Assassin was very tempting. A lot of shadow arts skills that helped survival, and even a teleport into melee skill... Problem was, some skills were reliant on dual daggers and as a warrior, I already was going to have trouble deciding between hammer, axe and sword on a regular basis.

I was running a baby W/Nec through Prophecies, so again, didn't want to repeat that. Not another Monk, no way, never. (NPCs react so much better and faster in a healer role, if you ask me.) An elementalist was also tempting, run in, melee and then shoot fire in people's faces. But warriors have pathetic energy stores, so I was worried about that. Eventually I settled on mesmer, just cos I love the 'new' innovation of health degeneration/regeneration and how rapidly it can slice through the health bar.

Character feels good. Feels tanky. Feels also like it can do some nifty damage.

I'm itching to get Nightfall, but the only thing that stops me is...greed. :) I want the Collector's Edition. I bet I can find it going for pretty cheap now in stores here, but that assumes I actually have a free day to go hunting for it.

Meanwhile, to stave off the desire (and to get Heroes, which is my main lure), I caved in and bought Eye of the North. I reasoned that the person who -really- needed Hero support was my ranger/monk, who just couldn't seem to get past Thunderhead Keep. And he was level 20, so I could pick up some Heroes for it via GW: EN.

Story seems cool so far, and I must say, I looked with a far more critical eye at the junk heap I was calling a skill bar and reworked the ranger/monk into a 'pure' ranger and he seems to be a little better. Must try the old Thunderhead Keep mission at some point again.

Got two heroes at the moment, a monk and an elementalist, and they seem pretty fun too.

Also found a very good reason to try and get a hardcopy of Nightfall... waiting for too-long downloads between missions is not really that fun. Now I just need to keep telling myself that and resist the siren song of digital purchasing.