PREXUS'S PROFILE

I didn't say "Nah, not gonna play." I even said it looked pretty good.

I consider myself, at the very least, of above average experience with MMORPGs. I don't exactly have a dossier of my experiences with MMOs, but I have played my fair share from as far back as Ultima Online so I have seen all sorts of different styles.

For the record; I don't, and ArenaNET agrees, consider Guild Wars 1 to even be an MMORPG. I don't know if something changed in a later expansion, but only two parts of the game even had MMORPG qualities: Towns, which was pretty much just a visual representation of a chat room with vendors, and PvP; which considering everything was on an equal level in terms of statistics and gear, was an over glorified MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, the genre that encompasses games like Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, Battle of the Immortals, etc.)

All of the PvE content was instanced, and only allowed for a small group of players to join. That is the exact reason that Diablo 2 isn't considered an MMORPG.

But this discussion isn't about Guild Wars and as I said, I wasn't saying what I did with an expectation to defend my opinion. I just worry about every new MMORPG that is coming out feeling the need to one-up the last. It leads to failure, and MMORPGs can't just fail. They need a certain level of success to be profitable. Lots of work goes into developing them, and even more work and money goes into maintaining them. It's one thing when an established game makes a shift in philosophy to improve on a bad game design (World of Warcraft making every class spec a viable option being a good example of this, Star Wars Galaxies 'New Game Enhancements' patch being a bad example of this,) but when a game that isn't even released yet tries bold new things you have to look at it objectively. You have to question how it is that they can do it, but so many others have failed.

You know what game had events that had a lasting effect on the world? Horizons. Go look it up. If you want to know any more information about that disaster, let me know. I've got all sorts of information about it's development and what it boasted to be able to do. In my opinion, one of the biggest disappointments in PC Gaming.

Yep, I also removed the rock in the river as it doesn't really look right.

This idea of localized questing is nothing new. While its not the primary system, the same style of questing is found in The Old Republic, and to slightly different extent RIFT and Warhammer Online.

The game definitely seems cool. With no particular tanks and healers I don't know how sustainable PvE encounters will last. They sound like they are going to be highly scripted, and thus have no replay-ability. Although that may not be the case, I don't know.

I didn't particularly like Guild Wars 1. I finished the main storyline in a weekend only to find out my character build wasn't viable, so I had to start from scratch. Which I did, and had much less fun.

author=Max McGee
Hey Stew. I like your article (largely because of how my own thoughts about romance have changed so much over the years) and congratulations on the Escapist. That's a mighty big billboard.

Can I ask you a personal question? I guess it's pretty insensitive, but it's meant with all due respect. This has nothing to do with videogames and I'm not trying to troll ya.

We stayed together, eventually marrying in 2009, and as the years went by, I began to learn more and more what true romance is. The big moments were fun, but the real foundation was simply the act of maintaining our relationship. Having arguments and coming to their resolutions. Accepting each other's flaws and working on our own. Real love isn't grounded in grand gestures but rather small moments and shared history. It's the nicknames and jokes only we understand. It's holding hands in the car and kissing each other goodbye as much out of habit as out of passion. It's the boring moments that happen after the credits roll.

Do you worry about the fact that your wife is the only person you've ever been with? Doesn't it concern you that you missed out, not necessarily on the right person for you, but on the experience of being a single adult and sewing your wild oats to to speak? Do you worry that the entire situation is a mid-life crisis or a divorce waiting to happen ten or twenty years down the road, that at some point you'll realize your life is halfway over and you've only ever been with one woman, and that that woman is essentially the first one who said yes?

I will disclose, personally, since I'm asking. I've been in a stable monogamous relationship with the same girl for over five years now. I love her, but we're not married, and we're not even engaged. She's the only living human female (i.e. the only entity, period) I can even imagine marrying, ever, and if I lost her I'd be completely lost to the world, but I hesitate to marry her at this juncture. There's a lot of reasons--one of them is that I don't feel like an adult, I feel like a 25 year old boy, and you have to be a grown up to get married, and others are too neurotic or personal to disclose--but the relevant one to this discussion is that I worry about the fact that before her I was with such a vanishingly small number of women in my life. (I'd honestly call it, besides my current relationship, one relationship and change; at least thee girls I was involved with don't count as a full integer or even high enough decimals to add up to a whole person, for various reasons, so we'll call it like 1.75 relationships before this one.)

I worry about this...for all of the reasons I listed above.

This topic may be suited for a separate thread as there is a lot worth discussing here. I know you asked Stew but I have almost the exact same situation and experience as you, Max. The difference is that I have gone ahead and am engaged to be married already.

I have had roughly 1.3 relationships prior to my current one, and while I know that fidelity won't be a problem for me (strong will and what have you,) it's hard not to think "What if?" and such. I feel, much like you, that I am a 25 year old teenager. I don't feel like an adult at all. Yet I realize that my significant other has brought out the best qualities in me. She has hardened my resolve, calmed what I consider to be a torrent of anger inside me, and is slowly but surely bringing me into adulthood by allowing me to experience her life with her, and soon to be our life with her guidance.

I have come to the conclusion that "What if?" doesn't matter. Nothing out there could be better than this and even if there was the slightest chance there was someone more perfect, the endless list of risks involved are outweighed by what I have now. There is no guarantee it will be better. There is no guarantee it would even work out. I am happy now. For the first time in my life I can honestly say that I am happy. Nothing; no amount of anything would let me give that up.

I think that is a question that people need to determine at some point in their relationship. If you can't get past "What if?" then you should start thinking "What now?"

I don't think that is why we are up in arms about it.

I think it has more to do with the fact that the author is writing an article about the state of current generation gaming based on nostalgia. We've all come across the "I think this game is great because of its story characters and graphics and the best gameplay ever." when, compared to other games of the time and many new ones, it really doesn't compare. That person just loves that game so much because of nostalgia. Rightfully so, too. There are many games out there that deserve a lot of praise for what they accomplished. I mean, the author of this article himself gives Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past a walk from his raving, yet it has many of the same problems that he is pointing out in other games.