As of the 28th of April (or as soon after that as Royal Mail manage to deliver my copy) I will be joining the legions of MMO players with a preordered copy of Guild Wars. I’m not a huge fan of repeating publishers’ promotional stuff, so I’ll just summarise what made me buy it in bullet points:
- Not a cash cow. No monthly fee for the ‘privilege’ of using my property
- Team includes many of the developers of Diablo 2 (especially the Battle.net component of said game, which is very reliable)
- Fast-paced and designed to be enjoyable for casual gamers and obsessives alike. No level treadmill, no playing for ten hours to gain ‘+1 woodchopping’, and access to a wide variety of skills from the start.
- AI-controlled ‘henchmen’ available for when the people you usually play with are offline
- Did I mention no monthly fee?