Back in the griffon saddle again

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about myself, it’s that blogging about why I’m not interested in playing a game anymore is the fastest way to end up playing it again. Not long ago, I blogged about how Elder Scrolls Online never holds my attention, and I’ve hardly missed a day since. More recently, I blogged about why I’m not playing Guild Wars 2, and not two weeks later I patched up, and, before I knew it, I was logging in every night again. As much as I love the story and lore aspect of Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2’s combat is just so much more appealing to me. It’s easy to pick up, builds are more intuitive, and tab targeting is just so much more accurate than action combat. I missed all of that.

The first thing I did was log in to a bunch of different characters and give them a try. I’ve got at least one of each of the nine classes at 80, so deciding who I feel like playing at any given time, especially when it’s been a while, sometimes takes some time. It’s also interesting how a little break from a game can change your tastes. For instance, I didn’t really care for the mirage mesmer when Path of Fire launched, but now it’s really clicking with me. After getting comfortable playing my characters again, it was time to catch up on the latest Living World story. No spoilers, but it was definitely worth coming back for! All of the feels! My next project is going to be braving World v World to get that new Warclaw mount. I’m not a big PvPer, but I’ll try anything if you reward me with a new mount. Gotta catch ’em all! Sorry in advance to anyone who happens to be in the same instance as me.

I was also reminded of just how pretty this game is, even though it’ll be seven years old this summer. Elder Scrolls Online might be more realistic and technically impressive, but Guild Wars 2 just has a certain style about it that is a lot more attractive to me. It’s colorful without being cartoony. It’s whimsical and doesn’t cling too tightly to the usual fantasy tropes, but not so far out there as to be unrelatable.

Coming back to Guild Wars 2 feels like coming home, and I hope I can keep coming back to it for a long time. I think my return had, in some part, to do with the mass layoffs that happened at ArenaNet recently, including some really long-serving ArenaNet veterans. I want to support the game, because I still think GW2 is one of the best MMOs on the market today, if not the best. I don’t think it’s going to shutdown next week or even next year, but it’s sad to see such a great game gutted of a lot of its talent. Hopefully they can recover gracefully and keep cranking out content for years to come!