Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

… indifferent.

It’s now been almost three months since I last played World of Warcraft and I have just one week left until my subscription runs out.  In that time I haven’t once been compelled to go back and play again, almost as if the longer that I’ve been away, the less I want to play.  When I quit EverQuest II however long ago, I struggled almost daily fighting the urge to resubscribe, but I’ve felt no such pull with WoW.  Until Cataclysm comes out I can’t see there being anything I want to do in that game, of course, I suppose I should never say never.

There isn’t any MMO out there right now that appeals to me, and that’s mostly due to my lack of free time to play them, but I also don’t really like the direction they seem to be taking.  WoW especially seems to be strictly all about gear upgrades as opposed to creating a sense of adventure, and fun.  Yes, I know that ultimately the loot is a prime mechanic in any MMOs, but no game hits that point over your head like WoW does, and it’s gotten to the point where I don’t even know which badges can be used to buy what armour and frankly I couldn’t care less.

If Cataclysm can bring back that sense of adventure and exploration as opposed to an endless grind for better gear, I’ll be back.

I hit level 8 in Guild Wars last night, as I continue to take on my friends challenge to reach level 10 without quitting of boredom.  So far things are going well, it’s actually not a bad game.  I’m certainly enjoying it more now than I did right after its release.  I’ve settled on my secondary profession, going with Monk, which seems to be a nice choice for solo-ing.

While I’m having a good time with the game so far, there are some things about it which drive me nuts.  First and foremost, I don’t like the game engine.  Yes, the graphics look great, but I hate all the invisible walls that are put up.  You can’t drop off a little hill to get to the area immediately below – you have to run around to the bottom of the hill first, following the one allowable path to the other area.  You also can’t swim.  You can run through shallow water, but anything above knee-level is off limits.  These invisible barriers are not very conducive to exploring the world.

Secondly, I hate the targeting and attack system.  I can’t count how many times my guy has started running towards the wrong target and then ends up bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball between where it wants to go and where you want it to go.  Left-clicking the ground moves your character to that location, so if you miss-click a moving mob, you can run right past him.  I’ve mitigated this somewhat by remapping the “target nearest” function to one of my side mouse buttons, but sometimes I still get caught in the target click-a-thon.

Finally, there’s no jumping.  It’s a stupid little thing, but sometimes when I’m running from place to place I want to hop like a bunny damnit!