I picked up Guild Wars last week, and I've been playing it quite a bit. Slowing down a little now, but I still play it every other day or so. It's a pretty good game. After my initial 'wow' phase, my enthusiasm has cooled somewhat, but it's still pretty fun. A couple of things annoy me about it.
Maybe it is just that my expectations about this sort of game are shaped and formed by Diablo (it is very Diablo-ish, and I understand several of the folks that worked on Diablo worked on GW as well) but the relative lack of good equipment upgrades is bothersome. I have a character who is Level 15 (levels are capped at 20, so I am 'almost there', so to speak) who is still wearing the second set of armor he has ever worn. He's been wearing the same set of boots, the same gloves, the same pants, etc... since perhaps an hour or two after he was 'born'. I simply haven't come across anything better. There are salvage materials and crafting materials galore--and not a damned thing to do with them. I'm at a place called Lion's Arch, the third main town (counting Ascalon and Yak's Bend). The trek to get there was quite grueling, all things considered, and a long time in the making; I expected to arrive in town and be provided the opportunity to upgrade some of my obsolete noob equipment to gear more fitting an elementalist of my level. But no dice; the armor crafter there offers precisely the same grade of armor as the crafter in the first city. All the same shit my guy is already wearing.
Don't even get me started on weapons. I'm still carrying the first 'decent' fire wand I ever found, because I quite simply haven't found anything better. It's a piece of shit; it truly is. The monsters I'm fighting now don't even feel that thing when it fires; they just laugh. It's a good thing the elementalist doesn't rely on his weapon. But it would be nice to at least find something useful to put in that hand, maybe something that would increase my energy or something. Instead of a useless stick that does 7-11 damage per shot.
I am really quite baffled by this lack of equipment. There is such a huge deal made of crafting materials. Crafting materials this, crafting materials that, I've got this to trade, I've got that to trade. And as far as I can see, they are bloody damned useless. I used a few odd bits to craft my current set of armor, and that's it. The remainder are taking up valuable space in my inventory.
It could be that it is just a slower paced game, and that I have to advance further into the world to obtain the good stuff. Looking at the overworld map reveals that I have explored only a small portion of the overall territory. If that is the case, I may not see the good stuff for quite some time, which is really a bad thing in my case. I'm going to need some visible indicator of my character's personal power advancement soon, because my interest is already starting to wane.
Or maybe I just suck. Who knows?
