the world of lucas and kyungsil

I'm a bit of a gamer. I can't help it. When I met Kyungsil, I was messing around in WOW. While it was never my favourite game, I've probably spent more time in it for the fact it's one of the most well developed. And I do hate saying that, because I just don't like Blizzard. Probably the most arrogant and nonexistent Customer Service in a gaming environment I've ever had the displeasure of using, they're without doubt the worst company bar none.

But WOW is a great game to introduce your wife to the wonderful world of MMOs. I'd have preferred EQ2 myself, but the graphics are so dull and dusty that you kind of get bored quicker. We gave up WOW after the last expansion didn't blow our minds.

You see, it turns out my wife is a highly skilled PVPer. I discovered this by accident when we reached a certain level and I was just itching to stab some kids. And I said to her, come along. Let's do this for one turn. Maybe two. Kinda relax and maybe, I don't know. See what you can do.

And she ended up second on the ranking ladder for the game.

My mind suitably humbled, we ended up competing pretty much amongs ourselves to be make the most kills in the various battlegrounds and were getting ourselves prepped for the highly anticipated Arena season post-expansion. Unfortunately, the expansion was a dud and pretty much cut us out of enjoying the game by doing what WOW does best: cater to raiders.


Disappointed over this and some account locking scandals that required trying to communicate to Blizzard's robotic "customer service" emailer for about two weeks before an actual human got involved (thanks to googling up a list of random emails for _____@blizzard.com), we gave it up and chucked it in.

And now find ourselves waiting for the next best thing. We've been waiting for six months. We've tried one or two other things, but none have clicked for us.

But now we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The highly anticipated Guild Wars 2 is set to give us pretty much everything we ever wanted. Some level of personal control over character appearance (I'm sick of looking like a multicoloured M&M or a drab brown yawn of nothing) is a highlight. And the PVP looks brilliant with a real attempt to make it more of a sport by chucking out the gear>skill equation and putting it back to skill>gear where it damn well belongs.

What's got us very excited is the lack of raiding. I hate raiding. Dungeons and raids are the worst kind of gaming experience in an MMO. The species of human attracted to raiding is generally of the worst kind. Spend ten minutes in WOW with any raiderps and you're guaranteed to find your iq lowering and your blood pressure rising as you battle all kinds of nonsensical mathematical arguments. It goes against the whole spirit of roleplaying by introducing and enforcing a reliance on number crunching as opposed to having fun.

And the worst thing about it all is it's little more than an overly-glorified memory exercise similar to playing Mario Brothers. Neither my wife nor I find flashbacks to 80s style gaming to be particularly interesting. One of the best things Blizzard suckered me into was Diablo. The first one. I'm old, study me (as a friend of mine is wont to say). And the thing that was so beautiful about it was the random spawning dungeon monsters. You never knew what you'd get, where they'd be, or when a glowy dude would pop up to make your life exciting. And that was what was fun about dungeons.

These days, raiderps need to "know" the "fight". They'll watch it on YOUTUBE. They'll demand you do, too. It's stupid. Why should you "know" a fight? Where's the fun in that? You could do it blindfolded, then. Count to one and tap 1, count to two and tap 3...

Guild Wars 2 seems to be addressing these very issues. The very issues that get the maths nerds excited are the issues which make the roleplayers and gamers yawn. And I'm so glad they're doing away with them. Bringing back the social element which means I won't be sitting there getting all mad "brah" when some guy comes in and sneaks up behind all the hard work I've done so he can ninja a kill and leave me standing around for a half-hour respawn.

And man, it looks so beautiful, too. I have been trolling through the YOUTUBE gameplay vids and I feel guilty when I do because I worry my wife will think I'm looking at porn it's that good.

This is going to be fun. So much fun I can't hardly stand it (as the great Lux used to say). Finally a game we can get into again together. Where our skills will even be able to link up and do even more than ever before.

Until then, however, my wife and I are sitting here all sad. And waiting.

Not waiting for the Star Wows MMo, though.

Help me ArenaNet. You're our only hope.