So eight posts later and I’ve finished my first analysis of GW2′s professions. There’s still more to come though. Towards the end of the series I really dropped into a stride and format I simply hadn’t figured out at the start, so the Necromancer, Elementalist, Guardian and Mesmer posts will get followups or edits where [...]

I’ve played a lot of retail MMOs. I’ve beta tested even more. And almost all of them have something in common that I really don’t like. I’m sure you’ve all been there. You’ve cracked open and installed your NEXT BEST GAME EVAH: the one you just know is going to eat away your life, and [...]

The warrior profession in Guild Wars 2 can’t really fail to exceed the trope as it is presented in other games, at least in my eyes. Warriors and I have never gotten on. While visually there’s something very cool about the hulking warrior with his huge sword scything through the battle, mechanically MMOs have always failed [...]

In a recent post on thief/rogue-like classes in RPGs, I mentioned that it always paid to choose the thief over other options. This hasn’t held up quite so well in the MMOs I’ve played. The thief in FFXI had some interesting ideas and mechanics — including Treasure Hunter which increased the drop chance of rare [...]

I have a chequered history with Ranger classes. The FFXI Ranger was atrociously balanced (a status that seems to have followed through to FFXIV’s Archer too) and required you to spam a button to fire ranged shots as there was no ranged auto-attack. RIFT’s ranger-like souls were dreadfully underpowered when I tried them, but that [...]

I have a confession to make: I really love the aesthetic of Steampunk. Note my choice of words. I’ve never really read anything steampunk, I just like the look of it, and I feel it makes videogames especially much more interesting. One of the things I loved about the Warcraft series of games was their [...]

Back on the 14th December I made an up-in-the-air post about how cool the Mesmer looked. It had just been announced, and with it a few images had been released, as well as the official skills video. The GW2 wiki had also begun compiling information on the skills the profession has. Since then there has [...]

The concept of the Paladin is one that I have always liked in games. There’s always been something super cool about the knight in shining armour archetype — a holy warrior who uses the power of his faith to smite the wicked, protect the righteous, and heal the faithful. My first contact with this archetype [...]

An Introductory Anecdote: I played Final Fantasy XI with my good friend Saikyo for a very long time. Six years, give or take. One thing he discovered in that time is that, if you wanted to complete content, one of the best ways was to throw as many mages at it as you could. The creation [...]

Back To Where It All Began: Now that I have put a close to my adventures in Guild Wars‘ Hall of Monuments it is time for me to return and examine the motivation for starting it all off. I’ve spoken several times now about incentivising gameplay, and the HoM was a perfect way of getting [...]