Normally Eve Online is a refuge from what occurs in the real world. If I have a bad day I can hop in a spaceship and fly away. But with the death of Sean "Vile Rat" Smith and the continuing coverage of what happened in Benghazi Tuesday my feelings were still a little too raw to do more than log in and update my skill queue. So I decided to dive into another game.
On Monday ArenaNet started selling digital copies of Guild Wars 2 again and I spent the money to buy the game. Why not? No subscription fee so I can play as infrequently as I want. I played around a little with the character creator on Tuesday but decided to lose myself in another virtual world last night.
Guild Wars 2 is a lot confusing. GW2's tutorial makes Eve's New Player Experience look like a comprehensive encyclopedia. In other words, I couldn't find a tutorial. I have played several MMOs through the years so at least I knew what the action bars and icons were for. I reached level 4 last night and I'm still not sure how I did it. Combat is very confusing. I know I can create combos because I accidentally did so once and I saw a tip appear. As far as I know the game does not use targeting in combat, but I could be wrong about that. Perhaps that is only confined to a thief. Also, I did not use ranged weapons so perhaps only ranged attacks require targeting.
In short, I am basically face-rolling Guild Wars 2 right now. I don't think I was ever this bad in any game, including Eve. Heck, I consider myself terrible at Eve after playing for 3 years but nothing like this. I've discovered I don't like face-rolling content. I either need to re-roll my character and sit down for a week to figure the game out or just wander around the map learning to craft like I spent a lot of time doing in EverQuest 2. I think I'll re-roll anyway because I do not like the way my character looks. I just wish that the achievements were tied to my character and not account wide.
If I want to devote study time to a game I will do so in Eve where knowing things actually matters to me. The same with resource gathering, now that I've started finding things useful in industry through activities other than mining or planetary interaction. So Guild Wars 2 for me is just a distraction for when I need a break from the serious business of internet spaceships.
