So this is my Guild Wars 2 column. I am going to tell you all about my beautiful Thief, Kayli Shadowfall. She is tall, long curly red hair… oh and look, there is a photo of her. 
I’m stationed on the Crystal Desert world. Currently I’m in my teen levels playing through Kessex Hills. I have been playing a few weeks and… oh geez I can hear it in the comments now, “why u not at lvl cap yet noob!1!!?” Well I’ll tell you why. A few reasons:
First, I get confused by the lack of direction. I am still learning the different mechanics that make this game move. Switching from multiple other games doesn’t help either. I don’t really feel like I know where I am going and the level scaling has been bothering me. Because while I can go anywhere, you don’t really want to go anywhere. I just don’t seem to be able to get enough XP from the little tasks I stumble upon even though I do them all completely before moving to the next area. I’m always struggling to make XP ends meet, like a poor xp princess.
The second reason, since the game game does scale you down to the area you are in… I can never be a few levels over the content. Everything I do is challenging and yeah, I die, a lot more than I’d care to admit actually. In other games I play such as Lord of the Rings Online(Lotro), after having played a few toons to get a feel for what I wanted. I knew that being 1-3 levels over the quests I was doing was the way to go. I felt powerful, I felt heroic. In Guild Wars, I feel, like a regular girl trying to make her way and struggling at everything I do. It doesn’t feel like I improve with level gain.
And last, I am a casual player that just happens to like to do content and pvp. So I hope on and grind for a bit on the weekends and get as much in as I can, then enjoy the stuff in between during my shorter sessions during the week.
So those are my reasons, I just don’t feel like I have enough direction and I can’t seem to get ahead. Speaking of getting ahead… Gold. I never have any money. I know I’ll make more but geez, the amount I used to craft in the early tiers was just ridiculous. I had these grand notions of crafting gear for Kayli as she leveled. Well turns out it takes a ton of mats to tier up, leaving me in the metaphorical dust oh and gearless.
So what do I like? Well the graphics are spectacular. The character models are gorgeous, and the color matching gear system is brilliant. I am a huge fan of cosmetic options and I’ll almost give up playing a game if my character is ugly or has to run around wearing a bunch of mismatched armor for all her days. So what Guild Wars 2 did was add a primary and secondary color scheme to your armor. So then no matter what you have on it always matches. You can change them at any time and you don’t have to buy dye. I still pick armor pieces that look like my starting gear over some of the other things that might give me more HP or what not, but I take those trade offs for fashion. I gotta look good killing centaurs you know? The animations, at least coming from Lotro, are fluid and chain together much more smoothly. The hair is animated and when I run, Kayli’s hair flows. That to me is exciting, the little details that a game puts in. The attention to finer things in life that really make me enjoy the game as a whole.
The last thing I wanted to touch on was the story. Oh my, I like it. I like it a lot. Now this is where I feel important. You are the center of the story. It’s all yours. You go into an instanced area and it begins. The cutscenes are wonderful and it’s fully voice acted. The comic book style backdrops really add character to the storytelling process. I chose the orphaned, missing sister options. So my best friend is some screw up that I have to keep bailing out of trouble and my sister? Well I don’t know much about her. I have an entire story in my head so I’ll see what the real story is when it gets there.
So my initial impressions of the game are strong and I haven’t even touched on combat. I’ll get to that in another article when I have more fully explored the different weapon combinations that make up the skill bar. With that, I leave it to you reader; What do you like about Guild Wars 2, what don’t you like? Leave your comments down below.
