It was the newly formed Tuesday N00b Club's inaugural outing last night, making a shaky but encouraging start on the Guild Wars: Nightfall Campaign. I'm probably breaking the First and Second Rules of Tuesday N00b Club, even talking about it here to be honest, but until 'Brad Pitt' learns to use CTRL+Space instead of just Space when pulling mobs, I don't feel quite that guilty, to be honest.
It all started as a bit of a bid to bring some kind of order to the chaos that is my evening free-time. I've played dozens of these things now, and met quite a few friends through it all. Some I lose touch with, the friendship being a thing solely of that particular game, but some I keep in touch with across many games. Trouble is, I'm not a big fan of meta-friends-list applications, such as Xfire or ICQ etc. It's a purely irrational thing - I see how useful they'd be, but really don't like having dozens of extra programs running in the background, while trying to force my geriatric PC to cope with the more modern of today's MMOs. I'm also a bit wary of any program having Internet Access that isn't absolutely essential - i.e. The MMO I'm playing at that moment - mostly bandwidth conservation habits from my dial-up days I find hard to break.
All of this means it can be quite difficult just to 'bump into' my long time online compatriots, given that I hop about between three or four MMOs at once, and so do they. So we've made a bit of a pact, of sorts. Tuesday Nights is Guild Wars Night. It seems a bit harsh doing it like this, demanding a set time and place, but a little organisation goes a long way, and I can't actually remember the last time I had a 'Regular' group, of any description, which is a bit sad really. Mostly it's been soloing, one-shot Pick-Up Groups, or the occasional remote and distant chatter of a Guild Chat.
There's three of us, and they badgered me into getting Nightfall in the end, a digital download that cost £29.99 - exactly the same price as it is in the shops here, which i thought was cheeky. Given the way GW only pushes the zones you actually need to you, it didn't even have a big download, leaving me with thie impression I'd just spent £30 on a 'Nightfall == TRUE' switch in a database somewhere. Still, I've been playing GW on and off for over a year now, all for that first box cost, so it's difficult to get cross about it all really. I've had more than my money's worth so far. On the advice of the Tuesday N00b Club though, I've skipped Factions entirely. Apparently, it isn't nearly as good as Nightfall, and costs another £30.
I was going to hold off until I'd finished Prophecies (The basic game - still one mission to go!), but I'm glad they did convince me to shell out, in effect giving the three of us an entirely new set of fresh adventures to work through together. I worked through the tutorial bit to get to the first city and was, well, not impressed exactly - what I've seen so far isn't anything revolutionary or mind-blowing - but pleased. Guild Wars has always had a very high standard of polish, even back when it was launched, and what I've seen of Nightfall so far merely seems to continue on a style and execution that was solid to start with. Nightfall itself adds a new theme to the world, partly Egyptian, party Tribal African, and partly something else again, and the integration with the older parts of the world seems well executed.
The refresher course on how2play was quite welcome actually, and I soon met up with the Tuesday N00b Club in the hub city place. I'm a Mesmer for this campaign - a kind of Enchanter-type, whose main job seems to be messing with the enemy's ability to function, heavily based in debuffs, DOTs and generally making a pest of myself. The other two Tuesday N00bs are a Necromancer and Dervish. We've yet to pick Secondary Professions. Necromancers I understand, and can cope with, but the Dervish is an entirely new profession to me, and I'm still having trouble working out what it is they actually do, apart from spin very fast.
A bit of post-rampage research shows that they're some kind of scythe-based close-combat AoE Melee DPS Fighter, which was just as well, as our Dervish seems to be showing early symptoms of Red Mist, and seems to charge into the fray with great gusto. Our Necromancer, who is a bit of a Nightfall veteran with other characters, was insistent that we try for the Survivor title (L20 without dying), an ambition I was immediately and vocally dubious about, seeing it as unnecessary pressure, but matters resolved themselves quite neatly when we strayed a little too far out into the Plains of Jarin a bit early on, and got trampled quite comprehensively by a pair of Lv8 lance flinging dog-things, being only L3s and 4s ourselves.
The Plains, the first real overland explorable zone in Nightfall, are a confusing place, with Quest NPCs wandering about the place, spamming chat directly into our Team channel, a quite steep level variance of mobs in close proximity, and worse still, some of the red dots not actually hostile, leading to a lot of confusion about what would and wouldn't attack us. Also the jump from a L20 Elite-Skill Tricked out R/N, back to a L3 Me/- with starter gear caught me off balance a bit, making me a bit more gung-ho that perhaps was wise. But after some shakey starts (No Survivor for j00!), we we soon getting a feel not only for the new zone and characters, but also for how each of use ought to be functioning in groupwork (which in GW, is all the mobs).
A satisfying romp, opening up two new outposts, ticking off a number of quests and seeing us quickly stock up on the basic equipment; belt pouch, bags, armour, etc, and we're all now ready to pick up our Secondary professions. I can barely manage a single one most of the time, so haven't given that much thought yet. Anyway, we've made a bit of a pact, not to use those characters on other nights, so hopefully they're remain groupable for quite some time to come, although Guild Wars is certainly much more forgiving than most MMO with the Tyranny of Levels.
I've also made a further personal rule- not to use my L20 R/N to go exploring the whole new world map Nightfall has given me, until my Istani Mesmer has been there first. There's still plenty of bits and pieces left to be getting on with in Tyria for my Other Self, for those Guild Wars moments that aren't on a Tuesday. Hopefully, this kind of uncharacteristically restrained personal Rationing will keep Tuesdays a night to look forward to, and Guild Wars itself, fresh...