Suboptimist

Impressions.

Two points of non-frivolity first:

First, I assisted in laying a brother to rest this morning. Though I have never done it before and hadn’t a clue of what was supposed to be done, it felt surprisingly natural.

Second, anyone who has had a Mormon upbringing has probably heard the discussion concerning the end of time how a sign of it is the increase of physical catastrophe. We also hear that the increase of physical catastrophe is clearly seen on the news. As a Mormon troublemaker, I have this to say: are there really more disasters today than before? Isn’t it conceivable that there is only a perceived increase, given the instant nature of contemporary news coverage? Surely disasters occurred at a comparable rates 3000 years ago, but only a few people, the people affected, had any clue of it. The rest of us lived in happy ignorance. Even around the turn of the century, if Katrina happened then, how long would it take residents of Utah to become aware of it?

Okay, back to business. The Reverend encouraged me to accept his trial offer for Guild Wars, a game similar to the game I ramble on about every weekend. Here are my initial observations: visually, the game is stunning, even on my [relatively] lackluster system. The shadows are realistic, and the water filter blows me away. In terms of realism, Guild Wars takes the cake, though World of Warcraft is intended to have a cartoonier feel despite the markedly serious content. The battle system is also impressive, but I really can’t describe it without showing you. Despite the strong points there are a handful of problems.

For example, every time your character leaves the city he enters an instance, or a personal copy of the environment. While I think it is fun to have the entire playground to myself, it kills an important aspect of MMORPGs, the aspect of playing alongside other players. The brief glimpse of the storyline I had also failed to impress me.

While I admit I haven’t experienced it fully (it may be better), the basic premise is that there are guilds, and they have wars. Oh yeah, there is a Charr invasion, as well. WoW does a good job with its storyline in that it doesn’t feature a universal storyline. While there is a back-story a player needs to be aware of, he is given freedom to create a storyline unique to himself. Really, in WoW, there isn’t one big story as much as there are several smaller ones, which may be quest-specific, area-specific, or even class-specific. It makes things far less linear, in my opinion.

Finally, the two greatest weaknesses are things I haven’t experienced, but have been relayed to me through the Mike can attest, level 60 in WoW gets pretty boring; the fun is in the leveling experience. It took me less than two days to reach 20 in WoW. As far as I can tell, the leveling system is the same in both games, so 20 will come very quickly.

Now two administrative notes: I am re-launching the Node central page soon. It will be base on Wordpress. The only problem is that we can’t think of a theme. We will also be advertising in Salt Lake, Boston, and Seattle. Also, Instead of Saturday Simplicity or Friday Frivolity, is there something I could call this that would work like, Weekend ___________? Oh, I am also looking for things to talk about to avoid turning my frivolous posts into discussions over MMORPGs.