Bartle Test

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology is a short quiz that breaks people down into several categories of game playing style. It's basically the Meyers-Brigg of gaming. The results are expressed in percentages, with a total of 200% through the four categories: Explorer, Socializer, Achiever, Killer. They mean more or less what they sound like: explorers like to learn about the world, socializers like to interact with others, achievers are goal-oriented (sometimes self-imposed), and killers enjoy the combat most (both in PvE and PvP).

Guild Wars Glossary (Appendices)

The main glossary was already large, and this is pretty word-filled as well, so I split the two up.

Last edited: 22 Feb 2011

Guild Wars 2: The 2nd M

One of the downsides of online gaming for someone like me is that, while I'm not really averse to grouping up with other people, for the most part I tend prefer to play with, well, just me and my SO, really. It's not that I won't play with others, certainly, but when one has an erratic gaming schedule (and even sometimes drops a game for several months at a time to do something else), it's very hard to get into and stay in any kind of guild... and even in the one case I have, the people involved were always moving much faster in various ways because they had more time in-game. So as you can imagine, I tend to prefer solo- (or, well, duo-) friendly MMOs.

However, there's one type of exception to this, and that's what you could call area or world events. The introduction of Rikti raids in City of Heroes, for instance, gave players a chance to temporarily group up to defeat a major menace, one that needed a fairly large number of players working together to take down. And I've always wished there would be more of that sort of casual, temporary grouping in MMOs.

Well, guess what? Guild Wars 2 appears to be planning on giving me that.

Guild Wars 2: Graphics

So. Guild Wars 2.

I'm still not happy with what I'm seeing of the human, norn, and sylvari female outfits, which are boobtastic and midriff-baring to an extent that just fricking annoys me (although at least in the case of the Norn, the guys seem to be getting a similar treatment, so I'll give 'em a pass on that race, at least), but let's put that aside for now to concentrate on the parts that I am decidedly not annoyed with.

Before I get into gameplay design things that are making me continue to be interested, let's tackle the other thing we've gotten a decent glimpse of: graphics.