Both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft are MMORPG’s. For the less technical/non-gamers amongst us that stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. Now, for me, this has become somewhat of a misnomer. For those of you who follow my site, you’ll see that I’m a regular whiner about how great Neverwinter Nights and Baldurs Gate et al were. Not only were they great games, but also you played a ROLE.
I’ve had a fair bit of experience with MMORPG’s now. I’ve played (a long time ago) the original Ultima Online, as well as the new stuff like Guild Wars, Eve Online and of course World of Warcraft. However, only the early stuff seems to actually have any role-play. The rest suffers from a massive bout of the ‘grinding’.
Once again, for those of you not in the know, ‘grinding’ is a term which signifies going through a monotonous routine to ‘level’ your character – i.e. make him or her better in order to kill more difficult foes, pass greater areas of difficulty and wield better weapons. Generally you’ll do this a lot until you completely max out your character. In case anyone tries to tell you otherwise, roleplay this is not. [Read more…]