I’ve been vastly preoccupied over the last three weeks, for what could be the worst reason ever: when I’m not at work or sleeping, I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2.

I have never been a huge fan of MMOs. I tried playing Everquest and World of Warcraft, but it didn’t hold my interest at all. I did, however, get into the original Guild Wars in a pretty big way: not because it was an MMO, but because I could play it by myself. I started playing GW when I was neck-deep in casting and IRC, and I spent every waking moment online talking to or at other people – so I started playing Guild Wars to get away from it all. It was touted as an MMO you could play alone, which truly appealed to me: I had no interest in playing with others since I did that all the time, and I had no interest in meeting people through the game because I already knew too many people. GW1 allowed you to “hire” NPCs to form a party, so you could complete group quests and goals without ever needing to communicate with another person. It was awesome.

In the time between GW1 and 2, I had switched from PC gaming to console and Mac computers. Seriously bored one Saturday night, I decided to see if GW2 (which launched last September) was going to be available for Mac anytime soon. To my surprise, it already was – so I handed over my credit card, made an account, and (some two hours and 18GB later) started playing. I haven’t stopped. GW2 doesn’t have the “talk to no one” aspect I loved about the first game; I run into other people all the time. I still don’t have to talk to them, but eventually I’ll need to start finding people to team up with for the group quests and I don’t wanna. Other people are scary. I can kill all those things myself. I’m enjoying it, though. I’ve only got one character, a level 72 Sylvari Elementalist – basically, I’m a plant who likes to play with fire.

i’m a plant, wearing plants as clothes. it’s basically a vegan meat dress.

Every once in a while someone says something ominous to me about dragons, but as near as I can tell the goal of the game is Centaur Genocide. No matter what map I’m on, Centaurs are coming at me and making fun of my two legs, which in turn makes me set them on fire. Not personally having anything against Centaurs (or lizards), I feel kind of bad about killing them all. I also feel kind of bad about the amount of time I’ve played – I’ve been playing for three weeks, and I’ve sunk 108 hours into it. That being said, I’m kind of glad I had the game this weekend – it gave me something to do other than lay around pathetically and moan about my death cold. I killed things instead! A much better use of my time, even if it’s training me to be some sort of killing machine who throws fire balls at people in real life.

I’m somewhat ashamed, but not really. This can’t go on forever – I basically plan to finish the map to 100% and be done with it. I’ve got no desire to PvP or start a new character or find out why people hate Centaurs so much – I just want to clear that damn Fog of War off my screen.

Goals! I have them!

Oh, that made me sad. It’s okay though! I’m sick!