Kill Ten Rats

Is there any way to get the Guild Wars hero monks to focus their efforts on you? I’m repeatedly facing the problem that my entire party of heroes is at full health while I am dying. The enemies are frequently focus-firing me down at 250+ DPS while my monks are making sure my flamingo is topped off. The wiki says, “Heroes will pick the ally with the least health as target,” but that doesn’t seem to work for me, and they really don’t care that I have -(7+) health degredation.

Also, any comments on that monster AI vs players? Some fights, they really do just shoot me. I can then get resurrected, at which point all the enemies will drop their current targets, and focus fire me while the healers top off the flamingo. Or I will start a fight and have 6 hexes and conditions on me in less than a second.

: Zubon

This could just be my time or place, but Guild wars does not feel particularly vibrant. It really does feel like a single-player game, with the capacity for becoming a small-group game if I find people I already know. The main chatter I hear is trade spam in Kamadan. There are people around elsewhere, but beyond the Eye of the North, they blend with the NPCs. I don’t see any reason they would want to interact with a newbie, and if they are interacting with each other, they are in a different channel. Maybe Embark Beach is where the action is.

The instanced exploration areas have a more severe version of the same effect. Like launching a game in a MOBA, once you’re in there, you’re cut off. This is your own little chunk of world. I like having my own zone, but you might pause and realize that you have not seen another player in an hour. It does not feel dynamic.

Guild Wars is a sort of accidental MMO, a something else that acquired more MMO elements over time. It was not built with the World of Warcraft feeling of soloing alone together. When you’re soloing, you’re not really “together” in any sense.

: ZUbon

That is all.

: Zubon

Many games have challenges and achievements for making things harder, like beating a boss without using any potions or cutting down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring. Early the the Guild Wars Nightfall primary quest chain, the Master’s rewards are mostly for intentionally delaying and acting against your interests during wartime. You are in disguise and headed to a rendezvous with a traitor general, being guided through the swamps by her lieutenant … so why not slip away at hunt down some cobra=headed velociraptors? You are leading an assault on the enemy base, where time is of the essence as reinforcements are arriving and artillery fire is raining down … so why not take your time and scour the corners for enemies who are not engaging? You are sneaking a group of monks through enemy territory, with a primary objective of avoiding notice from the troops garrisoned there … with a special bonus for visiting every guard post and slaughtering the troops.

As a player, your meta-game knowledge tells you that time is not of the essence unless there is a timer in the corner of your screen, and enemies only react as scripted. I slipped away from the lieutenant as the dialogue for the boss fight with the traitorous general was starting. It merrily followed me into the swamps as I searched the corners for rinkhal monitors. She was threatening to destroy me and all that I love while I was fighting giant insects several blocks away.

That’s the other thing you Guild Wars has been training me to do: avoid winning too quickly. Once you reach your objective, everything resets, so you cannot complete the bonus objectives, or if you are in an explorable area, you will need to re-clear areas to complete other quests. While questing, let crises pile up so that you can clear them all at once, and when fighting the war, stop to smell the roses. Well, don’t stop, because you’ll need to hunt down those roses in the corners of the map while clearing another dozen spawns of trash mobs.

: Zubon