Last night I decided to brush up on my Guild Wars skills in preparation for the PvP event this weekend and I was struck anew by the brilliance of the combat engine. This is the way all combat should work and it puts the WoW experience into the shade. Now, I love WoW, don't get me wrong, but for me it's the truly immersive universe that keeps me coming back for more. In GW, the world is limited but deliberately so. Here, it's the fight that must take precedence and the entire game is structured around making you think strategically in combat scenarios. With only eight skill slots, you have forced to focus on not only your own strengths and weaknesses but those of your party. Wrong choices result in messy and ignominious defeat. I am back to where I was nearly a year ago, literally panting with anticipation. I think Guild Wars: Factions is going to be even better than Guild Wars... and that will be some achievement by the people at ArenaNet. /salute ArenaNet dev team

The Good Samaritan

Let me tell you story. Yesterday, two girls got on the tube, sat down and started chatting. A couple of stops later, a man got on and sat down next to the girls, giving them a glare as he did so. The man was unknown to the girls, a complete stranger and they ignored the glare. Suddenly, the man leant right across one of the girls and started yelling in their faces, full on demented raving at the top of his voice.

To say the girls were gobsmacked would be a gross understatement. They were shocked, scared and literally afraid for their continuing health. After all this nutter could have been armed with a knife or he could have started throwing punches any second. (On an aside, I don't like calling him a nutter but, really, what other word will do in this sort of situation? I could go on for ages about care in the community and paranoid schizophrenia but we have no idea why he acted the way he did.)

Meanwhile, all the other passengers are doing that typical "don't involve me" thing of sitting there, heads down, eyes averted and hoping the man wouldn't start on them. But that's where the story veers off into Hollywood territory because one passenger did something remarkable. He was in his late twenties maybe, a fairly ordinary bloke sitting opposite the girls and he did the one thing no-one else was willing to do; he distracted the nutter.

In our eyes, this man is a hero. He berated the nutter and told him to calm down. He provided a much needed distraction while we legged it to the other end of the carriage and prayed for a station to arrive. When the nutter stood up and made to follow, this hero stood in his path and refused to let him pass and the girls got off the train safely and without further incident.

What now preys on our minds is not know what happened next. Is our hero safe and sound or did the situation escalate into violence when we fled the scene? We want to know and we want to be able to thank the good samaritan who revived our faith in the basic goodness of human nature. We've been thinking about posting something, but where? Should we write a letter to the papers? But where is the guarantee he would see it?

So, here on a blog that very few people will ever see let alone read, can I just say "thank you" to a bloke who did the right thing. I hope you are appreciated by your friends and family, you are one in a million.

Phew! What a weekend that was. Managed to get into the beta weekend for Auto Assault and drove like a banshee on Friday night. The game is really shaping up to be awesome although, to be perfectly frank, my driving pretty much sucked. My laser drone was cool.

Got to level 51 in WoW, despite joining a party in Zul'Farrak that forgot to bring the Mallet and then was all surprised that they couldn't finish the quest. The thing about WoW, I have found, is that there are a load of people (well, children I suspect) running around with very little idea of how to play the game properly and they are perfectly capable of ruining the experience for the rest of us. That said, I still love it, however I find myself getting less and less tolerant of inconsiderate and selfish players.

Then tried to play Ratchet: Gladiator and seriously wished I hadn't bothered. All the things I love about R&C were completely missing from this game. It was like playing an FPS which is my least favourite game genre. However, the two hours given over to SingStar 80s was wonderful :)

Day Three and just where are my co-posters? I call their names but my voice echoes in the darkness and I know that I'm alone.

In other news, this is proving quite compelling. I am drawn to the open page and find myself attempting to fill the space with words, but what is there to say? The truth is that I have nothing interesting to say and this saddens me immensely. Perhaps inspiration will strike later in the day. Don't hold your breath.

Day Two and we have doubled in size already :) Please say hello and give a big welcome to Mr Squirrel who will, I am assured, start posting very soon. I'm personally looking forward to some erudite and articulate comments on the sad state of society and how living in a game is much better than merely existing in the provinces. Go Squirrel!

MUAHAHAHAHAAAA the girls rock the house, we rule the roost, we... um, ok, running out of hyperbole. The news is that we WON, oh yes we did and that's all that counts. Stick that in your collective pipes and suck it up.

Well, day one and what has happened in this dynamic, vibrant online universe of blogdom?

I've made two friends (to be honest, they were already friends but I've invited them to help me populate this empty space as I can't see me generating very many comments) and hopefully they will starting posting here very soon. Work, while busy, pretty much made me want to suck on some chocolate salty balls. And now my fingers are itching to boot up my gnome mage and kick some Horde butt but my "friends" are insisting that I go out and "have fun". Whoever said real life is better than the virtual was clearly on some kind of hallucinogen.

This is a test. Yes, that's right, a test. I've never blogged before, I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm trying it out because everyone else seems to be doing it. I'm usually two years behind the times in any trend and blogging is no different. If I think of anything intelligent to say, then I will post it here. This will be an arid wilderness...