Traditionally in MMOs, your character levels up, and moves on to higher level zones; when he goes back to a low-level zone, it is as if he has godmode strength, sometimes even vanquishing enemies with a single blow.

With Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet sought to change this in an attempt to make the low-level zones more appealing to high level players. What this means is that you are down-leveled to match the zone in which you are in. So you might be level 80, but mobs in the starter zone will give you a similar challenge as they would a newbie character.

This sounds great but there's something I really don't like - your character never really becomes powerful. You don't really feel like you're leveling up and even better gear seems useless, other than for aesthetics.

So then, why are the various maps split into zones for specific level ranges? Why not just allow all players to go to any zone at any time? I think it is because the game is designed to create the illusion of progression.

Guild Wars 2 Review

It's been almost 6 months since Guild Wars 2 was launched and it has been pretty much the only game I have been playing since then. Many writers rush to push out their reviews as quickly as possible but MMO games take a lot of time to mature and I wanted to be sure that I had a good idea of all Guild Wars 2 had to offer.

Throughout those ~5 months I've had some ups and downs. I'll try my best to break down the game so that anyone who hasn't played yet can decide for themselves if it is worth the investment.

The breakdown:

Visuals

For a lot of gamers, this is the first thing they look at, especially with PC games. For GW2, you can look at the graphics as compared to the art direction. Take what I'm about to say with a pinch of salt because opinions will vary a lot.

Graphics

The graphics are good and are certainly the best that I've seen in any MMO I have played. However, I keep wanting more from the game visually. The graphical clipping of cloth, hair and arm

It's no secret that Guild Wars 2 pushes itself as a PvP MMO game. I've spent considerable time in the structured PvP and I have to say, it's probably the best in any MMO I have ever played. I like the way all players are balanced by being given access to all the skills and equipment; I like the small team vs team design, and objective based play; I like that's it is stable.

What worries me is the other side of PvP - the large scale battles which pits 3 servers against each other in a seemingly never ending struggle (World vs World vs World, aka WvWvW). In the second beta weekend event, I spent some time in this mode, and recorded a short video (with an admittedly terrible framerate which may be in the single digits).

Below, I have outlined my concerns:

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* Lag - obviously, when you put so many characters in one area at the same time, you will get lag. I don't think this is

Ever since the release of Diablo III, Blizzard has been under attack by their once dedicated fans. A lot of players were not satisfied with the game, saying that it was a watered down version of Diablo II. I really don't think that's the case, but rather the effect of nostalgia on those gamers.

So far I've spent over a hundred hours playing the game and I can say that I've received the full value of the product. But some were so dissatisfied that refunds were demanded. So that 7.something million copies sold will be knocked back a tiny bit. I don't feel it's fair to play a game and return it just because you don't like it; that's like demanding your money back at the cinema just because you didn't like the movie.

That's not to say that Blizzard is the victim here. I've notice