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

It's been around a week since Diablo III's launch and after spending a lot of time in-game, I think I am in a position to review it. The anticipation for this game was insane and it has gotten a massive amount of media attention, both positive and negative. Did the super popular game developer, Blizzard, live up to the expectation, or was Diablo III just hype?

I have to say, even now after playing the game a lot for a week, I still have mixed feelings about Diablo III. I've been having fun but I can't help but think that the only reason I am playing the game at all is because of how popular it is. So, I'll try to break down the different aspects of the game as best as I can.

Story

The first Blizzard game I ever played was Warcraft III and I was really amazed by the story. Not many other games of the time had gotten my attention and kept it as long as Warcraft III did. Naturally, I became a fan of Blizzard back then. For me, the thing that stood out the most were the pre-rendered

May 15th - a date marked in the calendars of gamers across world. The highly anticipated third instalment in the Diablo series has finally been released. After waiting years to slay demons, undead and Prime Evils, players can finally step into the world of Sanctuary. Or can they?

After a very shaky Open Beta, where many players had difficulty logging in, I thought that Blizzard would have been prepared for launch. If the servers couldn't handle the amount of people logging in back then, then surely they wouldn't be able to on launch day unless they were improved somehow, right?

The problem lies with Battle.Net 2.0, the platform that Blizzard has all gamers connect to before playing Diablo III. But Diablo III is a single player game with an online component, so one would assume that an

On May 9th 2012, Blizzard announced that all Closed Beta testers for Diablo III will be receiving an exclusive Feat of Strength: One of the Chosen. Below is the extract from the Community Manager, Lylirra:

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"In celebration of a successful beta test, all players who were invited to participate in the Diablo III closed beta will receive the commemorative Feat of Strength, "One of the Chosen." For eligible players, this feat will appear automatically in the Feat of Strength list after logging in for the first time as well as unlock a unique sigil that can be used on character banners.

In order to be eligible for "One of the Chosen," you must have had a Diablo III closed beta license attached to your Battle.net account (it isn't necessary to have downloaded or logged into the beta its

After the surprisingly good Diablo III beta, I was a bit worried that Guild Wars 2 would not live up to my expectations. But now that I have had a taste, I can't wait for the game's final release.

The first thing I noticed is just how quickly the game booted up. Diablo III impressed me with its quick startup time but Guild Wars 2's was even faster. Another great feature is that the client saves both your username and password, making login a breeze. It was easy to jump straight into the character creator and the game world.

Over the weekend I played mostly Structured PvP, which is incredibly fun and like nothing I have ever seen in a mmo before. You can access this mode anywhere in the game world by the menu, and instantly have all skills and high level equipment. This means that no one has gear or level advantages, so the battlefield is pretty much even.

It took a while to customize my characters' skills, weapons and traits but it was all interesting. Those players who like tr

Last weekend, Blizzard had it's Open Beta test for its highly anticipated game, Diablo III. I actually did a blog about choosing between Guild Wars 2 and Diablo III and since then I have been leaning more on the GW2 side (already pre-purchased). However the D3 beta may have just changed my mind.

Let me first say that I haven't played either Diablo 1 or 2 to any extent. So Diablo III was pretty much my first foray into the isometric dungeon crawler. The experience was much better than I expected. Getting into the game was the hardest task - the servers were full at all times. But once I was able to get into Battle.net, it was actually quite enjoyable.

The first thing I noticed is that the game loaded very quickly and had a very beautiful art style. It certainly isn't the best graphics in a game but it definitely had a unique atmosphere and visual appeal. Anyway, I got to play as all the classes and I did a quick breakdown of my opinions on them below. Note that these opinions are

In case you didn't already know, the North American version of Aion (hosted by NCsoft) will be going Free 2 Play from next week! Best of all, this isn't the typical P2P to F2P transition - Aion will be adopting a similar change as Lineage 2. Be ready for Aion 3.0 Truly Free!

So what kind of stuff can you expect? I've been playing the game's free trial for a couple weeks now and I have to say I am very pleased. The graphics are great, the client is stable, good music and fun gameplay. The only thing that could make the game better would be more content and players and that is exactly what we can expect on April 11th. 

Some of the things in 3.0 that players are excited about:

* Mounts - one of Aion's biggest draw is the flight system - all players have wings which can appear different