I keep forgetting to take screenshots in GW2, which is a shame, as one of my favourite things about the game is how pretty it is.   My very favourite thing about the game is that it’s free to play, of course.   There are no difficult decisions to be made about subscriptions.   I can log in, check my mail, do a bit of crafting and a bit of exploration, safe in the knowledge that I haven’t paid to do so.

One thing that’s nice about that, is that I don’t feel a duty to play, just to justify my sub.  I’d particularly started to feel that with SW:TOR before I left.  On the other hand, I’m finding I have a more leisurely approach to the game, just because I’m not paying a sub.    It doesn’t matter if I don’t log in today or tomorrow, because I can log in any day I like. 

Unfortunately, that has a downside.  Because I’m not in game day to day, it feels as if I lose track of what I’m doing.  I’ll log in, usually to find myself next to a crafting station.   I might have a look at my map for unfilled “hearts”, particularly trying to pick those which involve killing humanoid mobs, because I’m a tailor and need the cloth.  I might then notice that the travel costs are a bit steep and try to work out whether I’ve got the time and the bag space to make the most out of the journey.  Sometimes, I’ll log in and find myself out in the world, and from there I might travel on to the next hub, or go back and do some crafting.

This is where the lack of formal quests isn’t working so well for me.  With no clear sense of direction and purpose when I log in, I tend to focus on crafting and gathering, and every day feels much the same.   There is the personal story, of course, but I’ve left that on hold because I can’t decide which faction to join and so can’t progress the story. 

I’ve ended up being a very slow leveler.  Even more slow than usual.  I still only qualify for the first dungeon, and there hasn’t been a guild run there since I got to that level.  I’m hoping to get into PVP in GW2 instead (can you level through PVP?  I haven’t checked), as it’s possibly more easy to dip in and out of it, but I imagine gear is going to be a problem.   At the moment, I feel the levels stretching ahead of me, and I feel I haven’t done enough “homework” on my class to be effective in dungeons or PVP.   One thing that I would have loved for GW2 was a low level dungeon so that we could all get stuck in, in the first week or so, and perhaps some short dungeons.  I think that’s particularly important because it’s free to play and “casual”.  As it is, I’ve now been playing the game for several weeks, but am still pretty clueless.