Anticipation

Well, turns out it's easier to proofread at home with the way my desk is set up here at home. Ah well, word search puzzles are still entertaining. Oh shoot, I meant to pick up another one when we went school-supply-shopping today. Will have to pick one up at the grocer tomorrow.

So today I watched NCSoft's live feed from Germany GamesCom for the Guild Wars demo and then later the recorded Q&A session with Martin Kerstein presenting selected fans' questions to Isaiah "Izzy" Cartwright (posted on YouTube, ncsoftwest's channel).

The demo was interesting - presented some concepts I'm not warming to just yet, but nothing deal-breaking for me. I'm still excitedly anticipating the release of Guild Wars 2. The skills and the way they change with whatever you pick up or hold make logical sense, and the positioning battlefield tactics are awesome, and the group experience sharing and dynamic events are completely outstanding. But the monster's day-glo highlight when targeted makes me somewhat less enthused. I love the area-of-effect fire, earth and lightning effects we've seen thus far, but I hope any glowing effects aren't too Vegas-y.

The battle "feel" sounds like it will be very intuitive and natural, so I would hate to have neon glow spoil that "naturalness" - I suppose some folks would use the word "immersion" there, but I don't ever feel "immersed" in a game, sorry that's going to take a holodeck-level of tech for me to feel "immersed."

Semantics aside, it's an interesting time but the anticipation is agonizing. From all the hints I'm picking out of various interviews and the ArenaNet blog posts, I'm gathering it's going to be mid-2011 before we get to dive in. Maybe they're shooting for the six-year anniversary of GW1. I could accept that; I could be happy with that. But I'm afraid it won't happen that soon. Pessimism. Hard to stave off at times.