Not Addicted

“I’m frustrated with this game. I keep dying all the time.” the complaint about Guild Wars: Factions came across my speakerphone. I've had my own annoying moments with video games. So, I listened as he went on. “I can’t even finish the first few missions. The supposedly easy ones? I can't get them finished. I’m not sure if I really want to play this class anymore. I mean, I can’t even kill just a few things. How is it that I’m getting killed by level twos?”


I could sense that frustration in Ed’s voice; it had a twinge of urgency, with a dash of whine. gamer buddies are just like any other type of friend, if you game with them long enough; you start to know their moods even if you don’t see their face very often. It’s different with Ed, though. We have played just about every single MMO together since the dawn of MMOs. Just when I think I have him all figured out, Ed surprises me.

“What class are you playing?” I asked.

“I have a Ritualist,” he said.

This stuff with the dying all the time-- it made no sense to me because Ed is usually a pretty competent player. Or at least he had been, before he disappeared and started playing Dungeons and Dragons Online for the last two months. Still, the Ritualist is the easiest, possibly most powerful class that I’ve ever played in Guild Wars. “What level are you?” I asked, thinking maybe he was in an area that was too powerful for his level.

There was a long pause, and then he said, “Two.”

I must have heard incorrectly, I thought I just heard the number two. That is the level that you are when you complete training, and zone into the city for the very first time. “Two? Are you fighting where you're supposed to be?”

“Yah.”

Now I was really curious. There had to be something terribly wrong. What could be vexing our dragon slaying buddy so badly? I wasn’t going to stand for it. I logged onto my Ritualist, and my husband logged onto his Ritualist. We both wanted to see what was going on.

Ed’s voice echoed across the computer den as I was getting situated, “The underwear on these Ritualists is so cool. These spangles are so cool. It looks really great. I wanted to play a Ranger but the underwear looks really dirty and dingy.” I’ll be the first to admit that Ed says some peculiar things sometimes. I’m used to it. I guess a guy has to check out his female character. I grabbed some henchmen (NPCs who will fight alongside of you) and invited everyone.

I ran my character out of the gate. and directed everyone to the first set of bad guys. We annihilated them.

Ed says, “Cool, you get henchmen?”

“You mean to tell me, that you’ve been playing without any henchmen?”

“That is so cool, you get henchmen!”



Soon enough, we began running through the next mission. We were doing all right, but whenever we got into a large group of creatures, I noticed that I was having a hard time keeping Ed alive. Battle after battle, his health would drop so fast, that I had to keep my eye on his health bar and heal right away, or else he'd die. We got to the area where we would soon face the boss monster. The main NPC that we were supposed to be following veered right up a path of stairs. Ed pressed forward past me, forward, into a large group of monsters. His Ritualist/Ranger ducked down and fired off an arrow. I noticed something odd just then. Not just that he wasn't casting any pets and he was playing a pet class.  Not that he was generating as much aggression as possible with his flimsy character.  It was that Ed was running around as naked as a jaybird. There was not a shred of armor on his character.

Keinen.

Nada.

Niet.

None.

As his character began to fall face first into the dirt while the mobs turned their attentions away from him and unto me. I said, “Hey Ed, where is your armor?”


“In my backpack.”

Jeez. What the fuck? That armor adds on hitpoints. It adds on energy. How can you play without armor? Surely, you'd die fast, and frequent. "Why would you not wear your armor?" and as soon as the words rolled out of my mouth, I realized that I already knew the answer. Man, the underwear on these Ritualists is so cool. Suddenly, it all fell together.

Mission Failed.

These spangles are so cool.

Source: Who Needs Armor?