Just a couple of quick questions here, from what you've experienced playing WoW, and what we've seen of Guild Wars so far, which do you think would be the better buy for someone who doesn't have very much time to devote to a MMORPG (5 hours a week, tops), and who was a huge fan of DIablo 2?

On a different note, what's the most humourous thing you've seen in game in WoW so far?

Oh, and I think Goog's column title was a reference to SIlent Hill 4, but I can't understand the sympathy part either

AcidMan

ANDREW If you're not a gung-ho MMORPG freak and you don't get great personal enjoyment out of bashing slimes for eight hours to go up a level, I would recommend you go for the more user-friendly Guild Wars, since in addition to having a much simpler system as compared with WoW also possesses the notable advantage of being made by former Blizzard staff, some of whom, if memory serves, worked on Diablo. On the other hand, WoW possesses the notable advantage of playing almost exactly like Diablo, except with a Warcraft facelift and a few more people than you might commonly be used to in your average game of D2. The funniest thing I have seen... I guess I miss out on a lot of unbridled hilarity, because there isn't too muhc going on that's really all that funny. There was "good lord they're dumb" funny when some high-level Alliance attacked Orgrimmar's gates the last day I played(for reference, Orgrimmar is filled to the brim with people; attacking it with only five assailants is tantamount to suicide, though they coulnd't have cared all that much about that. There's also "Man I wish I could get out of this shame rut", when, after experimenting with the fall from Thunder Bluffs, a city stretched across a mountain top, and finding that yes, it was in fact exceedingly fatal to jump over the edge, I proceeded to fall an additional eight times in the next hour, much to my irritation. Beyond junk like that though, the game isn't really about humour; characters can tell jokes (yesterday's title is one of the tauren one-liners) but they're corny as all get out. I DID like that boars dropped apples, though; pretty much insinuating that they're ready for cooking :) As to the mysterious sympathy...

Just because someone's career later descends unto madness doesn't make their previous work any worse, and thus they are still equally deserving of respect.

In closing, Leonard Cohen was cool when he was cool.
-DNE

ANDREW Umm... no, no they aren't. If they become a zen-using shill sell-out sack of crap, they do not deserve my respect, and anyway, I don't like his earlier stuff either so my simmering rage will win the day. By a 3-2 score. In overtime. You should have pulled your goalie. Oh, how I miss hockey...

3 Coments...First, whatever happened to your weekly cartoons about your bunny alter ego?

Second, have you ever done a time attack on an RPG just for the fun of it, not because it could lead to a reward like Excalibur 2 in FF9?

Third, it is true? Are you a different Andrew than the one from last year? In that case, I'm sorry.

Thanks.

ANDREW Questions one and three can be answered in the same breath; the Andrew you are thinking of is in fact a different one, and while we briefly had him on staff again as the Japandemonium columnist, he was kidnapped by Japanese schoolgirls and submitted to all sorts of indignities, most of which will be playable in the upcoming "Rabbit Daughter Mother Tentacle Incident Schoolhouse V," available from your local Hentai dealer this June. And no, I have never done a time attack, nor do I care to post links of any sort.

- Steven

ANDREW Well, the thing about that is, the person who was slated to review the game and the site have since parted ways, leaving us with zero staff members who've beaten the game. This is particularly exacerbated because there aren't very many of us with Xboxes, so unfortunately, we're kind of stuck until the review copy gets sent to the next person in line. Hopefully you'll see something before too long, but I can't really promise any kind of time frame. Moving on to your other questions, I think that as long as a video game series of any stripe retains any minute bit of marketability to be squeezed from it, a sequel in that series you shall see, and in the case of KotOR, the games have been pretty well-respected, so I wouldn't be surprised to see another. As far as the actual games go, I enjoyed pretty much every aspect; there were minor interface tweaks with regards to swoop racing in the first that I felt could easily have been made to create a more enjoyable experience, and though the detailed plot was a welcome element, it did get rather tedious going from planet to planet to planet after a while, so a slightly more compact storyline might be a good thing in my books. As to the blame game, blame yourself; you set your expectations a little too high, from the sounds of it.

Now all that aside, I've got my enchanting at 215 at the moment and couldn't be happier. When I do manage to collect the ingredients I need, the enchants are very useful and, lets face it, everyone likes to see their weapons glow.

One thing I'm dreading thou is the enchanting mastery. Apparantley I have to go into a high level instance to talk to the get artisan level and any training for those skills. Joy. Anyway, thats my schpeel on enchanting. Not for the weak of patience.

-- Kalledon --

ANDREW Thanks for sharing, Kalledon. While Artisan Skinning isn't nearly as troublesome, I do still dread the 5G payment required to attain that level, since that's a whole lot of auctions for me still.