My New Best Friends

The more I see of this Guild Wars, the more I like it. In many ways, it smashes all the old rules of online rpg’ing and spits on them.

Like grouping.

If you’ve been keeping up, in GW you can hire these NPC henchmen to round out the quest group and assist out in the field. No charge, but they do ninja loot and coins. Kick ass group members tho — our mage henchmen was tanking a couple of mobs at one point without complaint, or much apparent damage either. Usually, he was flawless in his aggro control, he must have been bored that late in the mission.

One group, we hired a healer henchman, errr, excuse me … it was a henchWOMAN … and rarely have I seen such a stellar performance from a cleric (called monks in GW, whatever). Priests, doctors, friars, monks … they’re all clerics to me.

Damn, she was good. I was a bit behind the others checking the cleared portion for any loot wreckage, chests, whathaveyou, that we might have missed, and the monk comes running back to check on me. She was nuking, healing, meleeing, anything to service OUR needs. Not a single whine did she utter, not a single afk did she take.

Those henchmen are better than real people as groupmembers. Probably superior guildmates, too, but don’t quote me on that.

Our one guildie is so enamored with henchmen now, he never has room in his groups for anyone else. Example: “hey, I have that quest too, can I join ya?” “sorry, full group” “is the group full OF HENCHMEN??? or are they people?” Silence.

He could be taking this thing too far.

Real, live players are always welcome in my groups, as long as there’s still room for Nukey, the sexually ambiguous mage and Healee, superior monk healer — some might call her a slut, but it’s just because she’s free with her sexuality and doesn’t subscribe to modern societal mores.

We’ve grown close.

8 thoughts on “My New Best Friends

  1. Truth. The quality of the henchmen is one of the primary reasons why I purchased the game. Solo when you want, group when you want, or group with henchmen and still be solo (technically).

  2. Hah. Just yesterday you were belittling the use of henchmen. NOW look at you!

    BTW, it looks like the login link is missing from your page now, or I’m just too dumb to find it. I couldn’t log in using my RSS reader and had to ZOMG open my actual web browser. BLIZZ FIX PLS KTHX.

  3. Reading this after playing Republic Commando gives me visions of squad based MMOs…

    And yeah I know about the korean one but really, all those ragnarok online clones have turned me off korean MMOs for good. That and the janglish gets old fast.

  4. I tried GW today for a couple of hours. Friend let me make a char on his acount. WOW that game needs a LOT of work on it’s interface and “teaching” newb players like myself how to play the game. My first impression is that the game is REALY bad. It’s basicly Diablo 2 but with less polish.

    The world design is horrible although it looks fairly pritty. Whats with not being able to jump? What’s with those pain in the ass “invisible” walls? ARG. And that 8 spells only thing? Jeez that’s anoying. I can see all the people who loved playing Diablo 2 liking this game, but i also see the game lasting for only a year TOPS.

    I dont doubt that the game will become a mega hit in Korea as a lot of online games do in that area of the world.

    Small side note: What’s with almost all of the male necromancer faces looking asian? I felt like i was playing Lineage: The Bloodpledge when i was designing my necro. har har har

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