You know what you get when you combine one wife with a bunch of her old high school friends whom she hasn't seen in ages; toss in some alcohol and some good food? You get an all day and well into the night event which completely eliminates ANY chance of playing Guild Wars, or any other game for that matter. Well, now Saturday is shot too; that leaves just Sunday, and I made it clear in no uncertain terms that I would be in my office working (read: playing the BWE) all day Sunday and was not to be disturbed for anything.

6:15 Sunday morning and I'm wide awake. I had no intention of waking up this early... There was no alarm clock set or anything, but as long as I'm awake I might as well take advantage of it. Grabbing a cup of coffee on the way I head into my office, check my email and forums; get all of that out of the way and log into Guild Wars. Having spent all of my playing time on Friday in the RP section I decide I should spend Sunday in the PvP section. So I roll up a Warrior/Monk.

So I start off in The Crag. After several completely crappy groups I finally end up in one where we all click and everyone works well together. We win more than we lose by far and at one point won like four in a row. While we were waiting for our next victims to come in the message pops up that there's a new build and we should log out. So I log out, get the new update and log back in. Have I mentioned how much I love ArenaNet's streaming patching system? Well I do love it! That feature alone is almost enough to make me buy the game; but anyway, back to the tale at hand.

Upon logging back in I decide that the Warrior/Monk was ok, but I just really wasn't feeling it. I love the Warrior part of it; I've always loved being the main tank, right in the middle of the action, mowing down opponents. So I decided to be a little different from most people I'd run across so far; I went pure Warrior, no secondary profession. In all of my time playing so far I'd only seen one other person without a secondary profession. I really see no benefit in going with only one profession other than having less things to worry about. Without the Monk part I'm not worried about healing anyone or anything, just getting in there and taking people out.

This time around I decide that I've had my fill of The Crag and head to where the real fun is: The Tomb of the Primeval Kings and the Hall of Heroes tournament. Once again it takes several tries before I end up in a good group. And boy are we good. We're rocking and rolling; dropping teams left and right. We made it all the way through and won seemingly without even breaking a sweat. I don't know if we were just that good or everyone else we fought had bad teams. Personally I like to run with the thought that we were just that good. At one point the timer read somewhere in the neighborhood of about fifteen minutes until our next opponents would show up. A couple people left at that point so we all decided to head out.

I spent the next several hours running through the various battles with one group or another. Sometimes we won, sometimes we got schooled something awful. Whether I was on a winning team or a losing team it was a blast either way. I only ever went back to the RP side of the game once and that only lasted for about twenty minutes before I was thirsting to shed the blood of other players again.

I've never been much of a fan of PvP. I think that mostly stems from having played Shadowbane and I just absolutely can not stand open PvP. During my DAoC days it didn't bother me much at all because it was controlled. If I didn't want to PvP I didn't have to. I never had to worry about someone forty levels above me ganking me while I'm trying to do a quest. Well except for those few rare exceptions where the quest took you into the Frontiers. That's probably the reason why I'm enjoying Guild Wars so much. The PvP is so much more structured than even DAoC was. Not only do you have to specifically go seeking the PvP by going to the specific areas, you even have goals and missions to accomplish.

When I first heard of Guild Wars and read the synopsis of it I thought that it definitely wasn't the game for me. While I still believe there are games out there I'll have more fun playing when they're released as my "full time" game; I will definitely be picking up Guild Wars to play alongside whatever game I happen to be playing at the time. You never know when you just have the insatiable urge to go around killing other players and Guild Wars, with its lack of monthly fees, is the perfect outlet for that bloodlust. So hopefully on April 28th I'll see many of you on the fields of battle in Guild Wars; and whether you're on my team or on an opposing team may the majority of the blood coating your armor be not your own.