Guild Wars: Here's Why I Didn't Buy GW:EN

This is just sad. Over the weekend, when I wasn't trying to bull my way up and through the Crystal Desert to get to Augury and the promise of sweet, sweet XP tripled (For the record, I did get the 50k XP with a non-Prophesies character who hadn't "ascended" by the standards of the other games yet. Well, actually, I think I had cleared NF's low bar but since I hadn't in my homelands of Cantha, I wasn't able to switch profs. AND I nailed the bonus since I kicked my Queen Dopplepopilis's ass so fast I just had to go back and do it again in hard mode. But that 50k XP was not trebbled. Such a rip-off.), anyway, I sat down to some nice relaxing obs mode. Beats the hell out of watching football and being reminded there's some imposters wearing the winged helmets this year. But, not only was obs mode more barren, more berreft of matches than I've seen in a long time. And not only were the teams that were accorded auto-obs status mostly relegated to beating up on patsies - very few matches of teams both in the top 100. But in my admittedly none obsessive viewing, I don't remember seeing a single skill from the new expansion being used.

It's a few weeks past release and, with the preview weekend, and them being reinstalled in the ATs, this would be about the time I'd expect to see them. Figure by now the novelty has worn off, people have figured out a few new tricks, and the few new skills that are worth a damn are entering heavy rotation in serious play. Instead, they're strangely absent. No one's even using them in janky ways in the hopes of finding something good. Not amongst the top teams, anyway.

Which suggest two things, to me. 1) Not many of those skills are, in fact, worth a damn. Soemthing I was a little worried about when looking over them. There weren't many real instant winners but I expected someone to find something that I missed by now. And 2) Not many of the hardcore have bothered to pick up GW:EN. You can't use the skills you can't unlock, after all.

And the lack of support for PvP options would be why I passed on the expansion, myself. I might come back for the campaign, even though it looks shockingly brief. But I'd stay for the PvP. There's no PvP, hence, there's no point in my sticking around. And the sad thing is, I'm confident I'm not the only one holding that opinion.