Dear me, a new time synk!

Jane and I had a ton ‘o fun last night—started after supper and went to 12 midnight. Guild Wars 2. We really haven’t had so much fun since Might and Magic 4. The problems with most games are: bad art; bad maps; not-ready-for-prime-time glitches; and unsolvable puzzles or character requirements: 4 weeks into the game before you realize a mature jumping skill is requisite for the solution to the game and your mouse won’t do it, ergo your character can’t (Oblivion).

Well, we found a big online game with none of the show-stopping faults, and got heavily sunk into it with baby characters—and the fact that two people sitting side by side or across the country can separately run characters, link them up, and go solve problems together. I’m running a fire-throwing noble-born elementalist and Jane’s running a street-rat ranger with a big spotted cat for an ally, and we’re trashing fire drakes and bandits and having a ball. Lynn’s got the game at a higher level than we have, and we haven’t linked up with her yet, but we can: there’s a way to talk back and forth, even by audio, if you have headphones (not yet) and while my crappy mouse skills have me running into pillars and off stairways, I’m learning for a very practical reason: I’ve got a mouse I can marginally use, and my hands are starting to get just a little sore from the trackpoint mouse I tend to use while writing: since gran had bad arthritis, I pay attention to this warning. Gameplay may teach me to use a trackball efficiently yet.

And my guy is quite pretty, which is fun.

If any of you are gamers and want to give this one a spin, you buy the not-too-pricey disk, and that’s the last money you have to spend. You log on to a server: if any of you ask, we can tell you what server we’re on, which probably helps if you’re trying to ‘meet’ somebody on line; and beyond that, you just run around and have fun. Time just got away from us, and we realized it was midnight.