I have played a lot of video games in my time, probably more than I would care to admit. I have even paid monthly subscription charges to play one (Everquest). I have found, over time, that the majority of the game producers just don’t give a shit about the end user once they pony up the cash for the game. Diablo II still offers the online multiplayer for free, but Blizzard doesn’t really seem to give a shit about the community in general. Why should they? The game is like five years old.
Guild Wars, on the other hand, is actively doing all they can to keep the game both fresh and fun for all of the players, regardless of the fact that you don’t have to pay a fee to play it.
See, they took a normal monster from the game, rebuilt it out of candy corn and put it back in. Just for Halloween. They made a lot of changes to other things as well, cauldrons and the such appearing in the middle of towns, skeletons and candles all over the place. I thought it was extremely cool. Everquest never did anything like that in all the time I was playing it, and I was paying for that service!
I should also note that these candy corn monsters were not merely a background, they were the actual fighting minions that my wife was using as she headed out into battle. That is my wife in the middle of the photo, looking a bit petite (as always) next to the lumbering hulks beside her. Much like real life come to think of it.
I can tell you, from first hand experience, that candy corn doesn’t have to mutate in any way to become deadly. Have you ever eaten any of that shit? You kind of hope it is laced with cyanide about the time you taste it. Definitely better to be bludgeoned to death with it than to have to actually taste it.
Still, Kudos to Guild Wars for throwing in some creative and festive artwork. They didn’t have to do it, but they did. I think little things like that are going to make Guild Wars into on of the longest running games ever. The fact that they do minor updates almost daily doesn’t hurt either.