Choose My Adventure: Guild Wars 2 takes the polls

MMOs come and go. They get popular and sink to obscurity. Expansions can give a suffering MMO another chance, make an average MMO the popular kid on the block, or change the industry completely. No matter which MMOs come and go or what expansions push an MMO into the sunlight for a spell, many MMOs will keep on running with a larger community than there were votes on this poll. Not to mention people who aren't playing but want to see someone else play! Guild Wars 2 and Allods were initially close enough in the poll to leave a little doubt as to who might win, but GW2 swept ahead and held on to the end.

So before I let you vote on what you want me to do in Guild Wars 2, let me tell you a bit about my playstyle so you can make your decision. You'll find all of this week's polls at the end!

I think of myself as a strange bird when it comes to playing MMOs. I'm predominantly an explorer. I used to call myself a crafter, but crafting doesn't really live up to my snooty standards. I'm not big into PvP, but I like having it in my games, though I prefer the much-maligned open-world PvP that's found in EVE Online and Darkfall. I even like to go into dungeons. I'm happy when my character dings or gets a new shiny, but it's all icing on a delicious cake for me. I'm also very flighty at times and can't stand to do one activity for too long. Yet I've also found myself gathering for hours on end, with no break.

I do love to explore. I always hope that the developers have seen fit to put some fun objects in the hidden corners of zones. I don't just explore; I travel around to see it all while leveling or gathering. Many times my personality seamlessly morphs in and out of a slight roleplaying mentality. At any moment I may be gathering wood so I can make money to buy a shiny, but a mob or boss could suddenly demand my attention. I become the reluctant hero who needs to slay this beast because it recently terrorized a nearby village or killed my friend's character and provoked my revenge. That story could play out in a minute, then the roleplay fades away and I'm back playing a videogame.

I usually don't care about leveling or gaining XP beyond a casual desire. I like and want games to be fun from moment to moment. Every second. That's the cake. If I'm beating up a bunch of goblins and I level up, I let out a "woot" and do a dance, but if I'm only at 14% XP, I don't care. It doesn't spur me on, annoy, or aggravate me. Same with winning stuff. Yes. It's super-cool to win new armor, but I just don't care that much. Certainly not enough to run through a dungeon multiple times. My level 80 Shaman in World of Warcraft has mostly green armor, and I'm totally fine and content with that. If I find a nice, new pair of blue pants, then awesome. Ding, congrats, go me, but XP and many other rewards are just a thin layer of icing. The cake is the game, and it should taste good. The icing tastes good too, but it adds to the cake. I do not want an inch-thick cake with a layer of icing a foot thick.

It's true I can't do any one activity for too long before feeling as if it's torture, but I have done single activities for very long periods of time. More than a few times, I've spent three to four hours in one sitting just gathering wood in Runes of Magic. I think it might have something to do with it being an activity that I have total control over and can start and stop whenever I want.

I do like dungeons, achieving, and getting stronger. I enjoyed all the dungeons I've run through with guildmates, but a strong force for me is just knowing I'm playing with friends.

Once upon a time, I logged into RoM and decided to run to a high-level zone that would take a bit of time to reach on foot. I just felt like doing that, so I set off. Along the way, I playfully killed some boars in a casual, solo-RP mode. Realizing the drop rate on their tusks was good and that I already had some in my bags, I decided to collect them. They're good for a daily quest. I was way higher-level than that zone, but I was having fun, so I just kept doing it. I figured I was still getting tokens, even if it was a pathetic amount of XP gain from turning them in. After close to an hour, I started to tire of it and went to the auction house to see what kind of profit I could get. I found it was pretty small, so I checked with my guild. None of them needed or wanted the tusks, so I hung around the daily quest board and gave them to players who were doing the quest.

I spent over one year playing RoM without ever doing the repeated dungeon runs necessary to get better armor, but I enjoyed every sword stroke, every second sitting and chatting with guildies, and I never felt like I was missing out.

This is the start of my adventures in Tyria, and I need you to do some special things for me. GW2 has a nice character customization system that's too hard to make into a poll. So I want you to give me a short description of what you want my character to look like in the comment section below. Do I make a super-tall, bald, dark-skinned character with crazy tattoos? Or a pinkish-colored, medium-height, heavy-set dude with giant eyes and hair resembling an afro?

Your second goal is even easier. Make sure to vote in the number poll. Those three numbers represent story choices when creating a character. I will choose my character's story options based off of the order of votes each number receives. If the number two wins followed by the number three, that means my first choice will be the second option the game gives me, and for my second decision, I'll pick the third and so on. I'll repeat the process if necessary. I think this will spice things up and make for a fun, random story-line.

You have until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, October 28th, to vote.%Poll-78430%%Poll-78427%%Poll-78436%%Poll-78445%%Poll-78449%%Poll-78463%

Jeremy Stratton needs more MMOs to play. Seriously. The imaginary doctor who lives in his head gave him a prescription. The problem is, he's too flighty. He never knows just what MMO to try or how long to stick with it in order to get the most of it. That's why he needs you to tell him what game to play and how to play it every Wednesday in Choose My Adventure!