I’ve been playing Guild Wars since the 27th of April. I was able to get a pre order box so I could play starting at 12:01 am on the 27th. I’ve had my eye on this game since around this time last year. Guild Wars comes at an opportune time as my adventures in the World of Warcraft are being made very un-fun with the inclusion of the so called “honor” system and a contest to encourage this so called honor system of Blizzard’s.

Guild Wars at this moment in time feels like a fun game. The biggest selling points right now are no monthly fees to play and the fact that just about everything is a private instance means I don’t have to worry about getting ganked (farmed for honor) as I try to level. I can’t stress how antisocial I am at this time because of this bullshit going on in WoW. So it’s nice to be able to be all alone in an area in Guild Wars if I want to be.

Another huge selling point as it turns out is that I can play the game from work. There is only one port number that needs to be open for the game to work and that port number happens to be open on this isp the hotel uses. The ability to play at work is really amazing seeing how just about every other port number on the internet is closed here at work.

The ability to play at work has many downsides as the these six screen shots above can show. The Intel Extreme Graphics Technology powered 82845G Graphics Controller in the work computer just doesn’t have the muscle to run a game like Guild Wars. The horrible graphics really isn’t the problem. The problem is that about 20 minutes into playing the computer crashes to a bsod that points to one of the driver files for the onboard vid card.

Which is really frustrating. I’ve updated to the latest drivers provided by Intel. I’ve lowered every setting in the game that I can. The damn thing still keeps crashing. Granted this pitiful video card is not supported by the game. I was just hoping to have some luck and make it work via tweaks. And I’m contemplating buying a cheap ass pci video card to put into the work pc I use. It all depends on how things go at the hotel in the coming weeks.