Today I checked the Guild Wars front page which I haven’t done since the game went live. I assumed they wouldn’t ever update it because, y’know, no monthly fee. Since the server farm has been up and operational every time I wanted to play, they’re really under no obligation to change, update, fix or explain anything.

In my own mind, no monthly means we’re not married. I can walk away, they can walk away.

In many ways, this is my kind of relationship.

I know they had some blahblah about pushing new content every so often, but who believes that anymore? But there it is, in black and gold, in less than a month they pushed new content. Crazy. (The 5-16-05 news item because ArenaNet doesn’t believe in permalinks either.)

The rest of it is standard front page schtick: guild of the week, contests, press coverage, yawn, but one item caught my eye … Name Alert System. You can, in fact, report offensive character names via email. Damn.

I was enjoying the whole Wild West, lawless, Deadwood feel of Guild Wars. You’re on your own in this world, cupcake. No GMs to whine to, no official/moderated/corporately-sanitized (I hereby lay legal claim to the adjective “corporatized”) message boards to spam, no recourse WHATSOEVER.

You fuck up, you’re annoyed, you’re offended, game screws you, tough shit.

On paper, that sounds bad, but hell, there’s no monthly fee, the server farm is always open for business, I have no complaints.

I’m not a frequent petitioner in any game as it is; I think the only petition I ever sent to Blizzard was “hi, boats are broken. thx.” The authority-free world that I imagined of Guild Wars (and maybe is, the email addy could be a junk folder for all I know) was tremendously liberating.

It’s just the NPCs and us. There’s no one here to save you now.