I can't play Guild Wars

I tried to play Guild Wars. It's just so unpolished, clunky, and full of rookie interface mistakes that I can't even take it seriously. The moment-to-moment feel is so off-putting that I can't stand it for more then 5 minutes before I quit in frustration. I wanted to like it so much, because it's based on the "right" concepts of fairness rather than being rpg-heavy and caring about time invested way more than ability.

Here's a quick list of its crimes:

I can't leave the game running and on screen while I click on things on my second monitor. I have to minimize the game access anything on my second monitor.

I can't figure out how to turn off click-to-move. Even when "click to move" is off, I left click on an NPC or Monster or loot on the ground and my character runs towards it. I never want to move unless I move myself.

When I hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse, the camera and character move as expected. When I hold the LEFT mouse button down and move the mouse, nothing happens. I should be able to move the camera WIHOUT moving the character with this method. It's very painful to be missing this feature. In World of Warcraft I do this constantly and can't even fathom that this similar game doesn't allow this very basic feature.

Left clicking on a monster attacks that monster. I want left click to select things and never interact with them. Right-clicking should interact with them.

The "unit frames" (HUD graphics at top of the screen when you select a unit) look absurdly bad. Also, when you have a unit targeted, its name appears over him in text. This text looks like a joke or placeholder. Should be in a nice-looking small popup window with a decent font.

The green exclamation points over the heads of quest-givers are too hard to see. Should be more bold.

Art style of humans in this game bothers me. Almost all my options to make a male character look homosexual. Way too many options are for characters that look slight, slender, and dainty.

The mini-map spins around as I turn. This is totally disorienting to me and I want it to stay still.

The game has no jump fucntion. Not that it's really needed for gameplay, but it contributes to the overal clunky experience of Guild Wars when you can't climb up a little lip, two inches high.

There are weird invisible walls all over the place in levels. Makes it feel very restricted, but is at least consistent with the overal clunky Guild Wars feel.

When you rotate the camera quickly with the mouse, then let go, the camera takes a brief moment to smoothly come to a stop. I want it to move instnatly. This is very subtle, but bothers me every time I move the camera.

Guild Wars was my most anticipated game of the year(!), but the simple act of moving the character around and attacking is so unpolished that I can't even have fun with this game. :(

Now all the Guild Wars fans can get mad at me.
--Sirlin

PvP in World of Warcraft, yet again

All I really play these days are the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. As hoped, they do have some of the basic properties a competitive game needs to even be a competitive game: there is a beginning, middle, and end to a match; there are clear rules about who won and who lost the match, and there are roughly equal numbers of players on each side.

That's a good start. There are also elements to the battlegrounds that make them total trash as a competitive game. The thing I can't figure out is...why do the elements that I hate (and that ruin the game as a "real competitive game(TM)" end up making me play way more than I otherwise would? Also, if I could create a similar game any way I wanted, what would I change?

First, let's look at these "trash elements" as far as competitive games go.
1) You can fight computer-controller monsters and you get loot that helps you win in pvp. Why?
2) While fighting computer controlled monsters, your ability to organize with 40 other people matters more than your individual skill. Why? (This is just a sub-problem of the first problem.)
3) If you play A LOT of games, you gain enough "faction reputation to buy new gear that helps you win. Note that even if you lose, you still gain the faction rep, just slower.
4) There is a pvp ladder system. If you are ranked very, very high in this system, you get better loot that helps you win. This ladder system is hopelessly brokenly designed FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF FAIRNESS. Note that this is an MMO and it's not about fair pvp.

So why do I play these battlegrounds constantly? The answer is 3 things:
1) It's fun.
2) I can get faction reputation to get better gear.
3) Maybe I can get a high pvp rank if I put insane time into it.

Why am I so baited by 2) and 3)? Can you imagine Street Fighter if you could just "play a long time" and get a better Dragon Punch? Lol, it's craziness. And yet it owns me.

I could write a whole article on the craziness of the pvp rankings, but mabye I'll save that for next time. Anyway, if I could create a similar game, what would I do differently? Just eliminate 2) and 3) so that you can never gain items to make you better? That's the first obvious answer, but unfortunately those rewards are so damn strong, that it gets a lot of people to play. What if the rewards did not affect gameplay? Like if they were cool looking clothes your character could wear, and they are hard to get, but they don't give a gameplay advantage. I'm guessing that only a very small percentage of players would be baited into caring about that.

My answer really should be "Counter-strike doesn't give any item-advantages before the match even starts, and that's how it should be." But these rpg forces are SOOO strong, that as a game designer, I can't just totally ignore them.

Thoughts?
--Sirlin