Well, Guild Wars is having a free preview weekend of the Factions expansion. Or something. I’m not exactly sure. I just saw the word ‘free’ really, so I thought I’d give it a go.

I went through the training, thinking the game was a bit too fast for my liking, but got through all the fights easily enough. After training, found myself in a big open area with loads of other actual human being people. Ran around randomly until someone invited me into a team. I accepted. When we had a full team, we leapt into a mission and died within about ten seconds.

After which the leader left and – gulp! – the game promoted me to be leader of the party. Someone else asked to join, so I let them jump in and sent us to a random fight. One person never turned up for some reason, so it was only three of us. We died within ten seconds.

After that, our party was down to two people, but two more soon joined. Someone recommended an easy fight we could do. So I chose that one and all four of us turned up and… we died within ten seconds.

I decided it was time to quit.

The whole thing was absolutely baffling and the fights run so fast I found it impossible to keep up. I guess it’s designed for people who’ve played the original and know what they’re doing. It is an expansion, after all.