Guild Wars 2: No Metagaming

I'm a little late to the Guild Wars 2 party, being of limited funds.  I almost wish I had bought it instead of Assassin's Creed 3 because for the life of me I haven't been able to get into it past a few multiplayer sessions.  The multiplayer isn't as fun as I remember, but maybe I haven't played it enough to get my mojo back and getting stabbed in the face every two seconds isn't so fun.  And I haven't started the single player because honestly it just seems exhausting.  Sure the combat and climby-jumpy stuff is fun and all, but the story is getting so damn convoluted and I KNOW its going to end with some wacko cliffhanger to lead into the inevitable sequel where there will be more climby-jumpy stuff and fabulous combat and MORE weird story elements to lead into another sequel and on and on for as long as they can keep it up.  Its like a long corridor with no end in sight, because Ubisoft has as much as confirmed (as far as I know) that they'll be trying to crank out an AC sequel every year.  Maybe I'll play it, but for now Starcraft and now Guild Wars 2 seem far more appealing to me.

So I've started two characters already, a Sylvari Mesmer named Kikkari and a Norn Ranger named Meia Lua.  Haven't played the ranger yet, and I'm wondering if I should level up one character and then the other, or just have four or five characters going concurrently.  But to the point, I took my Mesmer out and just started doing things - quests, gathering, crafting, exploring.  And I was doing it all without any outside information beyond a couple simple beginner tips and a guide for how the menus worked.  It was fun, surprising, and exploratory but eventually the cancer of metagaming started to creep in.  Where to get the best armor, what build should I use for optimal leveling, and (as Yahtzee says) how can I get my numbers to beat the enemy numbers so that my numbers are the best in the land.  I started alt-tabbing for a quick wiki-browse every couple minutes to figure out which skills to pick and other things until the fun just leached out of the game.  This happened my second gaming session, and after I was done I honestly didn't know if I would ever pick it up again.  There goes my fifty bucks, I thought.

I did eventually because of a lovely person I know on Twitter, and the fun came back just running around doing events and jumping puzzles (which I am rubbish at) and generally just having a good time without all the numbers.  So the next time I picked up the game I closed the guides about where to find the best armor and weapons and just used whatever I picked up from monsters or could buy with my karma.  I started crafting jewelry because I thought it would be fun, not because it would level me faster.  I became a tailor because I wanted to make pretty clothes.  I went back to my starting area and noodled around there and found a metric ton of things I hadn't seen before.  The first time I jumped into water and almost got killed by a zombie before I figured out how to swim was amazing.  I've died plenty and had to repair my armor because I wandered into something way too high level for me, including the Christmas airship which you are supposed to have five people to play.  I may not be an expert at the game, but I am having fun and if anyone mocks me for having n00b equipment I will make my character dance at them until they go away.

Oh, and also the snowball fighting they added for the Christmas season is the awesomepants.

That is not to say I don't indulge in the metagame, mostly in JRPGs.  I would never have gotten the good ending of Valkyrie Profile, Dante as a party member in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, or nearly every Ultimate Weapon in Final Fantasy X (pretty sure I was only missing Tidus' and Wakka's) without online guides.  And if you're wondering, yes I am indulging in a bit of nerd chest-puffery.  I still use guides for most Bioware games, but certainly not as frequently as I did previously.  Mostly it was just to make sure a moral choice was going to fuck me over in the long run or make me unable to sleep with Fenris.  But after Mass Effect 2 I stopped caring about maximizing my Paragon points because I found if I role-played Shepard the way I wanted I got a full meter anyway.  But most of the Western RPGs I've played other than that are all about exploration for me, to hell with the guides.  And since in Guild Wars 2 it seems to me the only reason to pore over internet strategies is to find out how to get to level 80 faster.  So, no thanks on that.

On the other hand, though, without the metagame in Starcraft 2 I would have rage-quit the first day.  I guess it just has to be judicially applied in the proper circumstances.