With a mix of familiar MMORPG tropes and new, modern approaches to delivering them, Guild Wars 2 is an excellent, welcoming take on the genre.

During a full month playing Guild Wars 2, I recorded impressions in a series of logs. The first was where I discovered an insatiable need to explore. In the second, I marveled at how easy it was to get off the beaten path, how unnecessary it seemed to be to form a party, and how generally amiable the community was. Part three was where I discovered crafting, and in log four I hopped into world vs world PvP and fell off rather a lot of cliffs.

Guild Wars 2 is suffering from phishing attacks by hackers believed to be in China who so far have compromised scores of user accounts since the game launched a couple of weeks ago. ArenaNet, the game's developer, insists its servers and web portals remain secure...