One of the highlights in my Guild Wars gaming career happened while I was extolling the virtues of Guild Wars to a friend of mine.

First I let him create a new roleplay character and led him through several quests in the tutorial region. (The pre-searing Ascalon region is the prettiest.)

I have also shown him the other regions and the ascended characters I was playing with.

After that, it was time for some Guild Wars PvP (player versus player) action.

I jumped over to the 'Tomb of the Primeval Kings' map, where the ongoing tournament for 8 member parties is located. For a short time I bitched about how long it takes to assemble a halfway competent team (seems forever), and then grabbed the 4 available henchmen and entered the tournament.

I completely forgot about the test mission before entering the tournament, but nevertheless I managed to defend the Ghostly Hero and successfully join the tournament. (The test mission has been changed since.)

It was then it occurred to me that my friend won't see much PvP action if my small team of 5 gets insta-killed by a company of 8; hell, it may even turn off his interest in the game!

This fear of mine intensified when I saw I was up against a guilded team, not just some random bunch of players. I warned him of the most highly possible outcome of the match (and that being absolutely crushed is not all this game is about) and charged in.

Hah, I managed to kill one! And I'm still alive!

Hah, I managed to kill another one! And I'm still alive!

WTF?! Another one just died. I'm still alive!

This is not happening; I killed a fourth one!!! And I'm still standing!

But I wasn't standing for long because that's when I was finally brought down. Hmpf, what an incompetent team, they can't even crush my puny team properly.

I was impressed with my luck... err... accomplishment, and so was my friend. It didn't come as much of a surprise to him when my team mowed down several other teams in the random 4v4 arena a bit later.

The next time games were the subject of conversation, I politely listened while my friend was recounting my heroic feats in Guild Wars to the others and nodded importantly in agreement.

My status as an uber and 1337 gamer was established!