I guess Menhlo and Togo just don't do it for you That's OK. I don't care for them much either. What ever happened to Menhlo's Tryian buddies, anyways? They follow you to Cantha, but then they just kind of disappear without so much as a good-bye. I guess Cynn got fed up with Menhlo's "flirtatious" ways and dumped him, prompting the rest of the party to disband in the resulting boredom.

Be that as it may, I agree. Guild Wars (especially Factions) is missing something. Farming green items and fame just isn't particularly alluring. Those "record" missions are cool, but I don't have the time it takes to scrape up a good team. I only get a couple of hours of play time each night, and it seems that I spend most of that time trying to gather people to play with. One thing I liked about Prophecies was that I could do about 75% of the game solo (or at least just with one other person). In Factions, the reverse is true: about 75% of the content requires a real party (that is, if you want Masters on all the missions).

The whole Master idea ticks me off too. I had lots of fun the first time I went through Prophecies by taking my time to explore and find bonus objectives. In contrast, I constantly felt pressured to rush through Factions to obtain the Master level on the missions. I'm sure ArenaNet would argue that I can always revisit the areas in explorable mode at my leisure, but who wants to revisit the same areas right after rushing through them in a mission?

If Nightfall isn't a better expansion than Factions, I tihnk it will be my last one.