I intended to hold off creating new Guild Wars Nightfall characters until I finished the game with my Canthan Mesmer. However, my Mesmer was rapidly running out of inventory space and I had to create a new character a few days ago to free up storage space.

Behold my first Nightfall character, a Paragon.

I was pleasantly surprised I was able to create an old character. Guild Wars player characters are mostly pretty boys and girls. Unless they’re Necros, in which case they look like mutants. By mutants I mean ugly Morlock mutants rather than the fashion models of X-Men.

I created an old guy with a bushy white beard. The choices for hairstyle don’t really favour senior citizens, though, and I had to opt for the chromedome look.

So I now have an old black guy who’s bald, has a bushy white beard, wears a skirt and will sound like a twentysomething during cutscenes.

Awesome.

The next step in the creation process was the name. It had to be cool. It ought to set the tone.

As a bonus, the name shouldn’t get me banned.

(Hint: if you choose to name your character after yourself and you’re named Michael Hunt, don’t use the informal form of the first name.)

It should be pointed out ArenaNet itself is guilty of poor choices for names. I’m sure it’s unintentional but I cannot imagine anyone familiar with the Malay language reading this and not giggling.

If you’re looking for some good examples of African names, try Behind the Name. Since my first Nightfall-created character was going to be an angelic Paragon, I chose a name meaning “God is the leader, follow the right road.”

At least I hope that’s what it actually means. It could mean Mike Hunt for all I know.

To summarise: best Guild Wars campaign.

Best killer feature. Best writing. Best NPCs.

I’ll expound later.

Mr Postman delivered Nightfall, the third Guild Wars campaign, today. I added the key along with my preorder bonus pack key (which confers items for new Nightfall characters and more importantly, an extra character slot) to my existing account without problems.

I chose my Mesmer from Factions for my first run-through of the Nightfall campaign. I intend to blitz through the story missions with my fully tricked out Protector of Cantha and later explore the game at a more leisurely pace with new characters created in Elona.

(Tragically, the NPC shown above died from an acute subdural hematoma after a giant punctuation mark fell on her a split second after this screenshot was taken.)