Guild Wars - the low down?

Raumarik

Raumarik

Raumarik

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14 Jul 2003
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Does anyone have a players insight into this game? Preferably from a MMO veteran ;) I've been told by someone that it's a decent game for someone who plays casually like myself as I tend to struggle to keep up with people in other MMO games (DAOC/WOW/LOTRO/Eve etc.)

Is it a time sink or can you actually play it for fun for a few hours a week and not feel like you've been left behind by the person you were grouped with 2 days earlier ? :p
 
Very good game for casual players, i gave up on WoW because i got fed up having to play for the sake of the £9 sub, GW was/is perfect for me.

You hit the lvl 20 cap quite quickly after 5-10 hours of play, once you've got that it comes down to what skills you have, but even a noob can play the game well with the starter skills if they know what they're doing.

Go for it, its only £10, can't lose anything.
 
GW has a very low level cap, which you can easily reach in a couple of days solid playing (on Factions/Nightfall), as such you are never that far behind anyone in the game in that sense.

Max damage equipment and armour can also be had from crafters or collectors fairly easily so you don't even need lots of money to have the same kinda strength items as years old players.

The only things you will have to 'catch up' on are your skills which are either obtained from doing quests (Prophecies), or bought from Skill Trainers (All chapters) for varying ammounts of gold (maxing out at 1k/skill) and 1 skill point (aquired by gaining XP).

So GW is a game where becomming useful and effective doesn't take forever.

What you do get from playing a long time is experience on how teams work well together, what other classes bring, how to setup your skillbar effectivley, what to do in missions, how the enemy AI works, a collection of weapons specialised for certain circumstances, and pimp looking armour and weapons :D

What you have to remember about GW is that no matter how old your character is or how much gold you have that 1.5million gold Obsidian armour is actually no better stat wise than the free stuff you can get from the collector for a couple of Skale Fins. It just looks nicer... and the same goes for weapons, and skills...
 
guild wars its like tossing off with sand paper fun for a few mins that starts to get painfull
 
Been playing guild wars for about a year now, on and off. And that's one of the nicest things about the game... if you feel like a break from it for a while you can just uninstall it and put the cd away for a while, no account to cancel, no worries about characters or possesions being deleted, no monthly fee!

The original campaign is only a tenner to buy and the sequels are equally reasonable.

I currently subscribe to Ultima Online as well, more out of habit than really getting that much out of the game anymore. That's the trap with these games if you stop paying you risk losing things you worked many, many hours for. Guildwars is a refreshing change to that.


As for gameplay, it is definitely geared towards the PvP scene. Don't get me wrong the storyline campaigns are excellent both in action and plot. But with a level cap of only 20 (which you will reach long before you complete the first campaign even if you do no power levelling at all) and only a handful of valuable items and skills to be hunted down there's not a lot to hold your interest in the game once you've done the campaign with a few different character types except PvP. Although intensive item farming can be somewhat absorbing if you have the dreading collecting bug.

PvP is not something I'm a lot of good at in any game (don't have the reactions for it) so it's hard for me to comment, but there is a system whereby you can actually watch other guilds' ongoing PvP battles live, and I've been quite impressed with the depth of tactics and organisation I see in some. So if you're the competitive type I think you'll get a lot from it. You'll never fall behind other players because reaching the maximum level and aquiring the best equipment and skills is so darn easy. What really counts is having the right combination of class and skills (you can only have 2 classes; a primary and secondary and 8 skills at any one time). Another nice feature is that you can change your secondary class, your skills and even, contrary to all other known RPGs, your stats in between battles or missions.

If you're looking for a game with a good story and a simple and effective interface and an almighty array of classes, stats and skills to choose from there's still a lot to get out of it, and with no monthly fee... I can't see much reason not to buy it. Recompleting the campaign missions can remain fun quite a few times if you use a different class. A monk will have a very different game experiance than a warrior or elementalist. beign able to do the missions with a random group of fellow gamers is also a nice change, I've had lots of conversations with people I'll probably never bump into again while cheerfully hacking monsters to pieces. It beats doing the exact same thing in single player games with no-one to talk to.
 
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