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.
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.)
