Comments on: Guild Wars Free Trialified

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:54:32 +0000

Has Guild Wars 2 been delayed? Do I care? Not especially. It’s possible that it will be some sort of awesome – the folks at ArenaNet have proven design chops. But it jettisons most of what I found interesting about Guild Wars to begin with. The low level cap and emphasis on clever skill combos and tactics makes for a decidedly unique style of gaming that’s far more friendly to playing with less frequently available friends than almost any other MMO on the market. Guild Wars 2 will theoretically have -no- level cap (still unsure how they plan to pull that off). Guild Wars’ heavily instanced world meant your questing and choices could have real, palpable impact on your questing areas and griefing was essentially impossible, at least if you chose your adventuring partners wisely. Guild Wars 2 will be largely non-instanced. And so forth.

I would far rather have had more campaigns and/or expansions like Eye of the North. I can see where it might get difficult finding new and interesting skills and mechanics to introduce, but better a world overstuffed with goodness than casually tossed aside.

By the way, if you’ve only played Prophecies, you really are missing out. The Hero mechanic (introduced in Nightfall but expanded to the other campaigns) makes a huge difference. Heroes are far more reliable and controllable partners than the henchmen, and make soloing even large group content practical if necessarily less entertaining than playing with friends. And hey, they help even there, handily filling out gaps in the party. Two people each with an entourage of three carefully picked heroes make a formidable and fun pairing.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:02:57 +0000

elmo: “I still wish for a MMO that takes you by the hand through a story and somewhere in between gives u the best armor, weapons and access to all abilities and lets you party with equals.”

But, see, it kind of didn’t. There was base “good” armour and weapons, which anyone could get but required the grind of item drops, and then there was the really good armour that you could only get on certain raids, and even then it was game of chance.

With abilities, it depended on which expansions you owned (obviously), but could also unlock if you found the right party to help you unlock it, AND EVEN THEN the abilities you want to unlock may not be useful to you once your teammates realize that they are for an unpopular build (and even then, new abilities were twists on old ones to the tune of “you will do ____ when opponent is ____). You’re not wrong in saying that you party with equals, in that your equals are also fire-based elementalists and no other kind of elementalist (earth-based? forget about it).

Not that theses problems are unique to Guild Wars. Just trying to separate what the game was trying to do in theory (what you’ve written) and what actually went/goes on.

By: elmo

elmo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:47:32 +0000

I know that not all people think alike but i was never able to understand the “problems” people had with the game being PvP oriented … it had far more content for pvp players and depth of combat than any other mmo and it still has. And the PvE campaigns are also more entertaining than any other. I still wish for a MMO that takes you by the hand through a story and somewhere in between gives u the best armor, weapons and access to all abilities and lets you party with equals.
I played aprox 3000 hours of GW since release and after getting bored i tried to recapture the magic with WoW, WAR, Lineage 2 and some free crap called Silkroad. Never again i was able to get into them. As of today, even though i don`t play GW anymore i am not playing any MMO at all because i am looking for a game with 1500+ skills where any char can use them and all have the same armor and weapons and it has a storyline like in a cooperative game but you have more than enough things to do other than pvp and playing through missions

By: A-Scale

A-Scale — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:59:17 +0000

Guild Wars was limited by its lack of a persistent world and difficulty of finding good partners for raids. I also felt that the game was a bit light on content, sort of like WoW lite. That’s fine, considering its free per month. And all of that said, I probably played 100-200 hours of it over the course of a year or two. I quit out after the first expansion. I’m looking forward to GW2, but this news couldn’t be less interesting.

By: Rei Onryou

Rei Onryou — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:52:01 +0000

Whoops, forgot the detailed link and wasn’t logged in to edit.

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/showthread.php?t=486341

By: Rei Onryou

Rei Onryou — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:50:37 +0000

I was a long term GWer, with several thousand hours. This was my WoW. What made it work for me was my Guild (Guild Wars Online [GWO] FTW!). Playing solo is dull, but having many friendly people to play with and have a laugh chatting to just made it so much more complete. It effectively was a solo/co-op RPG with MMO-like hubs. But it worked. I do insist you give it a bash.

If anyone is trying it out, my Guild (not former as I’m still an occasional Officer) is hosting their 4th Birthday Party on Saturday at the Henge of Denravi (in the Prophecies campaign). You should probably be able to get someone to run you there easily enough. I hosted the previous 2-3 and they’re always popular, even with the Devs. Plus free booze, items and prizes, so you can’t go wrong.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:36:07 +0000

I’m playing through Prophecies now, and liking it. It’s a lot more of a gamey game than WOW-style MMOs which try to create a world to live in. Guild Wars is meat and potatoes fantasy action, very well balanced, looks lovely and runs like a charm on old machines. Levelling and gear are refreshingly egalitarian, with a lot of flexibility in how you build your character.

The game mechanics can be a bit mystifying for new people, but the wiki is excellent: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

RECOMMENDED!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:40:05 +0000

My advice, this game is best played with friends. The quests are really quite dull alone. Doing the EotN dungeons in hard mode with a couple of good friends and heros picking up the slack is some of the best fun ive had. Pretty much perfect difficulty for skilled players. And on the other hand, there is the best PvP content in ANY mmo. Perfectly balanced and requires actual skill rather than loosing to some no life who spend 8000 hours grinding for loot. Equipment is more or less equal in GW. I personally love alliance battles. 12 vs 12 in groups of 4 running around capping flags with a score system like BF2. Still to be honest the game is getting pretty stale lately.

By: yxxxx

yxxxx — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:48:43 +0000

Is there a pack that just contains all the addons?

I have guildwars but never bought any of the extra content.

By: BrokenSymmetry

BrokenSymmetry — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:37:15 +0000

I’ve always wondered why Guild Wars isn’t talked about more on RPS, as it is the most innovative MMO of the last 5 years. Also, it’s the most technically sound PC game I have ever played, and it’s still very beautiful, 4 years after release.

Anyway, for those interested in the PvP in Guild Wars, next saturday, from 16:00 GMT, the monthly tournament is held. These matches can be watched live (with a small delay to avoid cheating) from within the game (press B), and are almost always pretty fun to watch. Last month’s tournament even had some drama, in that the winner was later qualified for spending all their match time in a preliminary round in a conga line with their opponents, causing an intentional draw.

By: Alonzo Harris

Alonzo Harris — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:59:51 +0000

Obviously I’m completely wrong, but I thought Factions was easily the best campaign. The city areas were initially good but then became boring and bloody difficult at times, but the Jade Sea and the Forest areas are brilliant. I just think it had a lot more character than t’others.

By: Oddtwang

Oddtwang — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:53:45 +0000

Enjoyed GW when I got a free copy of Prophecies – for sending in a comedy DoD screenshot to PDG, in fact – a while back. Enough to go buy one of the addons in fact.
Having an existing network of guildmates already in place helped a lot with the newbness, but I’ve been lokoing forward to starting GW2 at the same time as them for a while. Unfortunately, there seems to be no activity whatsoever at Realms Beyond these days, at least outside the Civ4 page, which makes me a sad panda; wanted to play Diablo 3 with those guys too :(