Customer Reviews

Guild Wars Game of the Year

5 star:		(156)
4 star:		(79)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Guild Wars is a very solid MMORPG that strongly encourages team play. The graphics are top-notch (if not up to the cartoon levels of World of Warcraft), the play addicting, and it's well-balanced. With no monthly fee, it's one of the best bargains in the MMORPG world. I take off a star and a half for the forced team aspect as well as the focus on pure fighting versus creating a world, but add 1 back for the value proposition so give this 4 and half stars, or a 4/5 fun/overall split.

This is a tough game to master with no outright 'uber' classes. Players choose 2 of 6 fairly standard basic professions (1 tank, 1 mezzer, 1 healer/defender, 2 nukers, 1 mezzer/nuker) with the second profession lacking one of the strongest attributes of the primary (including which armor you can wear and runes you can use). As you level, besides gaining hit points you do two things - specialize in the various basic class attributes and gain access to the real key: skills. You're limited to a certain number of active skills while in combat, so strategy and careful character building take precedence over getting to level 20. Experience to buy skills can be gained through basic PvE, missions, or PvP. Using a small set of skills wisely along with picking and choosing your attribute development is far more important than getting all the 75 skills available to each profession. This is definitely not a game that is easy to blindly powerlevel.

Cleverly designed, this sidesteps a lot of the problems surrounding the genre. Rather than deal with constant kill stealing, maps and missions are instanced, and you don't have to spend a whole slug of time traveling between regions. (Once you've been to a locale, boom, it's yours.) Recovery time is minimal as is non-combat time. You don't need to spend time harvesting mats and begging a friend to make your next weapon. Instead, kill things, complete missions, and you can bring mats straight to the NPC crafter to make a custom weapon (that can only be equipped by you, likely eliminating much of the secondary market for gear in this game.)

My reservations are four fold but minor. First, the way to truly advance in this game is through missions - and the only way to accomplish many missions is in a balanced team. Thus, you're basically forced to group despite the nominal ability to solo. This really means you have to figure out proper character development early - rather tough with your first few characters until you find a good guild, and frankly, sometimes many of us feel like playing solo. Second, the lack of any real crafting system here means you fight...and fight...and fight. CoH has done well with a similar model (without the PvP aspect) and it's worked well - not to mention the biggest headaches in most MMORPGs are the messes created with a bad item creation system - but if you enjoy socializing more than fighting (the typical harvester/crafter) this isn't the game for you. Third, the game really revolves around PvP much more than PvE for the above reasons - so if you're looking for a game without conflict, this isn't it. Finally, while the focus on instanced events does prevent many of the problems found in most other MMORPGs, it also reduces the multiplayer aspect except in non-instanced locales like towns. The net effect of all of these is to slightly dilute the 'world' aspect, and for those looking for total immersion this may not be a perfect match.

Still, this is a great game and deserves 4 1/2 stars, and if you're looking for an alternative to the hordes of WoW that strongly encourages teaming this should be at the top of your list. One final note: this actually runs quite well even on my soon-to-be discarded Athlon 1100 and is geared towards doing well on slightly older systems - and even 56k modems! - unlike most new games. Big plus.

Guild Wars has been touted as being revolutionary in several ways. For those that haven't read the game overview, these can be summarized as follows:

1. Doesn't require immense amounts of time to be really 'fun.'
2. Little or no time spent doing repetitive tasks and travel.
3. Competitive guild-based play, with custom guilds.
4. No monthly fees and dynamic content change/addition.

The last point is of great interest to many people (myself included) in that this is the first MMORPG to be completely free of fees. However, everyone knows expansions are planned, so this is only 'kind-of sort-of' true.

Though you don't do repetitive tasks like gathering food or resources, to find anything remotely useful you do have to kill enemies over and over again. Additionally, the travel waypoints are sometimes very spread out, so you are still going to do a lot of walking. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however (more on that later).

The level cap is 20, and it's true that this doesn't make it very hard to become as powerful as you'll ever get. In PVP only mode, you start at 20, so you spend no time at all building up a character. However, this doesn't mean you can become level 20 overnight- it does take quite a while, and the quests are challenging enough that you will likely need (human) help.

That said, this game is definitely built for guild-based play. The designers say that solo play is optional, but truth be told it probably isn't. Now that the main features have been addressed, a general overview of the game is in order.

The only 'MM' part of the game is towns. While in towns you can see other players in the same district, form your party, trade items, start quests, and configure your skills (a maximum of 8 can be used at one time). You can also take along henchmen if you want to fill out a party or go solo.

You can leave town one of two ways- by walking through a portal or by starting a mission. The missions address the main quest and often take you to major cities, thus saving you the trouble of walking. They also reward you with experience and skill points. Quests are separate from these, and reward you with experience, skills, and items. In general, the mission and quest design is well done, but you will find the occasional glitch- some of which can force you to repeat one. When in a quest area, a pointer will show where the next objective is.

PVP can be done at arenas, and there's a level cap for each to prevent overly unfair competition. You get experience and (if you play enough) fame for winning matches. This is always a team-based mode, and teams are selected either at random or by party assignment. In RP mode, however, it's quite possible to get far superior equipment than your competition, and thus have a massive edge in combat. A winning team will continue to play matches, and the game doesn't seem very good at auto-balancing the parties.

While exploring the wilds, you'll encounter many and varied monsters, which range in classes and difficulty. Most come in groups, and usually are too dangerous or numerous to solo. This is where my first complaint shows up. Frankly, the henchman AI is beyond pathetic, which is why playing with other people is generally advisable (on occasion, however, I've found human players that are worse in that regard than the henchmen. Such is life). If you're in a party, you'll divide the gold, experience, and spoils. This applies to henchmen party members as well.

Exploration is really the meat of the game. I've done PVP, but it gets old pretty fast- especially if you keep ending up in a poorly balanced team, which seems to happen alarmingly often. You also get no loot for winning, and nobody really cares about fame. The wilderness areas are very well done, with excellent graphics and accompanying music. The world is massive, and the monsters are hard enough that you have to think about what skills you take- and what your fellow party members are taking. Unlike many other RPGs, a bunch of offensive-oriented people each doing their own thing will likely meet a very quick demise. Guild Wars really forces you to coordinate (especially with healing others and focusing to take down hard enemies) and punishes you if you fail to do so. I personally find this a welcome change in direction.

If you should happen to die, you can either wait for a party member to revive you, or (if everyone's dead) you'll respawn at an altar. Sometimes these are placed in very awkward places, which does need to be addressed. You don't lose items, but suffer a 'death penalty' that reduces your health and energy up to 60% (15% per death). You can work this off by gaining experience, killing boss monsters, or completing mission objectives. Going to a town negates the penalty, and this is highly advisable if you get to 60%. Nevertheless, sometimes you really can't go back to town, because leaving an area causes all monsters to repopulate. This can lead parties to conduct suicide raids, in which the sole objective is to kill at least one more monster blocking the way to that quest goal. At times it can be rather frustrating- especially with the more difficult quests. Since the max level is 20 and many monsters are higher, even if you're an experienced player you will likely die scores of times doing quests and missions.

As for character customization, you have a choice of skills in which to invest points (a max of 200, which each successively level costing more), and you can design guild capes and dye items various colors. This, aside from the standard appearance choices at character generation and of course equipment, is about all that makes you unique. If you decide you want to change your skills, you can acquire 'refund points' by gaining experience. These let you reallocate skill points. There are six classes to pick from, and you can have one 'sub-class' that gives you access to some skills from another. This is a permanent choice, so it's best to choose wisely.

The classes in general are quite well balanced, but there is a 'paper rock scissors' arrangement there. That is, Rangers dominate Elementalists, Warriors dominate Rangers, Necromancers dominate Warriors, etc. If you know what you're fighting, there are skills designed to counter every other class, but some are necessarily better than others. Usually you'll learn what to pick the hard way. Fortunately, there's unlimited refund points available, and you can quite quickly rebuild your character if you decide to just junk it all.

In sum, Guild Wars isn't an easy game. This is especially true if you're not a team player and don't like to make friends online. The bottom line is, this isn't a game for everyone. I personally like the party-based exploration and missions, but I know some others that despise it. If you haven't played in the beta and aren't sure which sort of player you are, I'd advise you to get the game and find out. Since there isn't a monthly fee, it won't hurt too badly to try, and- if you decide to quit- you won't feel like you're losing something you paid for by ditching your characters.

I got dragged into playing this game for the word preview event and absolutey love it. I ran right out an bought the presale package so I could play the beta events too. This game is a lot of fun. It has storylines, missions, pvp in two different arena type games, and even some armor weapon crafting. The basis, of course, is competing with a rated guild and engaging in a capture the flag type combat with other guilds, where teamwork is emphasized. However, if you feel like guild stuff isn't your thing you can go out adverturing solo. And for those who KNOW that going out alone might get you killed but you still don't like working with others, you can HIRE OUT, healers, rangers, warriors, elementalists, etc, to give you a hand in the field!! And finally, if you think you'll miss out on the pvp by not having a guild, you can go solo in a random entry arena where you are pitted against another random, and possibly uncoordinated, team.

I love this game and can't wait till the next beta event. The graphics are pretty decent and surprisingly enough, I can actually run it on my 5 year old computer with no problems and a cable modem connection. I can almost never do this with the latest rpg games. I wouldn't suggest this game to anyone running on much less than that, though. People with dialup connections tend to spawn so late in the pvp arenas that they're dead as soon as they appear. Overall though, I highly suggest this game. It allows to you to enjoy the game and allows character progression even if you don't have 7 hours a day to play, which you sometimes need with other mmorpgs.

ok, so you can guess from the title of my review that i have enough experience playing this game to say what i think of it and be acurate about it.

I'll just get right into it and tell you strengths, weaknesses, and comparisons (i have a wealth of knowledge from other MMORPGs)

1. This is not like any other MMO on the market. plain and simple. I've played Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, EQ, EQ2, Asheron's Call 2, Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI, and Matrix Online. Believe me when i say this, none of the those games is anything like Guild Wars. The only thing that makes them the same is the fact that you level up a character to a predefined top level.

2. If you want to compare it to another game or two, try EQ or EQ2. Medieval in nature with warriors, mages, necromancers, rangers.... but that's as far as it goes. EQ is the standard in this game genre and Guild Wars does not compare. Guild Wars does not have 6+ years of the developers adding story line changes/additions. This is not to say that the GW's story sucks. It's awesome. There are a few shallow points and sometimes you'll say to yourself, "what was the point of doing that quest? what did it acomplish other than to earn me some xp (and maybe a useless sellable item or two or three)?" sometimes the changes in the world are subtle in nature and when i say that, i mean it. There are few statues of the gods scattered around the entire world. Something i hadn't noticed at first but then later realized what had happened was that a statue of the god of war, Balthazar, was glowing a blue flame after i had completed many of the quests contained within the region. i have a habit of taking screenshots while i play cause i find things that i really like to look at. i took a picture of that statue initually when i first saw it and it was not glowing at all. i had to go back through my screenshots to make sure i wasn't just thinking it was different. so yeah.... it might not seem like much, but it may be something that may prove to be worth while later on down the road(ie. a major game wide quest to make all the statues glow by doing various tasks within a zone/region).

3. Strengths- first and foremost is the fact that you can move from place to place all over the world just by opening the world map, clicking on the place you'd like to go and then wam bam thank you ma'am, you are there. that is of course, you've been to the place already. that's the only requirement for being able to do all the jumping around. you just have to step into the place and it's put on your world map so that you can jump to it later. it's invaluable come quest time when you don't feel like going back the way you came.

another strong point is the quest system. some people would complain that they made it way too easy. it's too easy if you're the kind of person that likes to spend countless hours trying to find a paticular person or place or thing somewhere in the world. not me. the quest system will give you an arrow on your compass/map in the upper corner of your screen. it's not specific as far as what pathes to take. that you have to figure out on your own. but if you look at the world map, you can see a green star where you are to head for the quest. also, when you get close, you'll get that same green star on the compass/map in the corner so you know you're getting close.

the rune/weapon upgrade system. i love this in the fact that you specifically have to find the different runes and weapon upgrades to unlock them. for those of you that are thinking, "oh crap, now i will have to spend tons of hours trying to find one paticular rune for my character." not to worry. they can be bought from other players and also, a new addition added after the release of the game (meaning it won't be talked about in the instruction manual) is rune traders. you can buy any rune available in the game as long as you have the money. here's the catch. when you create a PvP character those runes aren't unlocked for you in the char. creation section. this is the point of unlocking runes/weapon upgrades. so you can eventually create a PvP character that is customized to your liking with the runes/weapon upgrades of your choosing. it may take a while, and believe me, i'm not even close to having them all unlocked.

the skill system is another strength but can also be a weakness at some points. this is another area of unlocking you'll do. this is more class specific though. you play through an adventure character (as apposed to a PvP char.) and unlock skills along the way by doing quests and/or buying skills from the Skill NPCs in different cities. there is a new way that's just recently been implemented and that's fighting in the arenas and earning faction points. you use the faction points to unlock skills/runes/weapon upgrades but it's not cheap. it'll take alot of fighting to get the amount of points you need to unlock certain skills/runes/weapon upgrades.

4. Weaknesses- for starters, as i said earlier, the story. there isn't alot to it. this is a new game though. the story that's there will surely be added to along the way with new expansions and patch updates. there is already a plan to have two new major zones added to the game some time this summer.

the quests are a little lacking at this point also. there isn't a ton of them, like many other games, but they are there. new ones are added almost every two weeks in the weekly game patches. when i say there isn't a ton that doesn't mean there isn't any. it's just that, some places only two or three quests while other places have about ten to fifteen. some are a little weak in content also. they pose almost no challenge even to someone that has just reached that region/zone. for whatever reason, the devs decided not to add a crap load of quests like most MMOs that are released right off the shelf.

last but not least is the varience in weapons. many of the ones you pick up look the same as one you may have picked up earlier in the game, but it's got higher stats to it. some people don't mind this, but i do. i like to find new items that have a different look than any others out there. when i find a gold unique item, i want it to look different than anyone elses. right now, the weapon models are rather lacking in some departments. staves are kind of bland whereas swords and hammers later in the game are awesome looking. armor is somewhat in the same department as this. they all look nice but when you get to a new city where you can upgrade to a better set, they are exactly the same. that is of course if you choose the same type as the one you are wearing. each armor is class and sex specific, so a male ranger's armor is going to look different than a female ranger's armor even if it's the exact same type.


i know at times in my review it almost sounds like i hate this game. i don't. i love it. it can be improved on and i'm sure it will. i've seen games that rise and fall very quickly (shadowbane and asherons call 2) but this will not be one of them. not having to pay a monthly fee is the biggest reason for this opinion. when you don't have to pay for something constantly, you're more willing to play.

Having played the original Everquest long ago and dabbled in free trial versions of other massively multiplayer online games such as Lineage II, I have become somewhat disenchanted with MMOs. I dislike the general concept of paying a monthly fee to play a game that often involves long hours of tedium, and lately I have little time/money to spare for games in general. But from October 29th to 31st there was an open world preview event for Guild Wars, and I decided to give it a try.

Guild Wars was developed by a team of former Blizzard employees, and they have managed to inject some strategy into the typical role-playing fantasy setting. However, some role-playing elements have been sacrificed in exchange for reducing online tedium. You may not enjoy Guild Wars if you absolutely love the role-playing element. That being said, the game in its current stage of build is amazingly fun.

Players start with the option to create characters with a primary and secondary profession. These profession choices determine the skills/spells you can acquire, and you can only take eight skills into a mission/battle. This by itself creates a new level of strategy for the player, as certain skills combo well together. You can also decide to emphasize skills that make you able to solo, or you can choose more support skills for your party. And having good support people in a group is essential in Guild Wars.

The preview event allowed players to start out at level 15 and max out at level 20. I was pleased to find that leveling and gaining decent equipment was no longer a pain. I easily made level 20 in the three days that the event ran and actually had fun doing so. This was thanks to a mission-oriented leveling system that encourages groups of six players to team up (alternately, you can hire NPC henchmen). The missions are instanced for your group (meaning no swarms of other players to compete with for objectives, kills, experience, loot), and have mini-narratives that follow a sort of linear plotline. As you complete each mission, a new area is open to you on your overall map.

Ah yes, the map. No more insanely long travel times. You just go to your map, zoom in on the area you want to go to, and click "travel." Areas open up as you complete each mission, and you can travel freely among all the places you have been to.

Large-scale player interaction takes place in the mission-waiting areas and main city (Lion's Arch). Here you find players forming groups or trading/buying/selling, and this reminds you that the game is a massively online multiplayer game. This brings me to player versus player action, which is the highlight.

You could say Guild Wars is all about player versus player, but it's done in a way that emphasizes the fun aspects. PvP takes place in areas like the Gladiator Arena and the Tomb of Primeval Kings, with groups of up to eight players battling several other groups. The objective might be to simply kill the other groups, or it might involve protecting a resurrection shrine (where an NPC monk can resurrect fallen team members periodically). There is no loss of experience or equipment when you die (though within missions there is a temporary health/mana penalty), you can only gain experience and fame.

PvP also brings out the strategic elements of Guild Wars. A well-balanced group that has excellent support combinations, skills, and strategies will do much better than a group where the players do not cooperate. There are no large-scale sieges or battles involving hundreds of players, but in other MMOs those tend to dissolve into freewheeling melees with little cooperation or strategy.

Finally, players can found guilds once they have enough gold (which is not that hard to get). They can then freely invite other players to join up. Being in a guild gives you your own nifty guild symbol/colors to wear, as well as a group of players always ready to form a team for missions or PvP arenas. The game also has a special arena for guilds to compete head-on.

I can already envision Guild Wars being popular outside the traditional MMORPG community, especially given that there is no monthly fee. The Guild Wars developers seem well on their way to creating an immensely entertaining, accessible, and affordable game. Good job guys.

For a more detailed review from an experienced Alpha tester:
http://www.epinions.com/content_142722436740

Related Links:
http://www.guildwars.com/default.html
http://archive.gamespy.com/landing/guildwars/
http://www.photics.com/index.php

First things first - this game is not for everybody. It's not your traditional MMORPG, in fact, it's officially a CORPG (Cooperative Online Role Playing Game). If you're looking for a game for farming and grinding, look elsewhere. You can reach the maximum level(20) in 2-3 days of hard playing, and the most powerful weapons and armor can be earned in a few hours of farming.

PvE:

The main reason GW is not a true MMO is because it's instanced - that is, outside of the cities, your party will have the world to yourselves. This is both annoying and rewarding. You cannot meet random people out in the world, which, I'll admit, I miss at times. At the same time, however, there are no annoying people disturbing you, and there are no people telling you to "back off, this is my farming spot," ect.

The instance feature also allows GW to have an overarching storyline, which is suprisingly good. Though it is a traditional sort of fantasy story (good vs. evil, light vs. dark ect), GW adds freshness to it with fairly unusual/original races and characters such as Charr, or Tengu, and interesting plot twists.

Though the world is instanced, that doesn't mean you must play it alone. You can form a party of players, opt to bring a party of AI henchmen, or make a combination of both. Throughout the missions and quests, you'll be reliant on your party to defeat your foes and keep your team alive. As the name of the game implies, guilds are an important factor in the game. Guild members often help each other out in missions or quests, trade or donate items, or simply give advice.

As I said earlier, grinding and leveling are not big features of this game. After a while, you will find that you've finished the storyline, and have all the highest level equipment. So, are you finished?

No way. For starters there are also "bonus" objectives to each mission, many people spend time going back to finish up the ones they haven't done or weren't able to complete at the time. There are tons of "Elite" skills to unlock, which require you to defeat a certain boss to obtain. There are also a goodly number of Titles for you to earn. For example, there's the Tyrian Grandmaster Cartographer title, for exploring 100% of the Tyrian continent, a feat that can take weeks or even months to accomplish. There are also difficult dungeons such as the Underworld or the Fissure of Woe that will require a coordinated team to complete. And of course, you could make a new character (you start with 4 character slots, extra slots cost $10 each), and play the game over again, with a completely different character type.

PvP:

Guild Wars gives you the option of creating a PvP-only character. These characters are the maximum level, have the best equipment availible to them, and all the skills that you've unlocked at their disposal. This means that a "good player" is not one that's spent countless hours farming for his godly armor and weapons, but rather one that knows the game well, knows his character, and works well with his or her team.

In other games, you may have 20 or more skills for your use. In Guild Wars, while you may choose from a myriad of skills to put in your 8-slot bar, once you leave town or enter the arena, you can't change your bar around. So, people devise skillsets, or "builds" whose skills compliment eachother, some of which are so brilliant that they become common knowledge and thousands of other people begin to use them. Guild Wars' system also gives you flexibility - you can be a Smiting monk one game and a Healing monk the next.

This concept carries over to the 8 player teams as well. The availability of the PvP character and the ease of changing your PvE/RP character's role means that you don't have 8 independant characters that randomly attack enemies, you have a team where each player has a specific role, and you coordinate your every move. Voice communication is a must for almost every team.

The result of this system is the most coopertive, coordinated, complex, and rewarding PvP I've ever experienced. Teams look for weaknesses in the other team's build, and exploit them. They split their team into two groups, attack, counterattack, and feint, and use maneuvers to give themselves the advantage. Often, the coordination and teamwork of a team is the most important factor in a game, teams that looked certain to lose have been known to pull off ingenious tactics that earn them the win. High ranked guilds and players are well known, and there's an Observer mode (affectionately dubbed "Guild Wars TV") where players can view top-ranked guilds' matches. Tactics and builds are hotly debated in forums and ingame, for the initiated and the newbie alike.

Overall, this is the best game I've bought in my life.

The first thing that should be stated forthright about this game is that it shouldn't be classified as a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game. Much of the game takes place in private zones that approximately 8 people can access at a single time. There are towns and outposts that can harbor many more players, but these are merely gathering areas to form groups for your private instanced area; the vast majority of this game takes place in very small groups that do not interact with anybody else. In nearly all other MMO games, you're interacting with a large number of people all the time. I suppose there are perks to having your own private area to share with a few other people, but I found much of the playable areas depressingly lonely since there is little, if any player-player interaction.

The game is divided up into two spheres: Player-Versus-Environment, and Player-Versus-Player, with specialized characters devoted to each. Player-versus-environment characters can explore the world AND engage in player-versus-player combat, but player-versus-player characters are restricted to just that: player-versus-player combat. As you progress through the main storyline and other side-quests with your player-versus-environment characters, the skills and items that you discover will be unlocked for any future player-versus-player character you create. If you haven't unlocked any items and skills and would still like to enjoy player-versus-player combat right off the bat, the game comes with several pre-made characters you can use solely for player-versus-player combat. There are six classes of players: warriors, rangers, monks, mesmers, necromancers, and elementalists. Each character has a primary profession and a secondary profession, allowing for interesting combinations of characters such as a player that is primarily a necromancer, but can swing a sword almost as good as a warrior. Some skill combinations don't really work too well, but the fact that there are a potential of 30 different classes combinations is pretty refreshing. In addition, even if you're the same primary and secondary profession as another character, you most likely have a different set of skills, of which you're only allowed to have 8 equipped at one time). This also aids in helping your character feel truly unique.

The main storyline is very good, and I enjoyed progressing through each quest as more of the main story was revealed. When you play through the main storyline, your character and whoever you're partnering up with, be it other human players or computer controlled "bots", are the focus of the quest, and your actions in the storyline make it seem like you're actually doing super-human deeds instead of some trivial task like delivering a package. It is your character that saves entire cities from certain doom, it is your character that holds off armies of undead as they march towards your location; nothing you do is trivial.

But once the main storyline is over, all you're left with is player-versus-player combat, which I personally did not enjoy. There are many strong strategies that people have already figured out for player-versus-player combat, so some battles are more luck than skill. Whenever I played in the player-versus-player arenas, I got the feeling that I was just playing some glorified first person shooter like Unreal Tournament, but with swords and spells. You can go back and try to unlock more items and spells, but this gets very boring and tedious quickly. I tried to play through the main storyline with a different type of character, but didn't find it as enjoyable or engaging as the first run through.

However the main thing makes this game unbearable isn't so much the game mechanics as it is the people who play Guild Wars. There is no community, and you will never see the same person more than one time. Also, in a game that requires a lot of team play and coordination, there is an overabundance of people who simply don't care for tactics and are bound to get your character killed with their carelessness.

The best part of Guild Wars is the fact that there is no monthly fee, and the steaming content that updates as you play. I'm sure ArenaNet will be able to do some interesting things with their streaming content system, but there really wasn't enough substance in the game to keep me hooked for long after I finished the main quest. The player-versus-player combat did not appeal to me, however if you believe that you'll like it, you'll most likely enjoy Guild Wars. If you're going to try this game, I strongly recommend you do so with a group of people that you already know, as there is no player community to speak of.

OK, let's get right down to it. I'm not a professional gamer. I don't get paid to play game 24 hours a day, nor do I have the time to do so. I am a working professional in my 30s and I thoroughly enjoy this game. Here are the main reasons why I like it:

1. Easy to get into: You don't need to know much about games to enjoy this game. After about the first 15-20 minutes, you'll learn how to navigate and do basic stuff (most of it is mouse-driven). If you don't, there are always people online who will help you. I don't know about other online games, but the fact that there is ANY online help from other players is a plus for me.

2. Strategic skill system: Players max out at level 20. However, to get there, you will need to complete several quests and several more missions. What you are trying to do here is to max out the stats for your character, get the most number of skills possible (think of it as a technology tree), and obtain the best weapons/armor. This part is similar to most other MMORPG like World of Warcraft. However, unlike other games, you are restricted to using only 8 skills even if you have several more. Skills are obtained by doing quests/missions and by "capturing" from dead boss monsters. Strategically, think of this as the thinking-man MMORPG. Each time you go out on a quest or mission, you can elect to choose a different set of skills to bring along (up to the 8 max). Depending on what the makeup of the rest of your team, you can reconfigure to be all offensive, all support, or both. Just because some other characters are higher level than you doesn't mean that they are better. If you choose your skills wisely, you can actually be more effective than they are. This strategic aspect is what I like about the game. Other games just let you run in with as many skills as you have learned, which means the character with the most skills is going to be better than you because that character has more choices to choose from while in battle.

3. Guilds: While other MMORPGs have the concept of guild, I think the guilds in Guild Wars are better. Anyone with enough money can start a guild. Starting your own guild means you get to choose your own cape with your own clothing design, and you are the leader who can then recruit other members. The fact that you can have a guild with just your friends and family members means you can have a "presence" in the Guild Wars world without too much effort. It's nice to have your own place online where you can easily connect to friends, sort of like an instant-messaging system in game.

4. Weapons: As you complete quests/missions, you will kill various monsters and they will drop various things, including weapons. The nice thing about weapons in Guild Wars is that you can customize each weapon with additional modifications that you can buy from others or "salvage" from another similar weapon. For example, you can start out with a Fiery Dragon Sword with maximum fire damage, then add a modification that would give you +10 armor to physical attacks, then add yet another modification that would give you +30 health points. If you find a weapon that has a modification that you want, you can usually "salvage" that modification by using an Expert Salvage Toolkit. Then you can apply that modification onto your own weapon to make your own "uber" weapon.

5. Money and loot: You get gold by doing quests and killing monsters. However, the fastest way to get gold is to actually buy and sell items such as weapons you've obtained. There are a few cities and districts where trading is the main reason people go there. Trading weapons and items help you gain valuable gold and help other players complete their character setup so it is a win-win situation. I find that the trading aspect of the game is pretty fun in and of itself. In fact, you can get a lot more game money if you are good at trading compared to just killing monsters when you are at lower levels. The loot that you get from monsters at lower levels tend to be not that great, although you do sometimes get valuable things to sell such as black dye, which goes for about $6.5K when the average amount of money you get from killing an NPC is like $10. However, when you are at the max level of 20, you are generally in areas where there are many high level monsters that will drop high-level weapons. It is always exciting to go out with a team of players to kill monsters so you can obtain cool new weapons. When you get that rare gold or green weapon (green is the best, then gold, purple, magenta, and white, in that order), it feels GREAT. You know that you are either going to be able to use it on one of your characters (you can have up to 4 different characters) or you can sell it for a lot of money to someone else who wants it. I think one of the main reasons I play any MMORPG is to get increasingly better loot. It fits very well with the normal human behavior called greed. Although it is just game money, it is always better to have more than less, imho.

6. Monster-killing: Despite what others claim, killing monsters is actually fun no matter how many times you do it. At higher levels, killing monsters is especially satisfying because you see the effects of all your preparation in team make-up, skills, weapons, armor, etc. Put together an unbalanced team and you might all end up dead. Bring the wrong skills with you and you will suffer. Attack the wrong targets will also get you killed. All these things make the game more interesting the more you play it. Just experimenting with different sets of skills and then doing quests with them until you find a good combination is fun for me. There are hundreds of skills to learn for each profession so the combination is endless.

7. Extras: superb graphics, great sounds, and phenomenal cut-scenes are all icing-on-the-cake for me. The fact that I have to invest only $40 for the game and no monthly fees is another big plus that others have pointed out. Another nice plus is that you don't need uber graphics card just to play the game. Sure, having an expensive graphics card will make the graphics look better in this game, but one of my computer only has an old GeForce 2 card with 64MB and the game still looks good. Contrast this to other MMORPGs (e.g. World of Warcraft) that require you to buy an expensive video card just to play it at standard settings.

All in all, I must say I really like this game. I've been playing it for 4 months now and I still lose sleep over it. I am frequently playing until the wee hours in the morning (read: 3-4 am) and struggle with coffee in the morning so I can get to work :) I have only 3 characters so far, 1 of which is at the max level 20. However, even with my max character, I am nowhere near finishing the game. There are many more quests and missions and many more new locales to visit. I would say that my $40 is well spent indeed.

About a year or so ago, I heard about Guild Wars, the now famous MMORPG without a fee, from a friend, and having played (and largely enjoyed, for the most part) a number of on-line role playing games for many many hours, over the years, I thought I'd check it out. I've leveled up several characters, now, and been through all the missions in the initial release of the game a time or three.

Asside from the novel and very happy lack of a monthly fee, the first thing I noticed about Guild Wars was the incredible technology. The graphics are no less than stunning compared with other RPG's, and the load times are very low by comparison. (Some people with dial up modems experience frequent multi-minute load times, but those people would literally have to wait 10's of hours to download the same types of updates in some other MMORPG's.) The technology is by far and away the best I've seen. I wish other MMORPG's would catch up with Guild Wars in this regard.

The next thing I noticed was the clever system of "skill" points and "attribute" points. When you create your character, you choose a primary "profession", and with that profession comes several "attributes" or named-categories of spells and tricks (called "skills"). Each category has a number (maybe 13 to 25) skills that you either start out with in that category, or can acquire over the course of playing the game for a while. After a short while of playing, you can choose a secondary profession, and add most of it's categories of spells and tricks to your character. Your character starts out with a number of "attribute points" that you can allocate across your character's skill categories.. so, for example, you might put 80 points into "fire," 40 into "inspiration," and so on. How many points you put into an skill category changes how powerful the skills are in that category. Of the 50 or 100 skills that you may have access to, you can choose 8 to use the next time you go out to fight. (In Guild Wars, you go into a city to meet and team up with other players and configure your character, then you go out into the wild to go on missions with your team. While you're in a city, you can select which skills you want be using, and how many of your attribute points you want to allocate into which of your skill categories.) The way that the designers have put all this together and set it up so that it.. actually seems relatively well balanced.. is sheer genius. One of the more interesting aspects of the game, to me, even to this day, is trying out different "builds," or configurations of skills and attribute points.

The next thing I noticed was an extremely gratifying absence of finding myself waiting around for things. You never ever have to wait around for health or mana to regenerate, in this game, for more than a few seconds. Nor do you ever find yourself waiting around for a "rare spawn" or a "rare drop." (That is probably the most annoying aspect, to me, of many MMORPGs. I've always felt there has to be a better way to allow players to differentiate themselves from each other than by seeing who's willing to wait around the longest for the rarest monsters to spawn, and then drop the rarest equipment. Guild Wars attempts to set things up so that players can actually differentiate themselves by showing superior skill in configuring and handling their character.) You can take a character from level 1 to the highest level possible in the shortest time of any RPG I've played, and that, too, is a very gratifying lack of waiting around.

But, while the game gains much in technology, cleverness, and near-instant-gratification, I feel it unfortunately loses more in other areas. Inspite of the superior graphics, the sense of being immersed in an alternate reality is just not there. As far as that goes, it's really more like a multiplayer arcade game than it is like an on-line role playing game. Why is that? How is it that Guild Wars fails to create this sense nearly as well as other games do? Well, one reason is the complete absence of players (outside of your current selected team) anywhere in the game except in the cities. In a game like World of Warcraft, or EverQuest, you can encounter other players in just about any part of the game universe, not just in the cities and towns. Another reason is the complete absence of player item crafting. The entire purpose of going anywhere and doing anything in Guild Wars is always to fight monsters (and get experience points and drops). Other games have player crafting systems that allow players to create or improve weapons and armor or any of a wide variety of things, and affect the game world in some way.. actually participate, in a sometimes relatively substantive way, in the economy of the alternate world. Examples of such crafting efforts might include jewel crafting, black smithing, cooking.. even simply fishing. In other games, you might be out on a dock or a beech somewhere, working on your character's fishing skill, and encounter another player out there doing the same thing, and strike up a friendly conversation. Never does anything like this ever happen in Guild Wars.

Sadly, the efforts of MMORPG's to engage players in developing item crafting skills, and in other non-"hack and slash" activities have been frought with a variety of problems, and have tended to sort of run their course over time, so that the activities are less and less rewarding, and fewer and fewer players bother with them. Still, it seems to me that completely giving up on the whole idea (the way Guild Wars essentially does) is the wrong approach, because a large part of the fun of logging into an on-line game is the feeling of being immersed in an alternate reality, and inspite of their extremely eggregious problems, player crafting systems and random out-in-there-in-the world player encounters definiely adds a lot to the game. Other games are definitely much better at creating the sense of being in an alternately reality than Guild Wars is. I think it's for that reason that lots of people say things like "Guild Wars is fun for a while, WoW (or whatever) is fun for life."

Welp, that's my two bits. I hope it was helpful. :)

I've been reading everyone else's reviews, and they have hit the nail on the head. So I wont waste your time typing up the same thing. I agree with what everyone else has said but would like to add on a couple more things.

The game will remain entirely balanced, regardless of how long you play for. If you have played games like EQ where you can get incredible "epic" items by slaving for days on end, you would understand that there is a line between the casual players and hardcore players. Guild Wars has no such items that would imbalance the game for people who can't afford sacrificing 6+ hours a day on it. Don't get me wrong, if you play for hours a day, you will find alot of things and gain wealth, but even the rare items you find, have pro's and cons. They may have + to a few attributes or whatever that you can use but they may also cut back on other skills.

The game revolves around building a character stratagy that focuses on using skills that complement eachother for given missions or PvP.

I just wanted to say that and I love that aspect to the game.