Customer Reviews

Guild Wars (Prima Official Game Guide)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Prima's Guild Wars guide is yet another example of why Prima should simply not be publishing for online games as the rapid change of content in them makes it extremely difficult to create something that's not dated upon publication. In sum, this guide helps somewhat with understanding characters and has decent maps, but as a strategy guide it's useless. Given much of Guild Wars is an instanced, static environment it is a better guide than most of their MMORPG work, but I do take 2 stars off as the errors are annoying and any help with strategy lacking throughout.

First, the positives. This is actually not a bad character reference for both PvE and PvP especially if you're unfamiliar with classes besides your own. That is, while some of the information on skills has been sadly inaccurate since even before launch (so that if you're actually going to use a skill because you're playing a class you're better off finding out what it does from your favorite fansite forum), it does serve as a good primer for what your teammates in PvE and opponents in PvP can in fact do for and to you if you haven't spent the time playing the class yourself. Second, the maps are actually quite good. While you can certainly download more basic ones through the web, these are a step ahead. PvE maps do have mob and quest locations distinctly labeled with numbers in their actual location, which will save you time your first or second run through. Content updates are already starting to shred locations a bit, but its otherwise ok. Finally, several references aren't bad. The drop guide is actually quite good, as is, surprisingly, the mob guide.

Where this gets two stars knocked off is on incompleteness of the reference materials and strategy section. Probably the most glaring issue is that the quest guide has already become badly dated; you will do better simply looking on any fansite, although it will save you buying several skills available through quests early on. But my real beef with guide is that as a strategy piece its awful. (Perhaps that's why Prima renamed the entire series to "Game Guides" rather than "Strategy Guides".) Such useless tips as "Necromancer is among the strongest anti-Warrior" class litter the book, and it makes almost no dent in exploring the rock-paper-scissors way the classes are set up. Finally, you don't get in-depth explanation of spell mechanics, something most other Prima guides actually do a good job of. Disappointing.

Still, its better than the average Prima guide if only because it serves as a good quick reference to your opponents skills. Those who have reached level 20 in PvE and played PvP for a while likely already know more than this guide, but for newer players probably worth picking it up.

Guild Wars is massive multiplayer game which is regular updated and changed by the game designers. It's a wonderful game that has many aspects of strategy gaming, role playing, and player versus player combat. While creating a guide for such an in-depth game seems to a logical course of action, Prima Games fails miserably in delivering gamers a reliable, interesting resource.

The guide is beautifully constructed with a map (in the print version only) and colorful artwork. The problem has to do with the guide's content - it isn't to be taken lightly when it's mentioned that the game is updated frequently: almost all of the material found within the guide is out dated. This is noticeable in that many of the spells that are mentioned in the guide. The spells mentioned have very different stats in the game than they do in the book.

Make no mistake... you cannot use this book as a "starting point" for figuring out new strategies to implement in the game. Being "out dated" for a book detailing strategies for a massive multiplayer game means it is useless and in many cases amusing.

One terribly frustrating thing with being out dated is the large sections pointing at places in the game where skills can be bought or captured. All of the locations mentioned in the book are wrong (not just some of them, all of them). With all due respect to the book's author and Prima Games, even more frustrating is that the strategies in the book (had they been based on accurate skills and spells) are horrible as are the characters builds that are mentioned. One can easily find better builds past and present by searching the net.

Recently an online version of the game guide has become available... a digital version which promises to be as up to date in the future as it can be. Be warned that this is the exact same version of the book simply digitized and in PDF format (the online version is also missing the game world's map... the very thing I believe warrants the 1 star noted on this review). Furthermore Prima Games states on their website that it will charge customers for future updates to the book but informs them via email that the first update will be free of charge (finally some good news). Prima Games never should have agreed to make a guide for this game in the first place.

Strongly disliking the book for reasons which are hopefully obvious (at least to those who have played the game for more than a few minutes), I think that this book is a waste of money and anyone who buys it can only be disappointed. I realize that many people might be purchasing this book for a friend as a gift in addition with a copy of guild wars and might not care whether or not the information is up to date, however, once more I urge the intelligent shopper to simply search the internet for better material.

With Prima Games releasing poor guides as of late (as seen with their newly released Official Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Guide which received horrible reviews), I certainly hope the game publishing giant revises its ranks and provides the gaming industry with quality products in the future.

This review is only for the PVE (player vs. environment) portions. I have not read the PVP (player vs. player) portions.

The maps are awesome because they clearly show the walkable routes, as opposed to the freely available maps online that are simply screenshots of fully explored maps (from which it's impossible to discern routes). So you can easily glance at the maps in this book and know where the dead ends are and how best to get from A to B. Not only that, but many of the mission objectives and bonuses are correctly labeled on the maps. There are a few typos, but nothing major.

The listings of skills derived from quests are woefully inadequate. First of all, the table formatting is messed up, and the majority of skills are listed in the wrong columns. But even if you have the patience to look up the professions of all the skills yourself, the listing is still incomplete. It only covers about the first 1/2 of the game, and the listing inexplicably stops there. And finally, the guide of course cannot accomodate dynamic game updates, and several new skill-granting quests have already been added since this guide was published.

I found the descriptions of the six character professions to be at best naive, and at worst downright misleading. They encourage some skill combinations that simply don't make sense and miss some combinations that I have found to be the most fun and useful in the game. For example, they suggest that a warrior/necromancer use the blood magic line. But that line is more advantageous for a spell-casting profession that need not be in the heat of melee battle. The curses line is much more useful for a warrior, due to skills like Mark of Pain.

Please do yourself a favor and avoid reading the silly profession discussions. Try things out in the game yourself and figure out a playstyle that you enjoy most. It's not rocket science, and it's the kind of thing best learned by experience.

The maps alone make this book well worth the price. Just use the other content with a grain of salt.

The guide isnt as bad as many have made it out to be. There are many inaccuracies that many people have already pointed out, things changed since beta etc. However if you are buying this guide to find out the exact energy cost, casting time of particular spells or things that could change due to balancing issues this will be a waste of money. This guide is a very good collection of things that don't change, i.e. a maps, skills in the game that you can read offline to plan builds or refer to when you get lost. The PVP content is surprisingly not bad, although nothing that would suprise anyone in the top 50 guilds, anyone else could still stand to learn bits and pieces. The PVE stuff does leave a lot to be desired but more on this later.

PVP _ The PVP info can be split pretty much into two parts of the book, the beginning where the classes are explained and a couple of columns barely totalling a page near the end. Most of the meat is at the beginning and it isn't too bad at all, but the end/miserable third part is what the contents page refers to for anyone checking out the preview. Every class description and skill listing actually describes the classes, uses for each school of magic, at least a basic use for every skill and the basics of what how each class/combo will likely play or be built for. This stuff is very important. People who think that you don't need every skill to be top end competitive will be proven wrong by this guide. It will at least help you see the worth of every skill and begin thinking of counters and strategies. This guide is a far better starting point from a "generalist" perspective than many websites.

I would make the pvp portion guide required reading of everyone who skirts pick up groups or is not in a serious guild who would want to improve their game. It explains the basics of other classes that you may not have played yet very well, and the advantages of any combination you can get, even gimpy ones and gives insight into what they could possibly be built for or why. The skills listing has MANY inaccuracies i.e. hundred blades being labelled as a no attribute skill when it is clearly a sword skill, but essentially all the skills are there. It's still a good reference to pore over when designing builds or as a quick reference when you cannot think of that one skill which would counter or complement xxx build but need to look it up quickly.

The back of the book where the contents point to as being the "pvp content" is a joke, the info is littered among tiny columns and is only 25% of the page sharing with monster listings. It contains basic info that anyone who plays will know such as "What is tombs" and "heres how you call and assist". What it does have in tiny little shots are maps of all the gvg arenas. Very handy to refer to at least since you can't find these maps anywhere else. Of course you could spend time studying these using the ferry captain too. They might at least be handy to refer to in a pinch or if you need to look up something quickly during gvg if you even have a chance.

What I was disappointed by is, that the excellent lead on the specialised team pvp stuff in the "tournament survival guide" from the pre order was not followed up on. If you didn't get a pre-order, it came with a mini booklet to get you started on pvp essentially discussing various gametypes, a short primer on classes, role builds and team builds. I was mostly interested in seeing more team builds as this is where the finesse comes in and none of it features in the completed guide. The 6 pages or so in the pre-order guide essentially still offer far more meat for experienced players than the final guide. Overall, if you are buying this for pvp info, it is best used as a "refresher" or reference rather than a provider of any indepth strategies, the guide focuses mainly on individual builds more than anything else.

PVE - Well this is where people have said this guide is most dismal and unnecessary. They are not wrong. Most people will not be using the map portion of this much unless its their first time, since the quests and missions aren't exactly rocket science to get through. The maps are nice to have but both the poster and the maps of the individual maps are not of the same quality as the maps you can get from free from the Guild Wars Map Project (even the guide's poster map is not as good), and heck if the guide had came out the sooner that project might have never got off the ground. The maps are serviceable for getting you around, but boss skill locations have already changed along with additions of things like rune traders, you probably won't be using this part a lot.

One pro is that they list all the quests and skills they give for each quest, this is useful for looking up skills before you buy them to see if you wouldnt be getting them free from quest anyway. There are no walkthroughs for quests, just lists them and their objectives. There are mission walkthroughs but they're not exactly indepth and basically jsut describe the mission to you as if someone was going through it for the first time. There's a bonus walkthrough for every mission, this is the most useful part of the PVE guide hands down but you can get better from Photics. The subtleties of how to complete pain in the ass missions like Aurora Glade's end, Thirsty River, Elona's painlessly are not covered at all.

Another thing I was looking forward to was hopefully more point charts. On things like armor (how much dmg mitigation gained per pt), things never explained like gain per pt on stats like Divine Favor, Fast Casting, Beast Mastery that aren't obvious just from how much damage the spell does and what not. It has a nice salavge listing telling you what everything is salvageable into if you are looking for mats, weapon mods, dmg and maxxes. The collector listing is a joke and so hopelessly outdated its not funny. Don't buy the guide for this. They list the armor levels and spells that the henchmen use, this is good. Not sure why this info isn't in the game. Lastly they list the regular mobs and what skills they use in case you might want to cap something early.

Final thoughts - the guide isnt totally worthless but it's not as good as it could have been either. My personal preference though leans more towards PVP and Im guessing the front and the middle of my book will fall apart pretty soon since its a pretty thick guide, and I dont think the binding can handle such one sided use for too long lol.

....Excellent guide to characters and basic descriptions of main quests, however many of the maps are not labled with the appropriate refference points. Overall I, found this book helpful and would recommend to anyone playing this game. I hope that a better proof read book will be produced for the Factions Campain.

I admit that I buy strategy guides to give me the recipes to everything. Not that I always use them, but I want to know where all the hidden stuff is, the unknown features, etc. I call it getting the most out of my game. This guide isn't bad, but all it really does is give a more in-depth look at how to play your character.

Overall this was an excellent companion book for the game. I have found the maps and skill breakdowns for the different classes both helpful and informative. The removable wall map is especially helpful for getting the overall layout of the world; but don't look for specifics, you'll actually have to walk there to find them. Hearing the game creators insights on character class combinations was a nice touch.

Prima's game guide for Guild Wars is first rate. There are maps for all of the explorable areas, as well as the storyline missions. There are tons of detailed charts to help you plan your strategy for armor and weapons. The guide contains plenty of information on the possible skills and each of the professions. I would recommend this guide to anyone who is playing Guild Wars. By the way, Guild Wars is a great game if you are just thinking about purchasing it, I recommend it highly.

This is by far the worst 'strategy guide' I have ever encountered. It was out of date before the game was even released, with much of its information seemingly taken from the game's beta testing. It has at the most 10 pages worth of accurate information, and you'll have to figure out which parts of the book are accurate for yourself.

The rest is either out of date, wrong, or can be EASILY found for free on the internet by anyone with even the slightest bit of competence in using a search engine (if you can't figure out a search engine, I doubt you could even install Guild Wars, so the guide won't help you anyway). Most of the things that aren't out of date are HORRIBLE or TOTALLY INADEQUATE strategies that will cause hours of endless frustration.

You would be much better off just playing the game and figuring things out for yourself than using this guide. Unless you plan on using it to fuel a fire, there is no reason to own this book. Don't waste your money.

Is very helpful, but there is a lot missing, and it's hard to find what you're looking for in the book as opposed to the game... The maps are very helpful when you can find the one that applys to the game... I'd like to see an updated version of this book, I would definitely purchase it!!!