Guild Wars
by NCsoft
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Video Game Reviews of Guild Wars
Customer Review: My Comparison to Guild Wars vs. World of Warcraft
Summary: 4 Stars
I have played World of Warcraft (WoW) for quite some time. Guild Wars and WoW are probably two of the most popular online RPGs right now, I felt there should be a review that compares the two side by side. These are my own personal opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of playing Guild Wars and is mostly geared toward those who understand WoW mechanics.
Disadvantages of Guild Wars:
- Cumbersome UI, very difficult to send /tells or /whispers in-game. Vent Servers are a must if you're PvPing with guildmates. WoW is streamlined in this case.
- No Jump button. You can't jump down to other areas, despite being two feet away from it. This was so annoying when I didn't know where to go.
- Click attacking. I hate it. You can tab-target mobs and enemies, but in order to take a swing at them you need to use your mouse button and aim/click their icon. WoW lets you have an attack button if you wish, or you can click.
- Below Average Community. Good luck finding help with quests in the game, or help with finding an NPC. You can't tell who is where in your guild, and sending random tells for help rarely get answered.
Advantages:
- Caters to casual. This is a game for people who enjoy RPGs, but aren't into actually "becoming" their characters. The game actually tells you in your chat bar when to take a break (Usually two hours logged in).
- No Increased time commitment. WoW sucks you in initially with the easy interface, but requires more and more time if you want to progress in content after the level cap. You can essentially play the same amount in Guild Wars from the beginning to end, and still be able to see everything in the game.
- Enjoyable PvP. I was very suprised how incredibly hard it was to take someone down. You don't get "one-shotted" by a warlock like in WoW or lose half your health to a critical strike form a rogue. 90% of the pvp has nothing to do with your gear, but what skills you bring into the fight. Yes there are classes better suited to kill others, but it isn't as easy as you might believe. Fights last minutes, not seconds. You need real strategy to take someone down, not superior gear.
- Balanced. WoW has progressively gotten worse with balancing classes (ask any Paladin or end-game Rogue). Guild Wars has the best balance of each class, and the ability to redo your character for free at any time. No time commitment necessary.
- Progressive PvE. Despite the stigma that end-game Guild Wars is all PvP, there is actually a 40+ hour PvE based storyline for each campaign (120 hours total, not including other modes). There is even a hard mode after you finish the normal one. Similar to the "heroic" dungeons of WoW.
- Easy quest / crafting system. You don't need a guide to follow the quests or to craft in the game. Read the instructions in-game and you can figure it out on your own. Quests are marked on your map, no need for sites to tell you the location.
- Free Max Level PvP character. You don't need to be level 70 or 80 to enjoy PvP content anymore. Just make one in 5 minutes.
- No loot wars! I've seen plenty of guilds disband over loot systems and DKP crap. Loot is essentially eliminated in Guild Wars, so all that is looked at is progression.
Synopsis:
Guild Wars essentially "woke me up" to the fact that I don't have to spend more time playing a game to enjoy the benefits. I simply don't enjoy WoW end-game as much as I do Guild Wars and made the switch based on that.
I recommend Guild Wars to any WoW veteran that doesn't have a lot of time to invest in online RPGs anymore, but still enjoys playing one. WoW is a great game, but the developers tend to push you a certain way and require a greater time commitment for "the good stuff". I believe Guild Wars was developed for people who want to enjoy the good stuff but still want to enjoy real life. With the game being 30 dollars since I wrote this review and free to play, picking up a copy wouldn't hurt if you're interested in trying something different. Guild Wars may not be considered the best or most played MMO out there, but it certainly changed my perspective.
Customer Review: First Guild Wars (aka the `Prophecies')
Summary: 5 Stars
OK, this game came out in April 2005 or so. Not a regular MMO but most of the time plays like one largely because there is no shortage of ppl online playing it... yep, 2+ years old and going strong.
Lvl20 cap, as everyone interested or already playing it must surely know by now. The cap is reached at approximately half-point through the PvE part of the game, half of the story (moderately linear story) is known by then. There are certain frequently abused paths that let players reach the high end areas sooner than that, but first timers should not be concerned with them.
Because of the lvl cap game can get pretty hard when mobs are lvl28 and your buddy only lvl20. Arguably those areas are the most fun to play in (for PvE) and have the best loot...
LOOT (or items): the variety is limited but not as much as attribute/stats range on weapons, armor, etc. That, together with low lvl cap probably keeps the balance of the game more or less managable... it's being balanced for PvP of course. Economy is complex, generally because for all intents and purposes there are no separate servers and anyone can meet with anyone... the population of 100s of thousands of players.
The best (range-wise) weapons/shields start dropping soon after half point. Player armors can be only crafted by NPCs.
PvP. Arguably the best part of GW, can be fun even for someone who doesn't like PvP, however it can also be abused in some ways and the higher lvl of competition the more specialised and narrow tactics/strategy used (cookie cutter builds)
Combat. Each character can wield only 8 skills at a time, they can be changed and rearranged in towns from a pool of many different skills that character has obtained since it was created. Skills are used only for combat, they are useless in non-combat areas (towns, outposts)... means that the game is very combat oriented.
Practically no physics, no climbing, swimming, jumping, flying. No potions of any kind.
Graphically the game is beautiful, and not very demanding on the system.
Customer Review: Solves many of the MMORPG problems
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all I just bought the game not even a week ago. Already, I can see many issues I had with other MMORPG's eliminated. First of all, the monthly payments. I'm a busy guy and sometimes, just because I've already paid for this month, I feel the obligation to make sure I get my "money's worth". "I've spent $10-$15 for this month alone, and I haven't played once and there's only 5 days left in the month... it's time to chug away".
I personally like to step away from the game, and not having the monthly payments is a big one. It makes it easier when "real life" has it's demands on you.
Another big pro with the game is how they handle the environment. All the towns and outposts (the places where the killing isn't), You can meet up with anybody really; you can switch servers, so you're not limited with whom you can group with. Once you leave these towns/outposts you in your own instance basically. Nobody will take your kills or accidentially kill the boss of your quest... nor do you have to wait in line for quests to restart cause a bunch of people are doing them at one time.
One thing which is really nice is that while in town you can add NPC's to your group. The group limit is 4 people, that kind of sucks, but you really don't need more than 4 to do anything in game. There are 4 different NPC's to choose from: a fighter, healer, archer, and nuker. So when you're soloing or grouping with a friend or two and really need that healer and one can't be found... you've got one waiting on you in town. There's no fee, but they do absorb their share of the xp's, money and loot (quest items excluded).
Something else... from what I've seen, all the classes seem very well balanced and no one class really seems to stand out above the others. I could be wrong, but my first impression is just that.
One thing that's also really nice is that you really can't mess up your character building. Usually, once you've figured out the science behind building your Ever Crack toon or what have you, you find that the early level set up can make a big difference once you finally get to the max level for the toon. In this game, as long as you're in a town, you can remove points from one attribute and place them elsewhere should you decide that you want him to be different. So, you don't lose all that time once you figured out that he's not going to be at 100% come max level. It just isn't that way with this game. You can make your guy a fire mage and then decide at level 15 that you really wanted an ice mage... just switch the points around once in town. The only time you'd really want to delete a charater is if you didn't want to play that particular class ever again.
The quests are easy to follow, yet they don't hold you by the hand at every moment. So there is still some brain power. They help you keep track of the quest steps and take a lot of guess work out of the game. Quests are everywhere, and they're also a fun way to just level. Although, I really don't equate my character to level of power so much as just what can he do right now. Leveling in this game even seems different on a mental level from other games. Usually you're out to get the first 20 levels as fast as you can so you can play with all your online buddies. It's easy to have a low level guy play with a high level guy and not really have much hinderance in the group. The low level guy will level a little faster of course (hate PL-ing), but it's not something one has to do to enjoy the game.
These are just a few great points... I could be here all day, and yet I've only played this game for 3 days. So buy it if you can... I do plan on getter the other expansions once I'm well through this story line.
Customer Review: Pretty Good
Summary: 4 Stars
Even though this game has been out for quite awhile, I just want to put in my two cents. There's plenty of places to find out exactly what guild wars is, but heres a few reasons why I like and why I dont like it.
If GW didn't have few things going for it it wouldn't be that special. I think one of the main things that make this game what it is, isn't nessarily the graphics, but the whole art direction of the game. From the box art to the character select screen, the game is beautiful. I remeber the main reason I bought it was simply the box art. I'm not speaking strictly about the graphics here either, everything about the game is pleasing to behold (oddly, except the loading screen.) Your character whether it's a stealthy assasin or a powerful warrior all look the part. I mainly choose to play chicks because I'd rather stare at the backside of a girl for hours on end, and boy does she look nice. Warriors and weapons are strong and powerful looking, skill effcts are nice, the scenery is beautiful to behold. And herein lay some of my main complaints with GW.
GW has big beautiful environments to trek out and explore, but sadly there's no real reason to do so. Every environment seems like it was painstakingly produced but oddly is devoid of life. There are no "secret treasures" to be found, no secret pathways, no special monsters or special weapons to discover. In games like Final fantasy and Neverwinter nights, you are rewarded for going off the beaten path. Rewarded by a conversation with one of your characters, rewarded by finding a new spell or weapon. In GW you simply follow your green arrow until you get to a monster or your destination and that's it. NPC's are basically paper dolls that DO NOTHING but sit in one spot forever until you come up to talk to them. Towns are empty cardboard husks that only exist to serve you to find them, find some meaningless quest and go kill a monster. I realize that is somewhat needed given the nature of the gameplay, but come on these people could have cycles,they could come in and out of buildings, the could have SOME sort of life besides never moving and doing nothing.
The main story in GW revolves around the CHarr invasion, but somewhere in the middle a whole host of new enemies are introduced and the story goes all over, what story there is to begin with. I'm later up in the game and I really have no clue what is going on, I just follow the missions with a friend.
Guild Wars' problem is it wants to be a lot of things to a lot of people, but doesn't go quite as far as it needs to to satisfy the role players out there. It's more of an "action" game with RPG elements that you can play with a friend. It has some similarities to Neverwinter Nights and if it would take a lot more of them from it, you would have a serious winner on your hands. As it is you never feel like you're in the game. It looks as if theyve addressed some of this with the new expansion Eye of the North, but we'll see.
I know it seems like I've bashed the game but it really is fun to play given what it is and if you understand you're not getting an RPG. The 8 skills at a time forces you to strategize and balance, the environments that you traverse are all gorgeous and well designed, and the multiple expansions means you'll never have nothing to do. It's just to bad it's not geared more to the person who just wants to experience the story and do a little role playing. For that you should get games liek NWN and Oblivion.
Customer Review: a very good game that doesn't cost much
Summary: 5 Stars
I had the same feelings about this game as starcrossedlady, but I started playing because it was cheaper and to try it out. The beginning of Prophecies is a bit different then the later stages, so if you are bored or don't think it's fun in the beginning, keep playing until you level up a bit more and/or reach later stages of the game. I really like the fact that are so many different aspects of the game--guilds are/can be just a tiny part of it. Armor, pets, and weapons can all be customized and unique (okay the pets can't be customized but you can have unique pets). There are specialists that focus on different areas like farming, and a very large variety of skills--some can only be found on bosses (where you have to "cap" or capture them), or in certain towns. The two bad things I found were that when I only had Prophecies, (the original, stand alone product), I felt like I needed Factions/Nightfall to complete my Guild Wars experience. There are some things that are found in Factions/Nightfall that will help your characters, like extra skills, different armor sets (just to look different), and heros, which level up with you and are better than the NPCs that are standard at towns. Also, there are a lot of immature people that play, but that is not the fault of the game--I found that there was a lot of kids age 8-15 playing. In harder areas of the game you need to have communication and cooperation with all the members of your party, and one of the six or eight players could ruin it for the whole team.
Overall I think the game is really good esp for people that want a "full" gaming experience.