Guild Wars 1

[Zewp]

I bought the collection two days ago and started playing tentatively. Tried out an assassin and got my ass kicked royally, so decided to play the Prophecies campaign as a warrior until I get to grips with how the game works.

Apparently it's very team-oriented, but can be played with AI companions. Is this actually worth it? AI can never replace real humans, so I don't want to waste my time seeing as the Prophecies campaign is supposedly the toughest of the lot.

Anything else I need to know about the game? Do people actually still play it? I've only seen two other players thus far.

 

[Scroo]

GW got nerfed a lot over the time and is perfectly playable with AI companions these days. From start to finish, every campaign. It's a really good game, the skill system is lots of fun, collecting skills and creating new builds is priceless.

You won't have a real mmo-experience tho, the game is basically dead more or less.

 

[Darth Roxor]

AI can never replace real humans

Ho boy you'd be surprised. I very often found heroes to be much more competent than pugs at just about everything. Plus, nowadays the game is just so dead you won't find any people to help anyway.

Do people actually still play it?

nope ;_;


Still, Guild Wars was the best mmorpg in existence, hands down, for both pve and pvp, and I put a fuckton of time into it, finishing just about everything that was there to do. It makes me sad each time I think what has become of GW2.

Also, since you're p. much going to be forced to play only the pve section due to the game being dead, you're gonna miss out on a lot of fun that was GW's pvp. Tacticool party-based combat, excellently realised twitch gameplay (muh interrupts), mindgames, going completely crazy with the skill selections... damn was that a good game.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Yeah heroes with the proper build will destroy the average player in most things. Especially when they made 3 of each profession and let you use as much as you want. I miss Guild Wars before heroes. Back when people wanted to play with each other.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Best MMO of all time, IMO.

Pugging with my monk through all of the content (as rage inducing as watching your teammates fail at everything can be), then again with a Warrior, then deleting said Warrior and recreating them and starting over again because it was that much fun, then again with like 6 other characters.

I wasted many thousands of hours in it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

there are some tricks or even builds which work better on bots than on humans.
mesmers, for example, give one a bunch of interrupts and he'll outright own mungri magicbox, one of the most annoying bosses. same for rangers who have some interrupts themselves. monks too could be useful as bots, but just for applying a heal where it's needed.
another popular strategy is having as many elementals as you can and equip them with the elite "searing flames". just that and "glowing gaze". they'll annihilate any group in seconds most of the time.

 

[Average Manatee]

Apparently it's very team-oriented, but can be played with AI companions. Is this actually worth it? AI can never replace real humans, so I don't want to waste my time seeing as the Prophecies campaign is supposedly the toughest of the lot.

There's two types of AI companions, Henchmen and Heroes. Henchmen have preset skills and equipment (auto leveled and all that), and are good enough to get through just about everywhere except elite areas, but you'll have to learn how to handle things proficiently. Heroes have to be skilled (skill unlocks are account-wide type) and equipped yourself (armor auto levels), and are very overpowered when you use them right. Humans are even better, but even when Guild Wars was populated it was hard getting together a crew of people willing to synergize, so in most respects heroes are the top of the top. Heroes can be used everywhere but you'll only be able to acquire most of them in Nightfall or EotN.

Prophecies isn't the hardest campaign. Factions is IMO harder, along with being much shorter so that you have less time to learn the basics and get skills/armor up to par. Of course using a fully equipped Hero team turns both into a cakewalk, so you might not want to do that (or take max 1 or 2 heroes, you probably can't skill more then that well). Also I recommend taking Henchmen for Prophecies/Factions simply because a huge amount of story gets told through them later on, and its actually decently written and nice to watch as they go through the same personal quests you do (or get killed, as the early ones tend to do), unlike in GW2 where the writing is pure shit. Nightfall and EotN OTOH are balanced for a minimum of 3 heroes with you at all times and henchmen are basically an afterthought. 3 Heroes used to be the limit but it was raised to 7 as the population thinned.

Also note that there is a Hard Mode which can eventually be toggled in any area (can't remember conditions to unlock it). It is designed strictly for level 20 characters and with teams of 3+ heroes, even in Prophecies/Factions where you can't normally get heroes. I once did a self-made challenge of completing Hard Mode with Henchmen and god damn its punishing. Arguably some of the story-extension areas that were released right before GW2 to wrap up the whole series can count as elite-level content as well, and shouldn't be attempted without heroes. Especially the Factions ones.

Anything else I need to know about the game? Do people actually still play it? I've only seen two other players thus far.

Prophecies is by far the longest and most drawn-out campaign with the most number of cities, so anyone else playing the campaign is spread really thinly. Dunno how it is now but if you want to find people check the major cities or the zones for elite content. There's also the Zaishen isles which has a zone that feeds daily quests.

There's tons of other stuff you need to know, but Guild Wars is one of the best games ever in terms of exploring the mechanics, so I wouldn't dwell too much on trying to find tips. I think I had something like 2500 hours in it, amazing games.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

can't remember conditions to unlock it

completing the campaign those areas belong to.

 

[TigerKnee]

Did this game get discounted recently? I always wanted to try it but not if it's still at release price without a bundle.

 

[Shannow]

Pretty much what Manatee said.
I'd go for Nightfall first, because it gives fastest access to heroes, IIRC. But if you're just learning the ropes, Prophecies is probably the better choice. You'll level slower, though. Factions and Nightfall will have you around max level by the time you're finished with the tutorial. In Prophecies you'll reach it around 2/3 or 3/4 through the campaign. Depends on how many quests you do and if you bother to grind. Grinding is not required for progression, only for aquiring certain items(skins).
You can start a character in one campaign and take it over to other campaigns. You'll only miss out on the first 2 hours of tutorials or so. So don't feel boxed in by that.
The challenge of getting good when you mostly go against AI without human players is:
Choose what attributes to focus on. Usually it's a bad thing to spread out too much.
Learn what skills synergize for your character. Then learn what might synergize party-wide.
Pay attention to enemy skills. Get a feeling for timings. Some skills offer near immunity to certain attacks but have long cool-downs. Or they curse you and punish you for doing certain stuff for a certain duration. Have patience and don't unload your damage-dealers in those situations. Adapt to what skills enemies are using or learn to shut them down before they do so.
I wouldn't advise mesmer or assassin as first characters since they mostly start shining when you know what you are doing. I also wouldn't advise a monk/healer as long as you've only got henchmen.

 

[Naraya]

I'm still playing it, after 10 years. I made a mistake of preordering GW2 CE, couldn't stand the 'endgame'. Be sure to visit guildwarsguru forum - it's still quite active and contains lots of useful information as well as helpful people.

And yes - start with Nightfall, cause heroes rock.

 

[Krraloth]

I'm actually against starting with Nightfall, heroes can stop you from developing srategies around certain mob types. Aside from some monster skills, all the enemies use the same skills as you broken down but the classes they have. You want to play with henchies through Prophecies at least once.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I'm not sure GW has the same lasting appeal nowadays what with so few actual people still playing it. Don't see why you would subject yourself to the pain of using henchmen when heroes will do that much better, still need a certain amount of skill in building and using, and are more likely to get you through the shitload of content there's to experience.

OTOH, henchmen don't really add much to the experience. They aren't referenced during missions, only when you're accepting / delivering quests and sometimes in the maps during said quests. They have sub-par, fixed builds and you cannot adjust their behavior at all.

Just the fact that you can play around with your heroes' skill selection should be enough incentive to use them. Unless you're abusing wikis and checking out teh bestest powah builds, you cheater.

 

[Krraloth]

I don't know, that's how I did it, hence my suggestion.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

heroes aren't going to be of much use to somebody just starting: he'll not have skills to equip them.

 

[Average Manatee]

Exactly. Buying Hero skills competes with regular skills which quickly escalate to costing 1k a pop, and there's well over a thousand skills now. Capturing elites for all of the professions will be tedious, without which most Heroes will probably not be able to compete favorably with henchmen. The alternative is PvPing for faction.

Do take advantage of Hero Skill Trainers when you get to Nightfall/EotN though. Counter-intuitively they will unlock the skill for your character as well as unlocking the skill for all heroes. And remember that Heroes can use any skill your whole account has unlocked, so if you want to start a new character your heroes will still have all of the same skills to use. Same for PvP characters.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I like how you address the problem of Hero skills and then immediately provide the solution: Hero Skill trainers. Don't see how this is a problem, anyone who started a character in Nightfall got through this issue the same way (skills for PvE heroes aren't account-unlocked).

 

[Average Manatee]

You'll get around 70 hero skill points max, and thats with huge title grind in nightfall/eotn when he wants to play prophecies so he'll probably have more like 10-20 to spend until he finishes those campaigns. Also hero skill trainers only offer like 1/5th of the skill selection for each class, so you'll often need to purchase half of the skills you want from a skill trainer anyway. Elite skills aren't offered at all, and you'll have a hard time beating a WoH monk hench without an elite of your own. Hero skill trainers are small saver to get you started at best.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I doubt that a person starting to play GW has to worry much whether his monk has WoH or not. You may as well be min-maxing by starting with NF, getting the quick heroes then switching to Prophecies with the easy level 20 to grind quests there for skills.

You won't get access to WoH either until you get to Crystal Desert so this kind of "newbie" theorycrafting is way beyond retarded.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I think Prophecies is the coolest campaign to just go through from start to finish. If you start any other campaign and then get to Prophecies, you'll be level 20 in Kryta, and that's not a very cool thing to do.

 

[Naraya]

I think Prophecies is the coolest campaign to just go through from start to finish.

I definitely agree.

If you start any other campaign and then get to Prophecies, you'll be level 20 in Kryta, and that's not a very cool thing to do.

Fair point and a good reason to start a 2nd character.

 

[No Great Name]

The majority of the players that are still playing are found doing end-game content and random arena PvP so just about everything else is a wasteland unfortunately.

Thinking about it, it's such a shame that Guild Wars 2 isn't a proper sequel.

 

[Average Manatee]

I doubt that a person starting to play GW has to worry much whether his monk has WoH or not. You may as well be min-maxing by starting with NF, getting the quick heroes then switching to Prophecies with the easy level 20 to grind quests there for skills.

You won't get access to WoH either until you get to Crystal Desert so this kind of "newbie" theorycrafting is way beyond retarded.

Well I was talking about using heroes instead of henchmen. If he wants to do that then he'd need to cap elites when he gets to that point, and do it for all of the heroes he wants to keep using, otherwise Henchmen will quickly become better. This would of course quickly become troublesome and a needless distraction for someone on their first time through prophecies, so taking all henchmen or a max of 1 or 2 heroes is preferable.

 

[Shannow]

Heroes have 8 possible skills, while henchies have 5, IIRC. Hero skills and equipment can be tweaked to synergize with the party while henchies are: "Take it or leave it."
By the time you get max-lvl henchies with elites (IIRC, they don't start with elites and don't get them early), you'll meet bosses from which you can cap elites yourself. Though that might be quite expensive for a new player.
I think all (normal) pve content can be done with heroes if they're done well. With henchies I remember struggling sometimes, especially in Prophesies. (Defending that dwarf fortress initially had me bogged for quite some until I got a capable PUG. I don't think I would have struggled as much with heroes. But then I knew more about the game and had more resources by the time I got them so it can probably not be compared...)
IMO, both has pros and cons. With my knowledge I'd tend towards NF. But a really new player just getting into stuff could just as well start off with Prophesies.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I also started with Prophecies and consider it my favorite campaign. That was with human players, though. And if the question is whether to stick it out with henchies or heroes, I'd choose the latter.

Among other virtues of the heroes, there's the fact that you can flag them to stay put which is pretty helpful in dealing with aggro ranges and not getting your squishies killed in AoE attacks. You can avoid Mhenlo's / Alesia's fuckawful tendency to cast Resurrect mid-fight. And interrupts, man. Them godly interrupts.

Keep in mind I hated heroes at first. That's when GW started falling apart (notwithstanding bloated number of player areas vs. players). Suddenly parties didn't need to look for good interrupters because a hero could do their job maybe not as cleverly, but certainly much more efficiently and regularly. Same with healers. Why risk bringing along Newbsalot who might or might not know how to use skills beyond the third one when a couple of LoD or WoH hero monks can keep your party up for a good minute in every encounter? They don't lag out, go afk or lose their WoH when you're still at 75% health.

It was a sad day for me when my guild went under and I started having to wait hours in cities just to find pugs to finish content with, because everyone was busy two-manning, six-heroing crap.