Guild Wars

[Monocause]

Anyone played it? How does it feel? How's the combat? I got interested in it since there's no subscription fee and I've heard grinding is not excessively required. I'd like to have an online game at which I can waste an hour or two when I'm bored - and the no-subscription model seems great.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's amusing. Got bored after two years when I finally made it through all dungeons/missions/campaigns/pretty much everything, but sometimes I go back to do some pvp.

Yes, there's no necessary grinding, since the rare items that have their prices in the stratosphere are not rare because of their properties, but because of their skins.

In combat you use attribute and class based skills (you can have 8 equipped at a time), and since attributes are re-specable, you can experiment and get some pretty interesting builds for various situations.

There are 6 classes in the vanilla version, two more in the Factions campaign and two more in Nightfall. You choose the class when you create your character, and later you can get a secondary class, that you can also change at will, but secondary classes don't have the main attribute of the primary ones.

 

[Shannow]

DR said most. Gameplay feels quite actiony and intense, especially in pvp. No grinding is required but after a while even normal story progression got boring enough to feel so for me (but only after a few months).
It's not a "real" mmo. Everything is instanced for a group with attached chat and recruting city-hubs. So you'll never have to deal with frag stealers, looter stealers and that kind of griefers, but it also lacks the possibility of helping strangers in the wilds and the opportunities that arise from that.
Since you can have henchmen (and with the nightfall expansion heroes) that you can recruit at least the main quest line is solvable with only a modicum of grouping Since I hate all idiots on the net I played through most by myself or with the help from a friend.
In the expansions you reach the max level very quickly so it is more about testing different skills and builds than about leveling.
Combat is skill based. The whole attraction is combining 8 skills from a vast pool and then grouping those with the right team to achieve good synergies. Positioning and timing are also important. PvP was quite balanced in a rock paper scissors way, but loaded with griefers and quitters in the casual random arenas. I doubt that has changed much.

 

[Rhett Butler]

It was the first MMO I played. It's like a regular aRPG only with no noticeable story and the towns are filled with annoying tits spouting unintelligible gibberish. I gave up after a couple hours, the genre wasn't for me. Still if you like MMOs this is one, and there are no fees.

Since I hate all idiots on the net I played through most by myself or with the help from a friend.

Why would you do this? It'd be just like playing a really, really poor single player aRPG.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Since I hate all idiots on the net I played through most by myself or with the help from a friend.

Why would you do this? It'd be just like playing a really, really poor single player aRPG.

Actually, I did the same, since I fucking hate 'working' with random people on the internet, who happen to be absolute retards in 9 out of 10 situations.

And heck, for me, it's not a 'really poor' aRPG, since using the various skill combinations for different missions/areas is really cool.

 

[Shannow]

It was the first MMO I played. It's like a regular aRPG only with no noticeable story and the towns are filled with annoying tits spouting unintelligible gibberish. I gave up after a couple hours, the genre wasn't for me. Still if you like MMOs this is one, and there are no fees.

Since I hate all idiots on the net I played through most by myself or with the help from a friend.

Why would you do this? It'd be just like playing a really, really poor single player aRPG.

Darth already said it. For me it's one of the better aRPGs. Certainly more fun than D2, e.g. And skyping with a friend while wasting time in GW is also fun.

 

[Black]

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

 

[Overweight Manatee]

The arena sounds interesting, codex warriors unite!

 

[AlaCarcuss]

Yep, I'm with Darth and Shannow.

If you play by yourself, it becomes a really fun ARPG and with all 3 expansions, fukcing heaps of content. There's some really interesting and varied locations, pretty graphics and effects and lots of character options with the shitload of skills. The heroes even add a bit of tactical gameplay into the mix.

Some quest lines are really well done as well. Especially in the latest EoTN expansion. You can pretty much treat them as single player games, though you still have the option of grouping if you want to.

Very well done, about the best online RPG I've seen. The new free version of DDO is pretty damn good too and structured similarly to GW.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Yes, the multitude of areas you can visit is indeed huge and well varied. I personally like the Canthan campaign most.

That said, I burned out on PvEing a long time ago. The skill system is kind of a two ended sword for PvE. It offers tons of possibilities, but once you have played long enough every PvE area ends up being "Check the skills of the enemies you face, put on awesome/counter skills, c-space and let heroes clean up while you check email". I might get back into PvP though, AB/FA/JQ were always pretty decent to start playing immediately and we will see how the codex arena turns out.

 

[Tycn]

This game pretty much had the potential to be the best thing ever. It still has the most tactically rich team-based combat of any MMORPG, and relatively grind-free. Higher level PvP was about communication, coordination and skill, and level/loot advantage is pretty much nonexistent because you can create a PvP character which starts at max level with the best stuff. Secondary professions and the limited skillbar really forced you to think when creating team builds and tailor things to your players' strengths.

Then at some point, they fucked everyone up by introducing expansions with overpowered profession and skills. Of course you didn't have to buy them, but it meant that your PvP options would be much more limited. And a lot of the new skills were pretty much 'mash buttons and win' instead of involving any real skill. Balance was still shit, people kept finding overpowered combinations (there was ONE person whose job it was to balance over 1000 different skills - go figure). Then they added heroes, AI controlled party members which fucked up PvP even more with interrupts and their split-second reflexes - which took three years for them to finally fix. At the same time, everyone who didn't live in America or Europe gets fucked over anyway because of the servers (or lack thereof) and it is extremely frustrating to lose to teams clearly worse than yours, for no other reason than ping. Not to mention, waiting for a GvG match was almost guaranteed to take 30 minutes or more outside of euro/american times. And when you did get a match at these times, there's a good chance they're either utterly shit and don't pose any challenge, or are way above your level.

It's still the best MMORPG ever, everything other I've tried afterwords has bored me to tears. It was just a victim of the dumbing down that few games can escape. I'm hoping that the sequel will be good, and will last for at least a year or two before balance goes to shit.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Factions wasn't bad as far as additions go PvP-wise, it was Nightfall that fucked everything up horribly. Factions added primarily a lot of weaker skills that were then slowly tuned up, while nightfall went the opposite way and added tons of overpowered crap to force every pvper to buy it, then they decided to overpower everything else in the other campaigns to compensate. EotN continued what nightfall started.

The game's primary problem IMO is trying to balance too many things at a time. There isn't just PvE and PvP, there are like 10 different primary PvE areas, then for PvP there is RA/TA/HA/GvG/AB/FA/JQ, and every single one of them stresses the skills differently. Every time a single build dominates any one of those half the community will be bitching about it. If the game were boiled down to GvG and PvE, you could easily have someone balance it. That said, the current balance is inexcusable. Everything is about 2x more powerful then before nightfall. I gave up when they decided the way to get players to stop using LoD as a strong party based healing was to buff WoH so that every monk in the game can solo tank warriors.

 

[Tycn]

True, I mostly meant Nightfall. They shouldn't have to rebalance for all the formats, however - HA and GvG are the only ones people really care about, and usually the gimmicks in question are the same or similar. What they needed was a team of people for testing and balance, who actually responded quickly to fix clearly broken skills before the meta became stale. They also seem to be toning down the number of skills in the sequel, which might help as well.

 

[yazaga]

It was my first MMO too, so i too have very fond memories about it. But what did stop me from playing was not bad balance. I actually thought they did good there. Well maybe a bit slow if u considered yourself pro but then again too little of the community was pro . Every other MMO i have played, neglected balance much more than GW team and were too slow to change obvious issues.
What actually made me stop was that as soon as hit top 500 in GW ( before the mini tournaments ) i became quite overwhelmed. Maybe i suck too much, but all the things going on in GVG were just too much for me

 

[Angthoron]

So guys, I'm considering giving Guild Wars a try. Thing is, I'd like to experience the best choice of content, or at least something that would be worth its purchase. And here's where things get confusing.

There's Steam's Guild Wars Trilogy that "combines Guild Wars, Factions™, and Nightfall™".
There's Steam's Guild Wars GotY that seems to only have Guild Wars
There's a retailer box, Guild Wars: Platinum Edition (Prophecies & Eye Of The North Expansion Pack).

Which should I go for? Are these in any ways connected? Is Platinum playable from basic onwards, or would I need a separate purchase of Guild Wars? Why are the Platinum and the Trilogy packs not having the same expansions? Or are they? I'm confused.

I mean, I looked up the Wiki, but still things don't make sense. Why does Platinum not have Factions and Nightfall? Why does Trilogy not have Eye of the North? And most importanly, is Trilogy pack worth its 30 moneys' worth?

 

[Fens]

factions & nightfall are on different continents, prophecies (the original campaign) & eye of the north share the same continent (with eotn expanding the explorable areas)

if you want the full experience, go with the trilogy thing (there should be a boxed version of this). you will get tons of content and three very different continents with different styles to explore.
if you just want to see what the hell GW is about, the original campaign will suffice, as it is pretty long already and introduces new players to the world and playing style.
if you're in for the pvp, you'll appreciate factions.
nightfall has some of the best quests of the whole trilogy and most of the npc heroes to pick up (basically npc party members you can order around and equip - unlike npc henchmen, that come preequipped and a bit dumb)

if you get stuck somewhere, send me a pm and i'll necro my necro.

btw.: there's a shop linked from within the game, so you might be able to avoid steam there... not sure, never used it

 

[Angthoron]

Thanks for the clarification Fens. I checked out the store, too, but it pretty much looks like content-wise Steam version of Trilogy is the best purchase option.

So I went and grabbed it. I'm also guessing the side benefit of (some day) unlocking the Hall of Monuments rewards for GW 2 is also present.

 

[Fens]

btw.: the hall is in the eye of the north expansion area and there's a reward calculator for GW2 : http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=welcome

 

[Mystary!]

Im also playing this, had the original game from when it was first release, barely played it, but now I've bought the expansion pack and am planning on playing through it all, just to get some background for gw2.
I like the system, mixing and matching professions. For the main campaign I have an axemaster fighter/ranger with a pet for extra dps. Probably not optimal but very fun.
The only complaint I have is that the fighter is the only "melee" option, everyone else uses wands which looks kinda silly. But the expansions (and gw2) seem to fix this.

 

[Mangoose]

Hey Angthoron, if you do give GW1 a try, give me a PM. I've tried it a few times but it's just so boring solo. So if you're willing to team up I'm willing to play with you.

Edit: Fyezall that's open to you, too, and anyone else that's up for it.

 

[Berekän]

I wish I didn't get my account closed so I could play with you guys

 

[Angthoron]

Will let you know once/if I start playing GW properly. What levels approximately are you guys?

 

[Mangoose]

I'll start a new character, I really haven't played that much. Just let me know which campaign you want to do, so I can grab the right one (I only have Prophecies but I can grab a cdkey for cheap for the other ones).

 

[Fens]

I wish I didn't get my account closed so I could play with you guys :Sad:

how the hell did that happen ? not even the scammers and gold sellers i reported were kicked out.

Will let you know once/if I start playing GW properly. What levels approximately are you guys?

max lvl is 20, which you reach pretty fast. it's more in the skills you collect, pick and use (you only get to take 8 skills with you in an instance so choosing the fitting ones is vital). there are some min/max builds on gw forums but i'd suggest to pick the skillset you're comfortable with.

 

[Angthoron]

I only have Prophecies but I can grab a cdkey for cheap for the other ones.

Oooh, any chance you could share the source?