Guild Wars - A Pre-GW2 Adventure

[Thompy]

As it's MMO season round these parts I thought I'd give some impressions of GW despite its age.

With GW2 currently set as a day one purchase for me I'd been thinking about picking up GW mainly to play through the story, and perhaps pick up some Hall of Monuments fluff. Even before I knew of GW2 I'd thought of playing but it's hard to find decent videos of the thing, and frankly WoW looked a much better game. It still took some um-ing and ah-ing to buy it because I got the impression it was too dated to bother with. After 10 hours of playing my initial impressions were mostly confirmed but I soon took a whole different perspective on it and I'm really enjoying it.

The Bad
Combat: pretty awful. Moving about with WASD is generally slow to respond, not as fluid as WoW. If you're a melee class you have to click on a target to attack like in DA:O. Your character will make an automatic movement and continually follow the target, but if you manually move him after engaging it'll cancel the attack. When running up to an enemy holding down W, you actually have to stop before clicking to attack or it won't register.

Interface and options: more awful. It's not very pretty to look at and again it's something that is clunky and slow. You have to hold down a button to see player and NPC names in the world, and no option to turn it on permanently.

Levelling and gear: bit boring. You don't get vast amount of gear, and mostly they just give armor and maybe a perk or two. It's not the stat and equip effect fest that WoW is. Also bosses don't drop much if at all (at this stage anyway).

(Tangent) Servers: I don't like the "no distinct server" thing. What this means is that everyone is on the same server, but if a town instance gets full a new one is made. You can then move between any of them freely. It's ok for GW because it's all instanced and it's more of a co-op game. The worry I have is in them continuing it over to GW2, a more traditional fully open world, and losing a sense of community.

An example from WoW: they introduced cross server instancing for dungeons and PvP. This got rid of queue times but I believe it destroyed the community. It was fun to play with people form you own server, who you'd eventually run into again. With cross server instancing your group members are completely throw away. This was made more clear to me when later at night or in the early hours with few people on, I'd end up in PvP with the same people, even from different servers, and it immediately gave a greater sense of co-operation and fun.

Now, every time I log into GW I end up in a different district (the name for multiple instances of towns), so even though you can always co-ordinate with friends where to go, you'll lose that sense of always being around the same people, from the same server, even if they're not your friends per se. I guess more casual players won't notice, but the people who live in basements will feel that I'm sure.

The OK

Mechanics: pretty interesting. There's no talent tree, but a plethora of skills to choose from, of which only 8 you can use at a time. You then have attributes to boost the power of skills attached to those attributes. Generally this means a lot more variation than a classic talent tree system where only a few builds become used. The second profession is convoluted and not needed in my opinion. It's recommend to only use 1-2, or even none at all, and given there are 150+ skills it seems a waste.

You can use henchmen or hero NPCs later on instead of player characters if you want (which I am). Basically a DA:O affair. Henchmen are purely AI controlled, heroes you can set skills and tell them to use specific ones but it's not an in depth system. You can solo the entire game on normal mode with them and a lot of hard mode.

Graphics: standard, holds up ok still, especially for an MMO. It has bland colours though which doesn't help to distinguish characters on the screen.

The Good
The good comes from the changed perspective. Firstly in ignoring the MMO tag. It's not one. Even the developers say it isn't in the sense of WoW but I guess it's a half way house between MMO and traditional RPG.

Secondly, GW has a story, which was the most important thing for me as I only got it to get the back story in a more interesting way than just reading. Yes WoW has a story, but it's more of a background theme, you then just do quests for people affected by it. It's not DA:O story quality (actually I thought DA:O was mediocre, but in terms of presence and polish), and you do have your standard badger's arse quest, but it's decent (so far). Also the story is split from the quests. You have "missions" which contain the story. Even though every area is instanced except towns, the missions are more similar to dungeons in WoW. They serve a specific purpose, containing the story elements and allowing you to progress through the world. You get voice overs and cut scenes and everything. In between missions you get the standard quests. They give flavour story and experience/gear/skills. If you don't earn skills this way you have to buy them. You explore the majority of the world this way.

A lot of the inventory, combat, interface etc is similar to DA:O and makes sense in that respect.

The world is much more interesting visually than the flat landscapes of WoW. It's all rather dull toned right now but the art style and variation in topography and features is great.

Summary
The thing that's kept me hooked so far, is glossing over the lack of polish and dated scheme of things and engrossing in the story and world. At the same time though is has that addicting effect of MMOs, that of wanting to explore, gain, conquer, achieve etc. Sure a traditional RPG will give those things, but for me (as discussed elsewhere) the online/multiplayer aspect gives a greater sense of satisfaction.

If you're planning on playing GW2 and want to experience its predecessor (as long as you can get around the things I've mentioned) I recommend doing so.


May add more later.

[Dog Pants]

I always felt there were some important lessons to take away from GW. Obviously lesson 1 is the payment model, or lack of. GW2 is keeping this, but I hope they don't make you pay for the full game then charge for micropayments. They've said they'll keep it like GW, but it must be tempting in this age of F2P. The level progression is, I think, brilliant. The PvE grind to reach max level lasts until level 20, then you're on the end game. Lets face it, if you're interested in playing an MMO long term this is what you're after, so getting there faster is a blessing. The way you choose your set of skills and talents before you embark is, I think, the heart of what makes GW great. This system means more experienced characters with more skills (unlocked through quests) are more versatile rather than outright more powerful. Combine the last two points and you have a game that's more based on skill and tactics than time spent playing, which makes perfect sense for a subscription-free game. I disagree about the server instancing being a negative - I never felt any sense of community in Warcraft, only saw a few familiar dickheads (mostly 5punkers, admittedly). At least being able to switch around instances means that if I find someone in real life I want to meet in game I can, rather than absolutely always being on a different server. GW is old now and there have been advances in UI and controls since which are conspicuous by their absence, but as a basis for GW2 I'd say it's a far more interesting than Warcraft if only because the latter is what every other game seems to use as a design document.

[FatherJack]

Things that impressed me were the payment model, the server-vs-server (ish) PvP and the pathfinding. You can click anywhere and your character will work out how to get there, instead of running in a straight line like in WoW.

Things that depressed me were the (at the time I played) hugely underpowered hirelings and the fact that everything that's not a town is basically what we now call an instance. It was so lonely just getting to the next town and while WoW doesn't always have the most helpful community there were occasions where I'd bump into randoms and we'd help each other out. Worse is that the instances always reset if you have to retreat back to the town, and the monsters always spawn in the exact same places. Putting these together made it prohibitively hard for me and I only experienced a small fraction of the game, unable to progress and unwilling to get my path cleared for me by a high-level character as I'd only find it even harder at the next quest hub.

[Anery]

I am a Guild Wars fanboi, so I won't say anything about the game in terms of good/bad, but if anyone fancies a wander round the GW world with someone else rather than NPC's give me a shout on X-Fire. I am always up for guild wars

[Anery]

The Halloween special events should be starting up sometime soon. They tend to be pretty good

[Anery]

This years halloween hats are a pirate hat and a hood of some description. You need to be in LA or Kamadan at 1901 or 2201

**EDIT**
LA gives you tricorn, Kamadan the hood