Improves all it's predecessors flaws making it an almost perfect fast paced online rpg
To make sure buy a brand new copy, I've seen several people buy 'factions' of ebay and only recieve the discs and case, you must have an access key.
Once you put in the discs and install the client you should pick the option create a new account, enter your email, your access key and make a password etc..
From then on you use your email to log in and if you ever want to change your password you get the client to email you a new password, this is simple and safe.
So, what is guild wars? it's set in the middle ages, no guns or technology, just a world of steel and magic.
When you begin you have spaces for 3 characters, when you create the character you get a choice of sex, proffesion and basic physical appearence.
Basic proffessions include warrior, ranger, monk , mesmer, necromancer and elementalist.
Unique nightfall proffessions include the dervish and paragon, bassically you can only create an dervish and paragon on the nighttfall campaign (as well as the other basic proffessions)
Each proffesions has there advantages and disadvantages in combat, warriors are slow, low energy but they have a lot of armour and strong physical attacks.
Un-like a monk which has strong healing powers and high energy but lacks strong armour and physical attacks.
There's also unique abilities like the ranger can have a pet, and necromancers can make undead minions out of enemies corpses.
As you come into the world you get given a primary quest, this will lead you to the end of the game and as you do you'll unlock new locations, grow stronger and richer.
There are also hundreds of side quests which can help you when you need to level up or are short on cash.
There are complaints and how the level cap is only 20, but I think this is good as when you finish the game you can then use the characters for PvP action which is guild wars main strength.
Sometimes you'll have primary missions instead, these offer bigger rewards and are more complex than quests.
Guild wars isn't as open as you might think for an mmorpg, you have cities where everybody can visit but when you go outside the map becomes your own personal space, you can also bring other players or henchmen outside with you.
Depending on the area your in you can bring a certain amonut of others with you.
Henchmen are NPC's (they're robots bassically) but they can come in handy when there are no players who want to team up.
Nightfall also brings heroes, these are bassicaly your own henchmen who you can customise.
You get to pick their skills, weapons and combat style, their armour levels up automatically with them.
Basically they're your own PvP characters/personal henchmen.
Each time you level up you earn points to spend on your attributes, each proffesion has 4 attributes, for example, the monk has smiting, healing, protection and divine favour, you can re-allocate these points whenever you want which makes combat very free flowing and it has lots of possibilities
Your heroes also gain exp when fighting and level up.
Titles are also a big deal in guild wars, when you reach a certain acheivment you can add a title underneath your name, for example after you've mastered all missions in factions you unlock the title 'protector of cantha' and then if you master them all on hard mode you unlock 'guardian of cantha' this keeps you going and I espeically was quite motivated by achieving these titles.
Each proffesions has up to 100 skills alone in nightfall and many more if you purchase the other games, skills can be unlocked by buying them for gold, or on a PvP character trading in faction for them.
You can also have a secondary proffession, altough you won't be able to use their 'main ability' you can still take advantage, for example you can have a warrior/assassin but you won't be able to take advantage of the 'critical strikes' attribute which increases the rate of criticals you hit, but you WILL be able to take advantage of the 'dagger mastery' attribute increasing your damage with daggers.
Altough you can only have 8 skills on your skill bar at a time you can switch them in and out when ever your in an outpost or town, you CAN'T switch skills outside in the wilderness which I think is very reasonable because it allws you to experiment.
You also customise your armour and weapons, these are bought using money and materials the craftsman NPC needs to make the armour/weapons.
Armour does not drop from monsters and it aways customised to a player so it only fits them, there isn't a broad choice of armours, there are about 12 set choices in nightfall, these include head armour, chest, legs, gloves and boots.
You can also add insignias and dyes to your armour making them more powerful and decorative.
The higher armour rating your armour has the more expensive it is.
The main way to earn oney is from quests and missions but some people turn to hard core farming, killing monsters for hours on end using special builds.
Once you complete the game once you unlock 'hard mode' this makes enemies a lot tougher and loot a lot more shiny if you know what I mean ;)
This is when guild wars players get competetive, often players solo extremely hard enemies using a specefic build of 8 skills, this takes a lot of skill but is a quick way of making money.
If you can't be asked to go through half of a campaign to reach level 20 to be able to compete in PvP you can make a PvP character which automatically becomes level 20 with the ability to make custom max armour + weapons and use skills unlocked with faction earnt in PvP activies like random arenas.
Random arenas bassically is a random selection of 4 players who fight eachother- the last team standing wins and goes to the next fight, you also earn faction.
Graphics are stunning, altough not at all times they're smooth, for example some wall textures are a bit dodgy and layering in some locations.
You can have the options to edit the graphical options dependng on how powerful your pc is, you can also do this with the sound.
Cut scenes are also done well, if your with other players you can have the option to 'vote to skip' the cutscene, if all players vote to skip then it is skipped.
Nightfall takes you through an Egyptian styled scape of deserts, forests and evil realms of torment.
You start of on an island which is bassically like the tutorial where you learn all the basics, then you progress to mainland where things become more serious as you venture into the wilderness to deafet an exiled god.
There isn't as much to say abuot sound, music is very typical 'swords and sheilds' fantasy styled.
Sounds effects can also get on your nerve if your using a certain skill over and over again.
Voice overs in cut scenes are brilliant though, no complaints at all from me.
One of the main features of guild wars is obviously you can make guilds, altough it's an expensive process it's worth it, you can customise your own guild cape, buy your own hall and even make alliances with up to 9 other guilds.
Guilds can also fight each other in freindly or ranked matches.
I reccomend guild wars factions for those who are seeking a high quality mmorpg without monthly subscriptions.
The main story with one character can be completed in 20-30 hours and PvP and GvG can also add another 40+ hours into the experience not forgetting the hundreds of side quests and exploring there is to do, I think after you've done a lot of side quests they get boring though.
Quests include kill or fetch bassically, they could improve this in future, missions are normally a lot more complex though making the main story quite enjoyable.
Thanks for reading, I hope this review helped!