A surprisingly fast-paced online rpg that puts its focus on action instead of grinding
After hearing mostly positive feedback, especially regarding its pvp content I decided to give it a go myself.
First off let me say that I really appreciated the color-printed and nicely written booklets that come with the game which is something that unfortunatly is rare to be seen nowadays. They are infact done in a quality that I am normally only used to from Blizzard and good old Bioware.
What was on the disks themselves felt more like a fast-paced action game rather than the usual MMoRPG formula.
The thing that had me worried at first was the instanced areas because I feared that this might take away from the feeling of immersing myself in an artificial fantasy world.
However, the instanced areas actually work to the game's advantage because the single factor that destroys the atmosphere of any Online RPG, being the playerbase itself can simply be ruled out here. In the towns and outposts of the game you can just ignore the usual 80 % of social inepts (yes Guild Wars is no different from other games in that department), grab your team of like-minded individuals, or better yet join one of the many guilds and play the game with them. That way you can actually make sure that you play with decent people who won't destroy the game's marvellous atmosphere for you.
Being able to just rule out unlikeable folks out of your game entirely is what I specifically liked about Guild Wars.
With the level cap being 20 I believed Guild Wars to have very little grind to it and I was positively surprised that it infact doesn't have a grind at all.
Instead of killing the same monsters over and over you will instead get the bulk of your experience from doing quests.
The quests in Guild Wars are unlike other, similar games actually enjoyable. You will be doing the main quests which even feature decently made cut-scenes to gain levels and more importantly advance in the game's story line as well as unlocking more areas of the game's world.
Also there is a countless amount of side-quests which include simply running from point A to point B (and surviving the monsters in between), doing escorts, running errands and sometimes killing a certain boss monster. While the objectives aren't extremely variable even the side quests have nicely told stories to them, sometimes even featuring scripted events which happen during or at the end of the quest.
While this approach is of course more linear and doesn't really classify Guild Wars as a "consistant world" MMoRPG it doesn't have to because the interesting story-telling and variable side quests actually do make it feel more immersive than most MMoRPGs.
Like I said this game is action-packed and in a way it felt more like playing Diabo on Battlenet rather than World of Warcraft.
You see, in most online games the monsters are little more than walking experience points and you will set out to slaughter these unfortunate critters in order to get them.
In Guild Wars however, the monsters actually feel more like obstacles, standing between you and your quest objective (and thus your exp).
After you have finished the game's tutorial you can forget the word aggro mob entirely because when something is a monster it will be trying to kill you the moment it sees you. Since most of the time monsters will attack you in organized packs, often even organized in classes such as healers or casters the combat in Guild Wars actually feels refreshingly difficult and tactical where in other Online RPG's the only possible cause of death is either lagspikes or simply being too low level.
Even the monster's AI is solid. They won't totally outsmart you but they'll know which party members they should preferably attack first, scramble when getting hit by an area spell, even heal their fellow monsters when they need it. Suffice to say the monsters in Guild Wars act smarter than some of the parties I've seen and they certainly are better than just having monsters that walk around, waiting to be slaughtered. Not only does combat feel much more interesting this way it also, believe it or not provide some solid boot training for the game's pvp content.
There is no doubt that a number of players will appreciate that Guild Wars doesn't force its pvp content on players, however it still can be regarded as the other half of the game and fortunatly it isn't even the endgame content.
Where other games force you to go through their dull levelling phase before you get to the juicy bits you will still be exploring the game's world long after you've hit the level cap for your first toon. That way you can play the pvp portion of the game while still having a lot to look forward to in the pve campaign.
Being more of a random pvp player I specifically enjoyed the arena matches where you are tossed together with some other random people, fighting against another team. This form of pvp feels rather casual and you won't loose anything from being the underdog in a match. Actually this portion of the pvp part felt more like playing one of the good, old online shooters where you are in it for the fun and nothing else.
If you are with a guild you can also engage in Guild vs Guild matches, featuring large maps and even an interesting tactical layer through the inclusion of NPC characters that will guard your homebase.
There is also a ladder system which in all honesty I haven't quite figured out yet since like I said I am more a friend of the casual pvp.
Guild Wars is best not considered as an MMoRPG, no it actually is better than that. You will not be wasting your time in an unimmersive, virtual world, killing the same old monsters over and over. Instead you will get a solid story campaign that you can play with people you know and actually like, ignoring all the other bastards or even play the game on your own most of the time if that is what you like (and it would still be vastly enjoyable), plain and simple pvp fun and a beautiful (though apocalyptic) world to explore.
Suffice to say I never got quite so much game for my money before and for that it is a great deal.