Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

I started playing GW way back in Dec. 2005. I was surprised to find that I haven't given it a review yet. GW is a great MMO. It combines no monthly subscription, a beautiful game world, a very nice skill system, and great Player vs. Player action to synthesize an amazing experience. The classes (professions for GW) are balanced enough that they can be formatted to anyone's style of play, due to the complicated and simple skill system. Each profession has 4-5 different attribute lines that can be specced into with Attribute Points as you progress your character through the 20 skill levels available. Each attribute line strengthens and increases the duration of skills that you acquire during your journey. For example:

Mesmers (masters of Illusion, control, and the mind and my personal favorite profession) have four different attribute lines: Illusion, Domination, Inspiration, and a primary attribute (an attribute only available to primary mesmers, but more on that later) Fast Casting. Each of these attributes have skills connected to them that increase in power, or scale, with the more attribute points in the line. Now, each primary profession (the prof you choose at character creation) is allowed to choose one secondary profession later in their career. You may choose from any of the other professions, but you will not have access to the primary attribute of that profession (an example being the Fast Casting of Mesmers). Each primary attribute usually has an inherent effect that boosts the abilities of your character. Mesmer's Fast Casting allows them to do just that - cast spells much faster.

The catch with the multi - profession system is that you can only have a total of 8 skills on your skill bar. That is where strategy comes in. You have to plan ahead and adapt your skill bar as the game progresses, because some monsters aren't affected as strongly with some skills as others.

The Player vs. Player portion of the game is much more strategic than that, even, requiring you to balance your build (your attributes, skills, and equipment) to the rest of your team in order to achieve the best results.

The 6 core professions of GW are:

Elementalist (general caster/ranged spell slinger)
Monk (your generic healer/protector)
Ranger (your generic hunter w/ optional pet)
Warrior (your generic tank/frontliner)
Necromancer (minion summoner/support/damage dealer using dark magic)
Mesmer (disabler and master of the opponent)


There are also four professions from the two other campaigns, Assassin, Ritualist, Dervish, and Paragon, but I won't get into them at this point. If GW sounds like your kind of MMO, then I highly recommend getting it.

-Dean