Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

Guild Wars is a subscription free MMORPG that brings quality, roleplaying gaming without the 15$/month subscription fee. The game has six classes (10 if you buy the expansion) which are all the classic D&D classes: Ranger, Warrior, Necromancer, Elementalist, Monk, Mesmer as well as assassin, paragon, dervish, and something else :). All of the games classes are nicely balanced and follow almost a row-sham-bo type style: Assassin kills warrior, ranger kills assassin. The game is to say the least, beautiful and you will be quickly engrossed in the detail put into the levels. The main plot in the original falls short of epic but it is nevertheless an enjoyable experience. Each mission and area is separated into various zones with which you use portals to move between them via loading zones. This makes the immensely large continent with which you play on smaller and can get a bit annoying. PVP is a big factor in this game and while the larger, guild orientated battles are fun, it is almost too challenging to get into if you don't have the newer weapons that are given to you in the expansions. All the games are rolled together so that in PVP, you will see assassins that are Factions expansion exclusive. Character customization is limited to a set number of armor and weapon sets but a large amount of runes and weapon handles keeps customization lively. You can't wear enemy armor however and any armor that you "craft" (give materials to smithy) is bound to you. You also have the choice of donning a secondary profession in the later levels and that adds a bit more strategy when picking your spells. And about the spells: Guild Wars has A LOT of them. Before you enter a battle zone (wilderness, PVP) you must choose 8 of the hundreds of spells spread out over 4 games. This can be a little intimidating to newer players because they don't quite know what to expect in PVP. The level cap is only 20 but it will supposedly rise to 30 in the coming sequel. All in all this game is a must. Its level of detail and ample supply spells keeps the action fun but balanced. One of the biggest set backs is their money making tool: At the beginning of the game, you get only 4 character slots between you ( including linked expansions) so you must choose wisely and most likely delete many characters over time. In order to get more slots, you must buy them at the NCSoft store for 10 dollars. Weapon packs as well as spells and monster pets are also available at the store for ten dollars.