Tell me about Guild Wars

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I'm interested in playing an online, cooperative game, but have absolutly no interest in paying monthly subscription fees. I know Guild Wars does not have monthly fees, so I am possibly interested in it. What is the basic story of the game? How does it compare to other MMORPGs?

 

[trancejeremy]

Bear in mind, it doesn't have any monthly fees because it's not really a MMORPG. I mean, it's a RPG and it's multiplayer, but in a lot of ways it's more like the multiplayer in Diablo or Dungeon Siege. The only time you ever seen lots of people are in towns.

The game is divided up into missions and quests. Missions are almost like levels in a FPS - you enter a mission and do various things to fulfill the conditions to win the mission (usually kill everything, at least on early missions). Quests are free-form, they are standard RPG style jobs. Go somewhere and do something.

The story is sort of complicated. It starts off (well, after the tutorial area) with your homeland being invaded by a group of fire loving felinoids called the Charr. Then Fate seems to drag you from region to region. There is a coherent story line behind the scenes, but it's not readily apparent at first.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Bear in mind, it doesn't have any monthly fees because it's not really a MMORPG. I mean, it's a RPG and it's multiplayer, but in a lot of ways it's more like the multiplayer in Diablo or Dungeon Siege. The only time you ever seen lots of people are in towns.

And just to show how far behind I am, I never played Diablo or Dungeon Siege, so I'm realy out of the loop.

Thanks for the info, though.

 

[mps42]

Okay, GuildWars is and is not a true mmorpg dependeing on how you play it. You can play as a singleplayer through the campaign and not worry about others (a nice option that I wish more mmorpgs would offer), you can join a Guild (hence the Guild part...) and play with up to (i believe) 50 other players on the same "team" through the campaign, you can play in a single player online Plaver Vs. Player area where you start at level 20 and design your skills and power the way you want and then battle other single players in an arena-type setting, OR you can play online in the PVP setting with Guilds (hence the Guild *WARS*).
It has a fairly decent plot (at least what I saw in the Beta was decent) for the campaign. There was a decent mix of "go and kill 10 of these" and "go to this place and find this and bring it back".
The graphics are very nice, especially for a MMORPG which are usually graphics-sparce due to the online part.
Sound is nice and atmospheric (sp?) with good indicators for happy and creepy.
All-in-all, I liked the beta and would pry by the game if I had $50 to throw at it.

Hope that helps, Game on!

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, actually, the trouble I had with the game (and why I basically quit playing) is that I had trouble finding people to play the game with. Unless you join a guild (and in 200 hours of playing, I never got an invite), you basically have to form random pick up groups to do missions. Which gets harder and harder as the game goes on. Near the end of the game (well, about 80% through) I just couldn't find any groups (looking an hour or more), so I quit.

In theory, you can do most missions with the AI henchmen, but in practice, the AI is stupid, and unless you know what you are doing, they don't help much.

The player vs player stuff is somewhat flawed as well. It can be fun, but it's spoiled by people who exploit the system. Ie, getting better armor than they are supposed to have for their level; elite skills (ie, more powerful skills than they should have); and unless you are in a guild and are prepared to do a lot of practice, it's not something you can really be competitive in.

And in the time I played, not once did I ever see anyone acting in character. I'm not sure if anyone does that in MMORPGs anymore, but I was somewhat disenheartened by it.

Though don't get me wrong, I did get 200 hours out of it, which I considered to be a great value. So I think it's worth buying. But as an action RPG, not really a MMORPG.