Well my patience is spent with this game.

I got level 60 in the first month, farmed my wildheart set, got all the gear I wanted, and sat around twiddling my thumbs waiting for an honour system.

Waste of three months, the honour system is horrible. Well, it's not just the honour system but rather WoW PVP in general. I probably should have played on a pve server, maybe it would have been better pking.

First they got rid of dishonour, so my girlfriend kept getting ganked and complaining when she tried to level her hunter. At this point I thought about changing servers, but didn't want to forfeit the time already invested in my char.

Then after some pking I realized the most important axiom of WoW PVP: Numbers rule. You show up to a fight with more people, you win. Period. There is no way in hell I can win versus 2 level 60's. No amount of skill can make a difference.

Of course as a druid this just got worse. With root, stealth, and track, the druid LOOKS like a solo-pk machine. I kept trying to play it that way, but our dps is just so low that we can't kill anyone before their buddies show up. The honour system made this worse as now people were actively searching for soloers like me to zerg.

Then the coup de grace... superior numbers win, but once you have more than 10 people you lag and so does the server.

This has been the most unfulfilling pvp I have ever seen. There is no skill or strategy in fighting 20 vs 20. Everybody uses their ranged spells, you try to gank 1 or 2, then someone charges and the other side runs. Since the honour system was introduced my pk has been reduced to two spells: root and moonfire. I can't find a solo horde to save my life, so I have to zerg with the rest. Zerg reduces me to ranged casting, and laggy framerates.

There is no such thing as a good pvper in WoW. I can kill almost anyone on my server in 1v1. The fact is I never get the chance, because as soon as they start getting owned they call in their buddies, or some random running by dismounts and zergs. The only alternative is for me to travel in packs as well, which results in either us winning 5v2 (not fun), or us losing 10 v 5 (not fun). The chances of us meeting an even sized force and having a battle of wits and skill is ridiculously small.

The last two times I logged into WoW to pvp hoping that something might be different my initial assessment has been proven true. After 15 minutes I end up saying "screw this stupid game, I'm out", after kicking someone's ass 1v1 only to have 3 or 4 more idiots show up and zerg me.

So I'm off to Guild Wars, bought my pre-order last week. It promises a pvp system based on skill, not numbers. And you don't have to be level 60 to participate. There are just 20 levels, so it doesn't take as long to reach the level cap, and from there its just unlocking new skills so you can try different strategies. All battles take place in arenas, you can challenge individuals to arena duels, or get paired up with 5 random players for 6v6 combat, or get your guild together for an 8v8 challenge.

WoW was sort of fun I guess, but I waited soooo long just for the honour system, and in the end all it did was reinforce zerging and eliminate all need for skill.

I have really enjoyed this forum, and I'll probably keep lurking around for a while. But come Thursday, I'll be rolling a mesmer on GW (no druids in guild wars ><).

Peace,

-Aitrus

Have fun Aitrus, I actually created a small subforum over on the old EQ1 TDG site because we had some people ask about this.

Linkage: http://eq.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/forumdisplay.php?f=68

:) Glad to hear you'll still be lurking Aitrus, and sorry to hear that WoW isn't your cup-o-tea. Myself, I'm still very much in love with the game, then again, I am on a PvE server and have pretty much stopped playing on the PvP server i've been on due to the zerg-ganking and my focus just isn't PvP. Best of luck in Guild Wars :)

Guild Wars pvp is a test of skill. I played in two of the weekend beta's and the E3 alpha test last year. It's a damn good game. I'll be picking it up eventually.

Me and a few others often times win out in pvp against superior numbers. If skill wasn't at all a factor, then that wouldn't be possible. *shrugs*

My experience overall has been different than yours. I hope you find what you are looking for with Guild Wars.

Have fun! :)

If you really want a test of skill just go play doom2 shotgun matches... or halo... or whatever...

Any game in which different players have a different ability set at all is going to be inherently unbalanced.

Oh I've won lots of 2v3's and even the occasional 2v4 if the enemy is truly awful.

But as a druid you cannot win 1v2 versus 2 level 60's no matter how bad they are. Some classes could 1v2 effectively with cc abilities. A mage could morph 1 and own the other, a rogue could sap 1 and own the other... but say 1v3 then... the 1 player is done for.

And its not even like that's the norm. The norm is for me to go around in a group of 1-3 people, absolutely dominate any remotely even matched battles, but then lose to 10v3 or 5v2.

I'm not saying I should win a 3v10, I'm saying the game needs a mechanism to make encounters happen with a "normal" size of a group... say 5 man groups as the norm for pvp encounters. But there's no incentive in WoW to run in any sized group besides the largest one possible.

If you've found the game to be anything other than zerg = win then that's great. After months of pvping I can tell you that my experience on Illidan has been that an evenly numbered battle is the most unlikely thing to happen in the game. I engage a lvl 60 mage 1v1? Surprise, here comes the 60 rogue to "even up" the battle. Engage a 60 shaman while he's leveling? He chugs a pot, walks closer tot he main road, fights until a raid group of horde show up and 10v1 me.

Then if I show up with my 5-man alliance group, we own everybody around in 2 seconds. All the solo-ers, the levelers, and the small groups. We dominate the area until... dum du dum... the 10-man horde raid shows up. I don't find being in a group of 5 attacking 1 guy to be challenging nor fun. You know who's gonna win. I find 5v5 matchups, 1v1 matchups, etc to be challenging and ergo fun. WoW is almost always one side zerging the other. I can't even count the number of times I've owned a lvl 60 1v1, and rather than him rez and fight me again or rez and run away, he waits for his friend to show up, and then they 2v1 me.

That's the pvp mechanics of WoW. Once in a while I hear fairy tales about groups of 5 beating raids of 10. Unless the 5 man is all 60s and the 10 man is all 30s, I'm sorry but that doesn't happen. Not unless that "10 man" is 1 guy arriving every 30 seconds to fight your 5man over 5 minutes.

I think you've really gotta stretch to defend WoW's pvp setup, at least on a pvp server. Maybe pve is better, but from what I hear its worse as people constantly gank quest npc's instead of players trying to goad you into fighting them. The people who defend it usually say "give it time, Blizzard will fix it", in direct contradiction to Blizzard's contest that will only amplify zerging and ganking... or they are members of a 500 man guild that is responsible for lagging the server in the first place with their 40-man raids 24/7.

There's good stuff in WoW till lvl 60.... but after that the pvp is just not good and the end-game is repetitive and LONG (5 hours for MC raid). And now thanks to honour system, good luck making alts for fun.

anybody have guild wars yet? i am curious to hear an analysis of the game from a WoW player.

Have fun Aitrus :)

anybody have guild wars yet? i am curious to hear an analysis of the game from a WoW player.

I'll be giving it some thorough play time over the weekend, so I'll try and get back to you about it next week. I've heard some people say its great, some people say it sucks. Never very much in the way of evidence to support either.

I just know my #1 problem with WoW is zerging. It is physically impossible to zerg in guild wars, so I'm optimistic!

As I said above, I played in the E3 Alpha Event and a couple of the weekend beta's, and it's a blast. I normally dislike pvp, but GW is great. I'm sure there'll be flavors of the month for class/skill setups all the time, but from what I saw, everything has it's counter. The only problem is the random match-ups. You may end up with four Ranger/Necro's against a well balanced team with healers, damage dealers, and tanks.

you should really try pve servers : / u can pvp when ever u want, and u can quest with out getting ganked..

Btw, i often kill 2 lvl 60s even though im 58.. Well not always if theres a good priest and mage.. but mage and warrior, damn. root warrior, reju reg, charge mage, kill mage, finish off warrior..

Dude, battlegrounds is coming out NEXT patch man. I dont know what the population on Illidan is like, but on the majority of servers, the Alliance is around double the population of Horde last I checked.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?PHPSESSID=8b2afeee6d4fa8c15abcc80dea6fd f02&serverid=-1&reset=RESET&factionid=2&minlevel=10&maxlevel=60&servertypeid=-1

Edit: Apparently Illidan is one of the few servers with about an even ration of horde to alliance.

Man, I did enjoy reading your posts, too bad.

I thinks its apparent that you still care for WoW though judging by the length of your post. You'll be back, they ALWAYS come back :wavey:

Make sure to keep us updated on Guildwars... preferably after a week or 2 when the honeymoon is over with the game and a person has a reasonably unbiased view.

Yeah, Illidian actually leans toward horde, a informal census (http://www.teamice.org/?p=census) on the 2nd, showed Horde as having a 15% advantage in level 60s.

Sounds like ya would like an "encounter system" sorta like EQ2, where once a target is engaged, only the people in the group/raid can damage the target. Thats the reason I left EQ2 personally. I had to solo alot in EQ2 and when 4 of 5 mobs are linked in a group encounter, it makes it hard to solo. That was PvE though.... not sure how well it would do in Pvp

Btw, i often kill 2 lvl 60s even though im 58.. Well not always if theres a good priest and mage.. but mage and warrior, damn. root warrior, reju reg, charge mage, kill mage, finish off warrior..

You realize druids have the lowest dps in the game and roots have diminishing returns right?

Root warrior, shift, fight mage. Oh damn roots are gone, warrior intercepts, mortal strikes, shift to heal, coutnerspell-silenced, gg whole fight is over in less than 20 seconds.

No offence, but either you're fighting the worst warriors and mages in the game or you're just making **** up.

----

Got a first look at GW at 3am last night. So far I am not that impressed, Warcraft was more user-friendly at the start.

One really lame thing about GW so far is the isolation. All of your pve is instanced... but in the towns even, you get 1 version of the town called a "district".

So instead of 200 people cramming ironforge, it'd be like 10 groups of 20 in "districts" 1-20. If you wanted to talk to or group with people you'd have to make sure you were in the same district as them, and running around IF you'd only see like 20 people. (there is a drop-down menu thing to let you change districts, its really easy to do, but still you'll not likely ever see more than 40 people or so in the town at a time).

On the plus side it has been 100% lag free.

Can't say much more than that about it until I at least get into a group and do some party quests. I'm just level 3 atm, solo'd the first bit in like 2 hours :P

You realize druids have the lowest dps in the game and roots have diminishing returns right?

Root warrior, shift, fight mage. Oh damn roots are gone, warrior intercepts, mortal strikes, shift to heal, coutnerspell-silenced, gg whole fight is over in less than 20 seconds.

No offence, but either you're fighting the worst warriors and mages in the game or you're just making **** up.



They might the worst players in the world, but i havent fought a mage that just stands there and look, and i guess you know what nature swiftness is... No counterspell on that, and when the warrior gets out of root, and you go out to heal, natures grasp, the warrior is rooted again, instant heal, rejuv, bear, feral charge mage. No im not making this up, you can do it...

Lets keep this civil or the thread will be locked.

I actually have had alot of good PvP Experience for instance, last night my guild put together a 15 UBRS Raid. Problem was we were all getting to the zone little by little. And there was an Alliance guild about 30 members forming for a Molten Core Raid that was picking off our guild one by one as they trickled into the zone.

We finally got a chance to regroup med and buff before they attacked are raid in full. From that Moment on we went on to elimating them 3 times in a row. It seems they were all about the zerg and we actually have a PvP strategy in place that normally leaves us in many more wins then losses.
Chubbs

I've found that in most cases Horde are more adept PvP'ers at least in a group PvP environment.

I PvP'd in a five man team last night for a couple of hours. I was grouped with a Paladin, a Warlock, a Rogue and a Priest. We had an awesome time. However, when PvPing my philosophy is more like I'm playing an FPS instead of an RPG. I know I'm gonna die going in to the fight, but I want to make sure I kill more than I get killed. I probably died 10 times in the 2 hours I played, but I got 180 hk's. Good times, good times. :)

i stick to the RP Servers...sorry to see ya leave WoW...at another gamers forum...there are serveral WoW players that have left for GW...they say it's better...not to mention cheaper -lol- i'm thinkin of pickin it up...but i'mnot gettin rid of WoW any time soon -nods-

See, the problem with the whole "isolation" factor, is that you seem to be expecting Guild Wars to play like an MMORPG.. when it's not. It's just Diablo 3, with less interesting classes and character advancement, but a bit more passable PvP.

Lets keep this civil or the thread will be locked.-

Crimson is trigger happy... :confused:

This is what I was reffering to when I was talking about mods going overboard with the "Let's keep this civil" stuff.

-Glyss 60 Tauren Druid
Black Blood Battalion - Medivh

I PvP'd in a five man team last night for a couple of hours. I was grouped with a Paladin, a Warlock, a Rogue and a Priest. We had an awesome time. However, when PvPing my philosophy is more like I'm playing an FPS instead of an RPG. I know I'm gonna die going in to the fight, but I want to make sure I kill more than I get killed. I probably died 10 times in the 2 hours I played, but I got 180 hk's. Good times, good times. :)

And this is why I am a firm believer that PvP should either be highly controlled and/or loaded down with negative conequences for griefing, or simply not a part of an MMORPG. Particularly not in a class-and-level based system where a major component of power also comes from gear and "spell" acquisition. The extent of "skill" comes from learning how to exploit the limitations of the control, movement, and targetting systems of an MMORPG - techniques like running behind the enemy so they can't counterattack until they turn around for instance.

In my mind, an MMORPG is just not well designed for PvP because of the very mindset the above poster refers to. MMORPGs with a strong PvE basis simply engender a very differant mindset, while PvP is very much a FPS type mindset. Heck, the few times I PvPed I can say it was exciting, but honestly it turned a "virtual world" into a "video game."

In a tabletop RPG, if I had a player engaging in massive killing sprees, as a GM I'd have the game world reflect the natural conequences of their actions. Bounties would be placed on their heads, towns and kingdoms would either bar entry or try to arrest/detain/kill, and so on. Such things I have yet to see in any MMORPG except in a sorta-kinda fashion in Lineage II. Freed from consequences, freed from the fear of "being brought to justice", and with no disincentive, PvP just ends up fouling the role-play experience. Not because of good/honorable PvPers, but because of the gankers, griefers, corpse-campers, merchant/quest-NPC gankers, etc.

Of course as a druid this just got worse. With root, stealth, and track, the druid LOOKS like a solo-pk machine. I kept trying to play it that way, but our dps is just so low that we can't kill anyone before their buddies show up. The honour system made this worse as now people were actively searching for soloers like me to zerg.
-Aitrus

Unless you changed recently, I believe you were mainly restore spec. To me this would be like a priest holy specing and saying the dps was bad. If you want dps go feral. Yeah it might not be as much of a benefit to go feral for dps as it is to go restore for efficiency, but it is better. I've gotten ambushed by more than a few feral druids. Yes innervate is amazing, but if you still have hope for this game, drop it and go 31 feral and see what you get. There's been quite a few changes to it recently, and I've found them to make a huge dps improvement with feral spec.

31 point feral gives you like 10 more dps.

Strength of the wild and predatory strikes are the two "dps buffs" at the high end of the tree and both of them are pretty much useless. a big fat 12% str increase? this is going to be what, like +20str for most? How about that whopping 20% ap increase for cat? also negligible.

The only real feral dps increasing stuff is sharp claws (i currently have 3/5), blood frenzy/primal fury (which are dependent on high agility and luck to proc), and improved ravage (requires 25 points to get to, otherwise a good talent).

No matter what you do to your char you're not going to change the essential design of the druid, which is to outlast, not kill quickly. Rogue's ambush for over 2k, a druid will ravage for just over 1k vs cloth. Mages and hunters can crit for 1500-2000, druids crit for 800. We are not a dps class and we never will be. We're a survival class. Survival classes need TIME to win battles. But the longer the fight goes, the greater the chance of more enemies coming along and jumping in.

This has been the way of pvp since I started pking months ago. I dominate most duels, but in open pvp its a lot of luck hoping that nobody else comes along, and a lot of ganking since I need to be able to kill someone with ravage, claw, rip, and then moonfire spam so I can get away before more enemies come. The thing is it used to be possible, now that there are always groups of 10+ running around LOOKING for pvp all it takes is one horde saying /1 druid ganking at felstone field. and within a minute there is a zerg there looking to 10v1 me.

Being feral specced makes no difference, other than you're intentionally gimping yourself.

-

Crimson is trigger happy... :confused:

This is what I was reffering to when I was talking about mods going overboard with the "Let's keep this civil" stuff.

-Glyss 60 Tauren Druid
Black Blood Battalion - Medivh

:) i'm not trigger happy, i'd just rather people didn't engage in personal attacks or things break down into a flame war. I'd rather never have to lock a thread.

Eh... have a good PvP story myself.

My guildies and I went PvPing a few days ago, we were 5 strong. (Paladin, Mage, Warrior, Priest, Druid)

We're looking for some trouble so we head on over to Orgrimmar, we have the palaidin run by and buzz the "Fight Club". They oblige us by attacking him (about 8 of them), the rest of us join in and proceed to wipe them allot out. We immediately take off for the Zeppelin tower and a few minutes later we have 15 hordlings attacking the tower while we try to hold the top.

We held them off for a bit, but out mana was running low so we retreated to a boat and rode off to STV. We hung out in STV for about 10 minutes before returning and decided that maybe it'd work twice. So we head up and this time there are about 10 fight clubbers out, and they once again oblige us by attacking. We make it back to the Zep tower.

Heh, this time we didn't make it out, they sent any army after us, it was great. We ressed on the boat and made it back to STV, but they actually moved Fight Club to the tower and had spotters for us on top. I felt so damned special that night. =)

Ya can't call it ganking cause they attacked us in their own territory. Hell, we were even out numbered. It was a really good night. =)

I've found that in most cases Horde are more adept PvP'ers at least in a group PvP environment.

Most likely this is due to..

1. Good players like to be the underdog and conquer the zerg.

2. Horde is outnumbered on almost all servers thus, they encounter more 2vs1 and 3vs2 action and are more conditioned to handle multiple enemies at the same time.

3. Consistantly outnumbered in battles at Hillsbrad and the Barrens. Again, conditioned to handle mass PvP better than..

dun dun dun.. the zerg!

everyone claims that the horde are outnumbered on nearly every server, yet on mine (gorefiend) the horde are the zerg who raid and camp southshore and stv constantly. i think the perception that nubs always choose alliance and the l337 gamers always choose horde is definitely off, though i can see why you horde players would like to believe otherwise.

-

Crimson is trigger happy... :confused:

This is what I was reffering to when I was talking about mods going overboard with the "Let's keep this civil" stuff.

-Glyss 60 Tauren Druid
Black Blood Battalion - Medivh


No, that isn't trigger happy. The thread is open, noone has been castigated. It was a friendly warning to keep it civil.

So anymore updates on GW Aitrus?

Would like to hear your thoughts on it.

-D

everyone claims that the horde are outnumbered on nearly every server, yet on mine (gorefiend) the horde are the zerg who raid and camp southshore and stv constantly. i think the perception that nubs always choose alliance and the l337 gamers always choose horde is definitely off, though i can see why you horde players would like to believe otherwise.

I think you got the wrong impression of what I was saying. Obviously not EVERY leet gamer is going to join the Horde side just because they are out numbered. And I may have come across that way. Please prove to me that good players dont like the challenge of being the underdog regardless of faction.

I am not wrong about saying that the MAJORITY of servers have around a 2:1 alliance to horde ratio. Check all of the server population sites. I am NOT saying EVERY server is this way.

I have spent some time playing both factions and have notticed a trend that a lot of the younger players are on the alliance side. Im not sure why, but I can tell this from the maturity level of the players whom I've either..

1. Heard over general chat bickering over silly things..

2. Dealt with in grouping

3. Lets face it, the Human and NE females are "well built" (****, when I created an alliance toon, I played a female as well)

A big reason for the overpopulation of the alliance is because the Human and NE's are the most popular race's in the game. (Amongst all ages. Not just the younger folk)

Alliance does usually outnumber horde, but there are exceptional servers and mine is one of them. We have an explanation though. Before release, people only knew of a few servers by name. The pvp community from beta basically stated that archimonde would be the primary server for pvp, and illidan would be the secondary. So a lot of the hardcore pvpers from beta wound up on these 2 servers. They chose horde because of the fact that alliance usually outnumbers horde and horde thus requires more skill. On Illidan it got reversed as a result, as most of the players who signed up went for horde (hell I would have been horde too but 2 people in my guild refused to be anything but lame-ass alliance).

----------------------

As for guild wars... so far I am thoroughly unimpressed with this game. It is clunky and not very fun to play. I am holding out for the pvp aspect of the game to save it, esp since that was my primary motivation for playing it, but the pve is 1/100000th as good as WoW.

I was under the impression you could 1v1 arena duel at any time. This is false. There is NO 1v1 AT ALL in this game. Guild matches are 8v8, and you can do random-team arena matches that are 4v4, but you need 7 other people standing around at the same time for that to work.

I was under the impression it would be one seamless world for all players. This is false. Players are divided into districts, which are basically separate servers. They can change districts in the game though, so it would be like being allowed to move from one server to another as you wished in WoW. However, by default players are either in US, Korea, or Europe server zones. If an American wants to play with a European, they have to go to "International districts". These places are LAGGY and EMPTY. There is almost nobody in these districts, yet the lag is way worse than being on the other servers. A European cannot access American districts, nor can an American access euro... both players have to go to international in order to see one another.

Another really lame thing is that you NEVER have to read a single quest. I haven't read one quest yet that I've done. I just hit accept and then go do it. There isn't the slow text loading effect of WoW (which pre-cosmos meant you had to read it basically). Worse yet, you just click on any quest, and a green arrow shows on your minimap EXACTLY where you have to go!! you just head in the direction of the green arrow and eventually you wind up at the target of your objective. You don't have to read the quest to even know whats going on.

Extremely lame thing: invisible walls. You go out and see all kinds of hills and trees and stuff, but you can't explore. You can only walk on pre-determined pathways in the game. You can run around sure, but you might be on top of a hill and want to go down. You can't just fall down to the bottom, or even walk down, you run up against an invisible wall. You have to find another way around to get to the bottom.

Finally, just the feel of the game with the text/characters isn't as attractive or visible as WoW. In warcraft things stand out, in GW they don't. It's very very bland. It reminds me of playing dungeon siege with my roommate over the LAN.

As it stands, I would not advise anyone to buy this game. Maybe once I get into pvp that opinion will change, but so far it has been a thoroughly crappy experience compared to WoW.

in a way that's a relief because if guild wars was great i'd have wasted an enormous amount of time and money via monthly fees on WoW. well aitrus, seeing as you'll most likely be returning to WoW soon, i have some advice for you: delete your NE on Illidan and make that tauren druid you know you need to. if you can't beat em, join em, and once you join them, suck hardcore so as to sabotage the efforts of all the horde who have the displeasure of playing with you. for the horde!?

Are you from Canadia, Aitrus?

Canada, actually.

I live in the nation's capital (doubt most yanks know what city that would be :P)

I know what city it is... but then again, I'm in the same Province

Canada, actually.Yeah, I know how it's spelled :p

I figured you were from there, my canadian friends always misspell "honour" too :)

I live in the nation's capital (doubt most yanks know what city that would be :P)Ottawa?

you don't know how frustrating it is trying to write stuff in ms word and always getting honour, colour etc etc underlined. its OU bill gates you yankee screwball... the brits know it, we know it, get with the program! :P

i would have never guessed you were canadian, i didn't think you people knew how to get angry :).

I'm a rarity for a Canadian, most of us are so apathetic that we can't be bothered to give a **** about anything (besides Tim Horton's roll up the rim to win contest)... then we pawn it off as moral superiority and/or politeness.

in a way that's a relief because if guild wars was great i'd have wasted an enormous amount of time and money via monthly fees on WoW. well aitrus, seeing as you'll most likely be returning to WoW soon, i have some advice for you: delete your NE on Illidan and make that tauren druid you know you need to. if you can't beat em, join em, and once you join them, suck hardcore so as to sabotage the efforts of all the horde who have the displeasure of playing with you. for the horde!?

****.. if Aitrius went horde, you KNOW he'd be a shaman!

Re: MS Word... Office comes with a Language Tool that lets you set the default language, tried setting it to "English (Canada)"?

http://www.timhortons.com/en/images/RUTR/RUTRmainpageME.jpg

Interesting. A friend of mine, Vestas, who has played pretty much every MMO out there gave an almost glowing review, which for him is rare. He did mention that the fun starts at later levels (although he is currently only level 8 so I take that with a grain of salt). His review was this:


Low expectations are a wonderful thing. They leave you with no predispoistion of what you want, or what you're looking for. You can look at a game with open eyes and an open mind when you don't expect it to be all that good. This was pretty much how I felt about Guild Wars. I've been playing most of the weekend and the outlook is interesting. Here is a game that is trying to be different, definately has a unique approach to the genre. What ArenaNet has created is something entirely beatiful to look at and entertainly fresh to play but requires the player to perservere to really enjoy it.

Welcome to Guild Wars. First, be aware, this is a game the centers itself on guild activity. It is expected that you will join a guild. As the name implies, PvP combat is prevalent in the game though before you panic, it is entirely goal focused, there is no such thing as "PK'ing" or "Griefing" in this game because the areas in which you will face other players are more like Quake matches then MMORPG standard fare.

Character Creation

There are six classes, Warrior, Ranger, Monk, Elementalist, Mesmer and Necromancer. Most are self explanatory and are in some way shape or form a derivation on Everquestian themes. Monks however are actually the "healers" of the game. Every class can solo, partially due to the power of the class, partially due to the way the gameplay works (more on that later). The beauty of the system is that you will be forced to choose a "secondary" class, so in actuality you become some pairing of the above classes making about 30 total possible choices.

The subclassing system is fairly elegant. When you first start out and explore the world you will have the opportunity to try any subclass for as long as you like. You can switch back and forth between different sub-classes (provided you journey to the requisite trainers) to test each as you see fit. At some point you will be forced to cement your decision, the upside being access to more abilities.

Abilities, or skills, are the other key concept to character growth. There are two kinds. First is your Hero Skills, much like an MMO this is a skill point system allowing you to place points you earn as you level into various skills which have various effects (generally positive) on your characters abilities. As a general rule your class has a primary attribute which is most common throughout all of it's inherant abilities. Warriors for example, have "Strength" as one of their skills. If you take a class as a secondary, you will not have access to its primary attribute, which will effect how good you are at your secondary class (and is what clearly defines a secondary class from a primary one).

The second set of skills are the real bread and butter of the game. You may choose to call these combat arts, or spells or attacks or whatever you wish. They server the same purpose and reportedly, there are over 100 such for each class (meaning you could learn nearly 200 skills). Many are derivations of each other. The catch here is that like EQ1, you can only have 8 active at any time and you can only change them when in town or when you earn new ones. Basically before you begin any adventure, you choose a set of skills from your primary and secondary class to set out with. The choices you make are tactical in nature. Like a complex card game, you want to pick skills that maximize your power in useful combinations. I can't beging to explain how elegant the system is. On one hand it limits your character (balance) and on the other allows your character a huge amount of available diversity.

Gameplay

Gameplay itself is a double-edged sword. The first several levels of the game feel very "standard faire" for any MMORPG. You'll notice a few odd twists at the start. For one, other than in town, it's a lonely world. That's right, when you go adventure you are given your own instance. The upside is that no one can interfere with your playtime. There is no camping, no spawn jumping, etc. If you have a quest and you're in the right spot the mob or object you need will be there garaunteed. You can of course choose to adventure in a group but it is not necessary in the early part of the game. You will only meet people, and can only form groups in towns.

As a result, the first several levels felt kind of dull. You spend your time doing the usual, grabbing a plethora of quests and pursuing them, exploring the world and learning the mechanics. Initially there aren't many options open to you and you will feel very constrained, even potentially underpowered. In my opinion this is unfortunate, for a game that relies so heavily on choices, it is perhaps a bit too controlled at the start and can leave you feeling a bit underwhelmed.

Thankfully things change if you stick with it. After the first few levels you'll choose a sub class and can, when you're ready, leave the pristine newbie lands for what the player base calls "The Real" game. And this is where you get your first taste of Guild Wars Gameplay.

Your first real quest starts with a short and amusing training round. You sign up for the "academy" and wait your turn (a timer starts). When your turn is up you are zoned into a waiting area. An NPC gives you a lecture and when he tells you that you will be facing other students he is not kidding, you will most likely be squaring off against other, REAL people in a 4 on 4 match that plays like death match. A score of team kills is kept and in those few hectic minutes you begin to realize the real power of the skill system in the game. My character, a Me/Wa was unbelievably damaging to other spell casters, but got eaten alive by melee types.

After this brief and shocking taste of organized PvP you are whisked out of the acadamy on a high priority cooperative assignment (you retain your team from the PvP engagement, so you will be doing this with other players in a forced group). This mission is to kill a named mob deep in some nearby caves, while not wholy challenging the first taste of instanced combined arms play with others is revealing and entertaining. At the close of this mission, some plot unfolds that I won't spoil that will change the game forever, there is no going back as I said.

NPC Group members?

From this point foward your game changes as well. Adventure areas get tougher, the mobs get smarter and there are more options. In a very nice addition, you can hire NPC group members. So if you don't want to play with friends, or can't find that healer you need, just hire an NPC one. In my brief play, the NPC group members acquited themselves very well. Healer types heal, rangers and casters try to keep their distance, and the fighters do their best to tank. They all auto-assist on you or another group member. Casters will try to remove debuffs on you and debuff mobs, cast buffs as necessary etc. They don't react as fast to the situation as real players would, but, if you're a soloer, they are a sufficient subistitute. The tradeoff is that you get less XP and loot.

A new kind of PvP

Due to the very nature of the "everything" is instanced in Guild Wars, this gives them tremendous control over the situation. PvP occurs on in PvP areas and is always goal based. Sometimes it's just to kill the other team, but often it is a capture the flag style situation. The is always a plot, or reason behind the situation and always a good reward for winning. There is no penalty for dieing in Guild Wars, other than lost time or a failed mission that needs to be restarted. No XP loss, no item loss, just ego loss

As a result, the "pressure" of PvP seems to be on fun and competition, not dominance and ego-tripping. It plays a bit more like a quake match in that regard. Bragging rights all around.

Progression and the "End Game"

My brief forray has only scratched the surface. I'm level 8, there is a level cap at 20. The game is all about "the end game". Getting to level 20 is really just the start of the game, a trainining run. From what I can see the focus of the game will be on equipment hunting and skill gathering. Nearly all of your skills will come as quest rewards, many of which can only be obtained on the most difficult adventures, often involving winning at PvP.

ArenaNet promisses a slew of new content, which you will have to pay for, on a regular basis. There is no monthly fee, so their plan for revenue generation is to throw "must have" content at you that you need to pay for. While the frequency and cost haven't been communicated clearly imagine that it will amount to about $10 a month on average

Graphics and Sound

Somewhere between WoW and EQ2 lies Guild Wars. I'd argue that Guild Wars has the ability to be far more breathtaking than EQ2 while retaining that artistic flair the WoW has achieved. Guild Wars runs on respectable machines without all the frame stuttering nonsense of EQ2. Using superb texturing, unique lighting and great choice of color pallettes ArenaNet achieves an amazingly gorgeous look. The kind that makes people stop and go "That looks incredible."

More impressive is they achieve this look while retaining a solid sense of art direction that reminds you this is a "fantasy" world. The character models have a heavy anime influence, especially in the costume design for the caster classes. Though aspects of the models are decidedly more western (faces tend towards realism rather than cartoon).

They are somewhat plagued by "sameness" as there is a limited set of looks for each class, often leaving primary classes easily identifiable. There is a dye system in game, though it is exorbatantly expensive to change the color of your clothes and not adviseable early in the game.

In Closing

I question the longevity of this game design. 20 Levels, mostly PvP or co-op mission content and already hundreds of skills. It will definately be a "fun" game to play but I'm not sure it will foster the same kind of community and spirit that other MMORPG's do around their worlds. But then, I'm not sure it was ever meant to. Guild Wars seems to present an alternative game style, one that focuses on short gaming sessions and player competition in a more friendly controlled atmosphere. Where the pressure is not on how many hours you play, but on your actual skill at playing the game.

A refreshing change of pace that shows how innovation is still alive and well. The concept of NPC group members is a stroke of genius, you will never be LFG or looking for a healer again. Their implementation of instanced missions, cooperative and PvP zones is fantastic, showing how much power there is in an instanced solution. Though ultimately it leaves the world feeling a bit more barren and lonely than it needs to. This is a game best appreciated with friends and a guild.

Most importantly though, the lack of a monthly fee leaves me more apt to keep playing it casually. I've already got the account so there is no harm leaving in on my hard drive and logging in to have fun. Now I just need some folks to play with!

I'm also slowly falling in love with the art. Some screenshots can be found at: http://www.guildwars.com/gallery/gwscreenshots/default.html

I don't expect I'll enjoy the game the way I did when I first played WoW. But in all honestly I'm a little WoW'd out as there just doesn't seem to be much to do any more in the game. Might give it a break and try GW a bit.

Eventually I'm going to pick Guild Wars up. The only thing I really dislike about it, is the forced pathing you have to follow in instanced zones that are for a quest.

my friend plays it, guildwars, when he gets a bit tired of wow. He dosent like it that much that he will play it alot, but always nice to fall back on

Aitrus if you're still lurking around, I'd love to hear your impressions now that I'm sure you have played a while longer.

"got level 60 in the first month"

I stopped reading at this point...

I play Guild Wars on patch day =P

just noticed your location leaf, i don't know where ridgewood is, but you may know where i live - bridgewater, nj, like 15 min from rutgers nb.

/bonk who revived this old thread ><