Guild Wars - REVIEW - a breath of fresh air

Memnoch

Well, I just spend saturday and sunday playing Guild Wars, and all I can say is WOW, what a breath of fresh air. Finally a "next generation" MMO that doesn't just repeat everything about past MMO's and add on a little fluff on the top.

I feel that AreaNet have put the F U N back into MMORPG gaming. With no monthly subscriptions to worry about, there is no "carrot on the stick" that you have to keep paying your monthly subscription for, no "mythical combat balance that is 6 months away and then delayed for a year after that," no "revamp promises" to worry about. You play whatever part of the game you have the most fun doing

So enough of my ranting and on to the Review!

Graphics - This game is really pretty, from the charecters to the world around it. Everything is lush and detailed and looks "hand-built" and unique as opposed to the "generated" terrain of many of todays "more and more explorable area" MMO's. There aren't as many charecter customisation options as SWG's in this game however. But as I've said before, this kind of stuff is only really a minor aspect of MMO's for me as I'd much rather dev's spent their time on balance and gameplay aspects. Still this gameis more than satisfying in the graphics department.

MMORPG features -

Monthly subscription - There is none! OMG, you buy the game and thats it, no need to pay monthly fees to keep on enjoying the game. I'm guessing there will be more expansions, but after having played this, I would gladly pay for an expansion every two-three months, if they are as filled with content and are balanced the way the current game is.

Grinding - Its gone! I can't believe it, but I actually didn't feel like I had to grind AT ALL in this game. I started the game with a level 15 charecter, and the cap is level 20. i could jump straight into PvP at level 15 or I could do it at level 20, whatever suited my fancy. You can get from level 15-20 in a single day by running the "instanced" co-op missions. Which is pretty fast. You can FARM if you want but a day of farming max is all it would really take to get the best armor availible.

Time Sinks - Being a game that doesn't really on monthly subscriptions means that they don't have to worry about making people play the game for "longer". So... Time sinks are GONE, there are no time sinks in this game. No waiting for shuttles/boats/etc... no 20 minute horse rides to get to the action, etc etc etc. Just open up your world map, click on a location you want to go to and hey PRESTO you're there!

No sitting down endlessly to regen your Health/Mana/endurance. They all regen pretty damn fast and usually will regen fully by the time you get to the next set of mobs.

Buffbots - GONE. There is absolutely NO need to get a second account or in this case a second copy of the game as far as I can see. Again a nice feature of a no subscription based game. Buffs can be imparted by group members but they need to be in the same zone as you. There is also a distinct range on buffs. Also since ALL zones PvE and PvP are "instanced" it is actually impossible to take a BUFF-Bot without unless you want to sacrifice a slot in your group. Which would be dumb since its much better to actually have a live player.

Griefing - Despite this being a PvP game there is NO griefing, its impossible. PvP is consensual - you enter arena's but the arena's are always packed, always a fight going on which is great, but i'll get more into the PvP aspect later. Off course if you want you can go into the PvE missions and not have to worry about PvP.

Item/loot stealing - GONE. Since each mission is "instanced" you and your group are the only ones in the PvE zone at any given time. You kill a mob and if it drops loot it is randomnly assigned to someone in the group and only that player can pick it up. Its a great system, no more petty squabbles over who needs what item etc. No more "Kill stealing" or "mob stealing". And since each zone is instanced there is no more "fighting over spawns and boss mobs". No more, arriving at the Krayt graveyard to find that its already camped by 5 other groups who will happily steal your kill if they can.

Quests/story - TBH being a PvP type of player I never care about pay much attention to these, but I actually really enjoyed the small part of the story arc that I was allowed to see and take part in during the WPE. It was FUN!
But if your a questaholic then you might not have as much fun as I'm sure there is a limited amount of such stuff to do. But the quests I did were all extremely fun and engaging.

Classes/Professions - There are 6 main professions - Warrior, Monk, Elementalist, Mesmer, Ranger, and N-something (not sure what it is :P). So few classes you say? No big deal say I! I'd much rather have it like this. Because each and every class is UNIQUE, FUN and BALANCED. Rather than having 32 professions out of which many are similar, many are overpowered and many are gimped, this game concentrates on quality over quantity. And really each class has a role. You pick a Primary and a secondry profession and your skills/stats vary accordingly. So even within the 6 basic professions there are numerous combinations. I personally didn't feel that there was any "over powered" profession, though that being said a group of 8 warrior/monks in PvP can be hard to take down. But a group of 8 of any 1 combination will easily loose to a group of 8 that is well balanced with a good mix of professions if both are played by skilled players. Some professions such as Mesmer take more skill and tactics to play than others. I myself played as a Monk/Mesmer and had loads of fun. I enjoyed being a healer and healing my team mates, and also running around being chased by warriors trying to kill me. In PvE you can only have 6 people to a group so you need a well balanced group, a couple of warriors to tank, an elemental or two to nuke add in a ranger for some nice damage dealing/pulling and throw in a monk or two to look after your healing needs.

Grouping - this is simple and easy. For each Mission/PvE zone there is a "pre-zone" a small area where players gather before embarking on the journey. Just use the world map to travel instantly to any area that you have unlocked and form a group with others waiting there. Its usually pretty easy to form a group, and there are NPC BOTs availible if you need a hand. These bots are actually pretty decent, though they may not CUT IT at the highest level missions as the bots are all level 15. Still its handy to be able to add them to your group if you can't find a tank or a monk.

Memnoch

PvP - MMORPG counter strike! PvP in this game is fast paced and skill based. While there is no "aiming" your skill and tactics make a huge difference. While a level 20 charecter with fully kitted armor is a force to be reckoned in, newly created level 15 charecters can have fun too! So really its not all about who has the "leetest itamz" and "phat lewt". There are two main forms. You can either go into a Random touney or into guild based combat. In random tourney you enter an arena and click "start mission" and it takes anywhere from 5-30 seconds for the fight to start. You will be ported into an arena with 15 other random players to form 2 teams of 8, red and blue. The objective is simple, KILL each other. The arena is big enough to allow for manouvers and healers/mages being able to run/stay behind their warriors, but also small enough for there to be constant combat and no where to REALLY run away to. Fights can last from a minute to 5-6 minutes plus depending on the mix of charecters and the skill involved. If your team is wiped out you loose, and are teleported back to the gladiotor arena and you can simply start again! If you win, your team stays together and you are pitted against the next set of challengers. I have a feeling that there are always numerous such "arena's" running at any one time. This one time my team had like 14 straight wins and we ran into a team that had like 40+ who wiped us out. It was a great fight though. Did I mention you gain EXP by PvPing? Yes, I actually went from level 18.5 to 20 in the RANDOM pvp arena. It took like 3 hours or something and I didn't even notice cause I was having fun the whole time.

Did I mention that there is no "I WIN" tactics in the game? There is no "spam Pbaoe" or "chain stun" or "aoe mezz" or "cm poison spam" or "rifleman headshot spam". You have to work as a team to take down enemy nukers/healers while keeping your's alive. Constantly ressing the fallen. Ressing is a tactic in itself as it takes a good few seconds for you to res a team mate and during this time you can't move (or the spell breaks) and you can't heal anyone else. So you have to strike a balance between ressing and healing your team, do either too much or too little and you will loose. There is a VAST plethora of skills and spells that players can utilise and some of these are really REALLY cool or inventive. An example of this is "feed back spells". Cast this on an enemy nuker as a mesmer and the enemy will take damage every time they cast a spell. Cast a "scourge hex" on an enemy tank, and every time the tank gets healed the healer will take damage. Cast a "clumsiness" spell on a tank and if the tank attacks someone in the next 5-7 seconds the tank's attack will be interrupted and the tank will take damage depending on your skill in that spell. There are so so so many different and cool combinations of spells in this game that I haven't seen before in any other MMO. Yet they all seem to have a PLACE and a TIME to be used and each spell has a balance/counter-balance to it. It really is pretty great.

THere is a particularly cool spell called "vengeneance" which costs a bucket of mana to cast and basically Reses a team mate with full hp and Mana. However after 30 seconds the spell wears off and the team mate dies again.

There is also Edge of Extinction, which is a psycho ranger spell, that basically deals damage to EVERY player in the arena including your own team mates depending on how many team mates are killed already. I've seen occasions where rangers have used this resulting in BOTH teams getting killed simultaneously. I've also seen rangers use this and kill their own weakened teams off accidentaly, its quite funny!

Also you can only take up to 8 spells/skills with you into PvP or PvE zones, and you can't change these mid mission. So you really have to decide before hand what kind of role you want to play? Do you want to deal damage? or heal? or nuke? or debuff? or buff?

While Random PvP is fun it really is random.

There is also the GUILD based tournament style PvP. Where you select your group of 8 before entering the arena. you must then defend your NPC ghostly hero to open a portal for 2 minutes from really high level PvE mobs. Once thats done you enter into the arena to take on another team of 8. The winning team progresses further into king of the hill style mayhem with numerous teams. and also duel arenas. There are a few neat features in this such as a priest in your shrine that can res your dead team mates with full health if need be (so keep him alive). In the final game there is supposed to be tournaments where the top guilds from the different servers compete and the top guild in the world that wins, their server gets additional quests etc, which is cool so your always kind of supporting your "team". Though I haven't seen this feature in action myself yet it sounds cool. Winning fights in guild tourneys awards you with FAME points. Now i'm not sure exactly what they DO, but I think they give you added skill points among other things. Think of it kind of as realm ranks from DAOC but different.

Bugs - Well this game is still 3 months from release, and after having played it pretty solidly over the weekend I can say that bugs are pretty much NON-existant. In fact the ONLY bug that I found is that sometimes when I zone my equipped weapon doesn't show on my charecter, but its there and is used when I fight. Its kinda funny, but doesn't really affect the game at all. Other than this I couldn't find a single bug that disrupted my gameplay in any way whatsoever. This is certainly a far cry from the numerous bugs and exploits that have plagued recent MMO released, including big games like daoc/SWG.

Drawbacks?

Well the only MAIN drawback that I can see is the "Longevity". Because there is no GRIND, and there is no time sinks, a hard core player might find that they run out of things to do after a while? But since there is no subscription fee, I don't think this will be a big deal. Plus, personally I don't see myself getting bored of the PvP any time soon and there is a lot more content in the final game than was on display at this event.

Broadband - You really need this imo to enjoy the game properly, particularly because of the streaming nature of the content. I would exlain this better but I'm not a techie so I don't really no how it works. But personally I thought the streaming was a great feature. Also since all patching is done LIVE, there is no server downtime. Simply restart your client to download the latest build when the patching is complete. Some people did complain about lag, but personally I think its more to do with their connections as I didn't have any real trouble with this myself!

PvP focussed - The PvE in this game is great (from my point of view). But for those people who love games like Everquest (yuck), this might not be their cup of tea, as there is no endless grind, and endless questing with camping monsters for xxxxx hours for uber loot and farming xxxxx platinum for that latest SC armor, and endless PvEing to level up. So really I guess if you are a PvE focussed player you might run out of thigns to do much faster. That being said the co-op missions ARE a LOT of fun and since there is no monthly fee i'd say it would be worth getting the game for a "single player" role playing experience but with groups of players involved instead!

Expansions - since there are no monthly fees one would get the feeling that there would be more "expansions" than is normal for an MMO, though thats only me guessing here. TBH i'd rather pay for expansions in a balanced game that add real content, than pay to "test" a game one year after its release, while the game makers release expansion after expansion while parts of the core game are still broken. Still i'd be worried that they MIGHT add unbalancing features to the expansions to force players to buy them, like SOE did with Planetside and Core Combat. But so far AreaNet have seemed to have really thought through their implementation in this game pretty well.

Gizzard

very dissapointing game, particularly compared to EQ2, just does not feel like a real world, to much instancing, but fast paced and dumbed down, some people might like that

Tusky

The most fun thing about MMORPGs is building up you character...putting work in and then bashing people in pvp and feeling like you have actually achieved something...The fact that there is no monthly fee will make me try it though.

Drakar

Thanks for the thorough review Memnoch! My broadband went down on Friday (I'm migrating to a new ISP), so I missed all this. When everyone is at level 20 I was afraid the fights could get very samey, but being only able to take a subset of your spells into the arenas is a good idea. By the sounds of things it's a game full of good ideas. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Memnoch

Gizzard wrote:

very dissapointing game, particularly compared to EQ2, just does not feel like a real world, to much instancing, but fast paced and dumbed down, some people might like that

like i said depends on what your into, I personally wouldn't touch EQ2 with a 10 foot pole. I'm not interested in an endless grind.

I dunno why you say it does not feel "real". Is it because you don't have other players running aroud when you are PvEing? TBH if there is no PvP i don't see the point of that. Other than people fighting over spawns and kill stealing :P

Fast Paced? yes, dumbed down? no i don't think so. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you feel it is "dumbed down" a little bit more?

At least that is if you tried the PvP it seemed extremely tactical to me

Memnoch

Tusky wrote:

The most fun thing about MMORPGs is building up you character...putting work in and then bashing people in pvp and feeling like you have actually achieved something...The fact that there is no monthly fee will make me try it though.

I guess it depends. What you are saying sounds like you want an unbalanced fight, where you win not because of player skill but because you had 500 more hours to grind and get the best items

I'd much prefer a game where its a test of player skill rather than hardcore grinding time devoted to the game.

There IS building up your charecter and customising it, but instead of daoc where it takes 50 played days (or 6 months irl), or SWG where it takes like 10 played days (or 1 month irl). You can do it here in 1 played day or (3 days hardcore play irl). And having a fully built up charecter does give you an advantage, only its not as huge as it would be in other games, and again the main reason for this is the fact that its not a subscription based game, so they want to let people have fun from day one! Which is fine by me really.

Still if you're into PvP it might be worth giving it a go :P Personally to me i'm sick of the endless carrot on the stick

P45

Would you reckon it's akin to a "Swords, & Sorcery" Planetside, without the subscription?

Gizzard

WoW would be my choice for PvP rather then Guild wars, what I mean by dumbed down is the character customisation is not very detailed.

Still very impressive fast GFX, well programmed, has potential, I was just dissapointed because I had expected more.

Memnoch

P45 wrote:

Would you reckon it's akin to a "Swords, & Sorcery" Planetside, without the subscription?

yes thats a good way to put it, but the only main difference is that this game is ENTIRELY team based, while in planet side there is a lot more "soloing" in regards to the pvp.

I'd say more like a swords & sorcery counter strike? Hmm.. perhaps not even that, its hard to pin down an analogy really TBH The best analogy would be like the 8 player group gank squads of DAOC, but without the endless PvE grinding it takes to get there before hand. Also instead of spending ages getting to emain (though they did speed it up eventually) you get transported to the action instantly.

In PS before on, players that wanted to own solo would just get an air cav cert and fly around in reavers and mosquitos, easily getting a KD ratio of 5:1. Now that they released BFR's all the "ownage" players get BFR's. A friend of mine IRL has had KD ratios of 200:3 in his BFR!!!! But he is a very skilled player, still that is overpowered imo

Also in Planet side there is no such things as items. So this game has more of a "role-playing" feel to it. ANd there is a certain amount of "building up your char". TBH by the end I was very attached to my "Pretty Healer". That being said Planet side has some other cool stuff in it that this doesn't have. You won't have 100 players vs 100 other players in a fight simultaneously like you can in PS.

Though the king of the hill fights there can be like 4-6 (maybe more) teams of 8 present, all trying to wipe each other out.

Memnoch

Gizzard wrote:

WoW would be my choice for PvP rather then Guild wars, what I mean by dumbed down is the character customisation is not very detailed.

Still very impressive fast GFX, well programmed, has potential, I was just dissapointed because I had expected more.

hehe yeah I mentioned at the start that there aren't as many char customisation options as say SWG etc.

But tbh this is a feature of MMO's that i care about the LEAST I'm much more interested in fun balanced game play than having a charecter that looks "totally unique".

I think SWG is a good analogy in this regard because they had the most detailed char creation screen that I could think of (my gf used to love creating chars in it though she never played em :P ). But the game at release was horribly broken, full of bugs, completely and utterly imbalanced. I'd much much much rather that development time and recources were spent on balancing the game and the PvP as opposed to "fluff".

Off course thats just an issue of personal taste. I'm sure there are people who are more concerned with the charecter customisation options such as yourself, and thats really a personal gameplay choice, and one that every gamer is entitled to make.

I think the player base that this game is targetted towards is more of the PvP'er variety (like myself) and they tend to not care as much about charecter customisation.

edit: I haven't tried WoW PvP so that might be fun too. Still this game has become top of my list of the games coming out because it takes away almost every single feature that I hated about past MMO's, such as endless grinding, kill/loot stealing, imbalanced gameplay, useless time sinks etc etc etc

Drakar

You describe a pretty good random pvp mode. Although teaming up with a group of random peeps against another group of random peeps for a battle royal sounds kinda good, one can see how it could get boring after a while. It's called GuildWars, is there some overriding concept of guilds in it? Do guilds get awards if their players are successful in combat in some way over time?

Memnoch

Drakar wrote:

You describe a pretty good random pvp mode. Although teaming up with a group of random peeps against another group of random peeps for a battle royal sounds kinda good, one can see how it could get boring after a while. It's called GuildWars, is there some overriding concept of guilds in it? Do guilds get awards if their players are successful in combat in some way over time?

there is, the REAL PvP is guild based combat.

Guilds get their own guild hall the moment the guild is created, players can journey there to group up and head out on quests/pvp etc. I'm not sure about rewards as I didn't join a guild myself. Off course players themselves are far more likely to gain FAME points if they are part of a well organised guild than if they just team up with random people to PvP

Memnoch

this was an intersting topic no the IGN GW boards that I just read, it offers a bit more insight onto the balance side of things..

"My main gripes were with class balance. For example, if you pick a Warrior/Monk you have an overpowered char but if you take a Warrior/Ranger you don't. Many of the skills do not mix well between these classes and so it leaves many defunct combinations."

I had a Warrior/Ranger that was raping Warrior/Monks in PvP. Learn what skills to pick and how to use them. This is the most balanced and tactical PvP out there currently.

"This may be something that sorts itself out as more skills become available but as it stands there are far too many weak mixes and only a few strong ones."

Each combo has strong points. What the combos allow for is a specialized character. Once the learning curve with regards to skills is reached, all combos are viable. Again, the game allows for either maximizing one skill or spreading them out and both are equally effective once you know what you are doing.
The games combat is completely determined by player tactics and skill. There is no cheesy crowd control or "I Win" buttons that are littered throughout WoW for example. Getting the jump on a player does not equate to an easy win. This is PvP that actually works.

i would tend to agree with the guy posting the response to the post in quotes. Every combination is balanced and viable with its own strenghts and weaknesses. YOu just have to learn to play to your charecter's strenghts.

And the lack of an "I Win" button is really cool


edit - http://vnboards.ign.com/Guild_Wars_General_Board/b22740/77994429/?0

added in a link from another veteran MMORPG gamer's review.

Tusky

Memnoch wrote:

I guess it depends. What you are saying sounds like you want an unbalanced fight, where you win not because of player skill but because you had 500 more hours to grind and get the best items

I'd much prefer a game where its a test of player skill rather than hardcore grinding time devoted to the game.

There IS building up your charecter and customising it, but instead of daoc where it takes 50 played days (or 6 months irl), or SWG where it takes like 10 played days (or 1 month irl). You can do it here in 1 played day or (3 days hardcore play irl). And having a fully built up charecter does give you an advantage, only its not as huge as it would be in other games, and again the main reason for this is the fact that its not a subscription based game, so they want to let people have fun from day one! Which is fine by me really.

Still if you're into PvP it might be worth giving it a go :P Personally to me i'm sick of the endless carrot on the stick

Unfair fight ? Of course. Sometimes its great fun to destroy someone thats slightly lower level then you, or to know that you could take on a group of five lower leevls characters. DAOC does not take 50 pld days to get to lvl 50. I did it in about 24 days first time around ( as a complete newbie ) and less than 10 the second time around.

Memnoch

Tusky wrote:

Unfair fight ? Of course. Sometimes its great fun to destroy someone thats slightly lower level then you, or to know that you could take on a group of five lower leevls characters. DAOC does not take 50 pld days to get to lvl 50. I did it in about 24 days first time around ( as a complete newbie ) and less than 10 the second time around.

i won't say that the level system is bad or crap its a different system.. but tbh after playing guild wars I'd PREFER a system that is skill based. Maybe thats because i'm confident in my skills and don't have as much time to devote to hard core gaming as I used to.

In any case 50 played days is probably not needed for level 50 but to get level 50 + all the l337 armor fully SC MP'd + get the quest items + get a decent RR + get fully TOA'd...

how long do you think all that would take?

I was happy PvEing to an extent with a goal to PvP, but tbh if the PvP is good like it is in guild wars I'd rather the PvE was LESS rather than MORE.

That was the problem with SWG, the PvE was LESS than Daoc, but the PvP was ****e.

Drakar

What I didn't like about SWG is that there didn't seem to be much teamwork in it, it seemed to be all about you soloing out in the wilderness. I'd like to see games where you have to work together with friends in a team, helping/depending on each other. If your team had to fight someone elses real team all the better, as after a while people work out the best way to beat PvE and it just gets a bit of a grind.

I'm not sure if this is Guildwars, but hey...

Thordon

The most fun thing about MMORPGs is building up you character

Why does everyone call it an MMORPG, it isnt one, its more akin to Diablo 2, from the Guild Wars official FAQ:

Is Guild Wars an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)?

Guild Wars has some similarities to existing MMORPGs, but it also has some key differences.

Like existing MMOs, Guild Wars is played entirely online in a secure hosted environment. Thousands of players inhabit the same virtual world. Players can meet new friends in gathering places like towns and outposts where they form parties and go questing with them. Unlike many MMOs, when players form a party and embark upon a quest in Guild Wars, they get their own private copy of the area where the quest takes place. This design eliminates some of the frustrating gameplay elements commonly associated with MMOs, such as spawn camping, kill stealing, and lines to complete a quest.

Guild Wars takes place in a large virtual world made up of many different zones, and players can walk from one end of the world to the other. But Guild Wars eliminates much of the tedium of traveling through the world. Players can instantly return to any safe area (town or outpost) that they've previously visited just by clicking on it in the world overview map.

Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience. Success in Guild Wars is always the result of player skill, not time spent playing or the size of one's guild. As characters progress, they acquire a diverse set of skills and items, enabling them to use new strategies in combat. Players can do battle in open arenas or compete in guild-on-guild warfare or the international tournament. But engaging in combat is always the player's choice; there is no player-killing in cooperative areas of the world.

Finally, unlike existing MMOs, all characters in Guild Wars inhabit the same virtual world -- they are not divided onto different servers or shards -- so players can always team up with or compete against any other player in the world.

I played the weekend and the e3 thing earlier this year, for me, its main selling point is the PvP aspect, no game I've ever played does this better. I plan on playing WoW and this. WoW for depth and long term goals, and this for quick fun gameplay (like fps games).

Ivan

uh, so how do you sign up for it?
I've gotten the client but it wont let me create a new account...

[Edit]Nm, evil beta [/Edit]

Memnoch

Ivan wrote:

uh, so how do you sign up for it?
I've gotten the client but it wont let me create a new account...

[Edit]Nm, evil beta [/Edit]

i think if u buy PC gamer the UK edition mag, then there is a weekend code to play this weekend.

Other than that you need to pre-order the beta from "Somewhere". There are a few places that will ship to ireland but they will easily add on 20-30 euro for shipping.

i might be pc gamer tomorrow to try and get into the beta for this weekend, but then again Football manager 2005 is out tomorrow as well

Drakar

I just participated in the event last weekend (6th - 7th). I won't attempt to review (preview?) the game since that's already rather excellently been done, though I can't resist repeating an exchange initiated by a new player on the game talking about the Team pvp arenas:

[Player 1]: If this is what I think it is, this is the best game ever
[Player 2]: It is what you think it is

Drakar

Interesting interview with one of the devs where he answers *lots* of questions. Note that it's on a somewhat risque site however (I've been afraid to explore further in work:P): http://www.s90947942.onlinehome.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=194