NCSoft released Guild Wars Chronicles in early 2005, a game to take up the many challenges of the MMORPG scene and setup a different subscribtion plan to target players that don’t feel comfortable with paying monthly fees. Different way of making the franchise a commercial success have been devised and the main idea was pretty straight forward. ArenaNet developers will release a steady stream of stand alone expansion packs to be sold at full price, thus Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall and Guild Wars Eye of the North since followed.
Story
<-250x250 Square - left->The lands of Tyria have ever been in conflict, some say since the very creation of the world. War took many shapes and forms but continuous evolution of the human kingdoms presented it with the finest: the guild wars. They were the expression of power hungering within the magical races of the land, as guilds grew stronger than kingdoms and kings alike. The Guild Wars raged for decades, never did the peace accords last long, never did the negotiations take root. The conflict claimed the lives of many hundreds of thousands. It uprooted families, made neighbors into enemies and soured the relations between the human nations. Eventually, as all things do, the wars did come to an end. But there were neither the swaying words of peace negotiators nor the sharp blades of conquering heroes that ended them. The resolution was instead presented by an even greater war brought by the Charr. In unprecedented numbers, the beasts from the north swept down through all three human kingdoms. Ascalon, Orr, and Kryta, embroiled in conflict with one another for more than fifty years, dropped their grudges and turned their attentions to defending their borders against the new threat. With great sacrifice, the ravaged human kingdoms eventually repelled the invasion in Guild Wars Chronicles, but this has not yet come to pass. Factions takes place on the continent of Cantha, way south of Tyria, roughly two years after the Charr invasion, while Nightfall welcomes you to the exotic continent of Elona, Land of the Rising Sun. In the Eye of the North campaign however you can return to Tyria and tie up the loos ends in the sotryline.
Gameplay
You can meet new friends in towns or outposts, form a party, and then go quest together. Your party always has its own unique copy of the map, so camping, kill-stealing and long waiting times to complete quests are all obsolete. It is a feature and a problem in itself as it kills off both solo PvP and a large part of player interaction. I always gave quite an importance to the “massive” factor in MMO and over instancing the game’s areas is not the right way to ensure it. This does open up the way for some interesting tweaks, such as instant travel between map areas. It is all there, in the grand scheme of things, where NCSoft wants us to enjoy ourselves without the burden of excessive downtime or boresome walks to remote key zones. Unlike other MMORPGs, here you are paired up with a number of NPC teammates right off the start in order to plan a strategic approach to the game’s combat challenges.

The vanilla version (Chronicles) has a rooster of sex classes available, with four more being added through the addons. Thus we initially have the Warrior melee damage dealer, the Monk healer and holy damage dealer, the Mesmer master of curses and lockdown, the Ranger huntsman which uses pet along with bows and arrows, the Elementalist magic user and lastly the shadowy Necromancer, a master of minions.
If you are the kind of player that prefers to meet head on his opponents in battle, then the Dervish profession is tailored for you. The Dervish could be termed holy warriors as the character not only has some powerful spinning attacks that can take on several opponents but also special skills that can increase their abilities in battle.
Holymen just the same, Paragons are bent on the spiritual part of life, most efficient while fighting close by their comrades for encouraging and support. They bear heavier armor and deal moderate damage, as the main asset is their chants, shouts and echoes. Natural born leaders, it is through faith they manage to effectively use healing powers. Paragons look as the name implies, almost like the offspring of gods among men, revered for their actions and attitude alike.
The assassin is a powerful yet versatile killing machine, that can use the added benefits of dual wield, teleportation and stealth to bring down his foes. Clearly a fighting profession, it lacks most of the defensive capabilities that are available to the Warrior. It makes up through special combo moves and the added ability to cripple and do extra damage on cursed opponents. This way the Assassin is most suited for team combat as the main damage dealer with excellent support for Mesmers.
The ritualist is a master of the spirit. With the help or his otherworldly companions he uses his powers to protect and heal allies. The impact of a ritualist’s spells is directly linked to the number of spirits he calls forth, otherwise is in many ways a profession similar to the Monk. Not a good damage dealer at all, the ritualist is a healing and support class. The Ritualist is a spirit summoner who will use lots of minions to attack, heal, defend, buff players, or power up spells.
The current level cap of 20 is not going to get higher soon due to balance issues. There are the six professions available from Prophecies and four extra from the expansions. Over 600 skills can be unlocked through quests and once you have them, subsequent characters you create for either PvE or PvP can use them at will. This is to say, you can’t be the best out there unless you have the right in game skills on your cast bar, so there’s plenty to do while you complete the campaigns a couple of times. With the addition of Guild Wars: Eye of the North, we saw a lot more content being developed for maximum level players, unlike the two previous expansions. 18 new areas were tailored for this exact purpose of enhancing your character with new set armors and unique items, along with new elite skills to change the high end gameplay mechanics.
With Guild Wars Factions saw the introduction of Alliances between up to ten guilds. Once an Alliance obtains a city, it will have access to elite PvE quests. The challenge level of those missions scale to the size of the city. Over the course of 24 hours, whichever faction wins the most battles for a city will own it. These Alliances will share a chat channel and be able to visit each other's guild halls. More importantly, Alliances will have access to a real-time map of the struggle between the Luxon and Kurzick factions.
The ladder system involves guilds rather than individual players. In the end game, Guild Wars Factions is all about team play and team tactics. Most character skills can be acquired with relative ease in player versus environment play. The great thing about this skill system is that players can easily change their secondary profession to better suit their purposes, be they cooperative PvE missions or PvP frenzy. Combined with the free point reallocation system, the versatility of your avatar’s powers is limited only by the use of imagination. Guild Wars was not designed to be a colossal time sink, neither early nor late game. As the developers stated on numerous occasions, the main goal was to give an equal fighting chance to the casual player as well as the hardcore gamer, a goal splendidly achieved. Of course, this does mean that the average lifespan of a Guild Wars account will be lower than, let’s say, a World of Warcraft account, purely because farming and lenghty instance runs will keep the player glued to the seat for longer periods of time.
Video
Character customisation is one of the assets Guild Wars made itself known for and I have to agree, characters look simply amazing. Having breathtaking detail and full freedom of choice regarding the way your body, weapons and clothes look is good for the ego, be it in game as it is. It even went so far that armor and weapon dyes are sort of a second type of currency, besides regular gold. Players go out of their way to paint themselves using black dye, being the most expensive. After all, you can’t look grim and evil without putting some effort into it. Designers put extra care into the drawing and rendering of those models. Their effort can be widely appreciated especially when you do some non standard moves, by emoting sitting, sleeping, dance, laughter or salutes. Overall, the game has beautiful graphics that will look just fine even if you’re using an older video card. Often enough you’ll find yourself pausing the gore filled action for a minute or two and simply admire the landscape. Either tall mountains, covered with vast forests, bare rock where waterfalls descend into oblivion or deserts filled with trickery, they all have an exotic, oriental feeling about them that you will learn to enjoy.
Conclusion
Guild Wars is a subscription free online roleplaying game where players explore a huge fantasy world, build personalized characters in both appearance and skills, compete in head-to-head guild battles with players from around the world. The game has done the seemingly impossible task of surviving World Of Warcraft‘s obliterating grip on the gaming scene. It’s managed to pioneer a whole new type of MMO business model and gather up a dedicated fan base of over a million players. The long term asset of GuildWars has always been guild PvP, so expect many exciting hours of player versus environment play that will eventually result in a full player versus player showdown.




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