I've been considering Guildwars, is it good?
Oh... You had to ask!
World of warcraft is awesome, but I am totally against the concept of purchasing a game and then having to pay a monthly fee to play it. Here's my detailed explanation/review of Guildwars.
Guildwars isn't the greatest game ever but it's good. It's two games in one really. You have your quest filled game where you operate in a fantasy world and do hero stuff, or you have player vs. player modes. In PvP, which I haven't really explored at this point, there are apparently various games such as team vs. team (kill everyone in the opposing team), Last man (or women) standing and capture the flag.
The game isn't as elaborate/complex as WoW. For example, when you create characters, there are no races, therefore no racial modifiers. In fact, there are no stats like Dex and Str. At this time, you can only play humans.
The game is based on skills (the equivalent of D&D spells and feats). You pick a primary profession and early in the game, you pick up a secondary profession, and the you can learn skills from those professions. For professions, you have the option between:
Elementalist - Basically an evoker that uses element based magic (fire, water, air, earth).
Mesmer - Focuses on domination, illusions and inspiration.
Monk - Focuses on healing/resurrect and support skills. The monk is very valuable in PvP because he can try and stay out of the fight and resurrect the tanks whenever they die. When playing PvP, some people often try to eliminate the Monk 1st for that reason.
Necromancy - Raise an army of undead minions, sacrifice some of your health to aid your group or hex the enemies, steal health from others.
ranger - Focus on range attacks, stealth and scouting. Make animal friends.
warrior - Master of melee combat. Kick some royal ass!
The way the game works:
Unlike WoW, you are not actually in a virtual world with other players all the time. Only in towns. When you leave town and go adventuring, you will not encounter PCs randomly. You can however form a party of PCs or NPCs while in towns, and then go adventure with them so you can play with some friends. It's not a bad system really. I like it.
Levels and XP:
You max out at level 20, which one would think sucks, but they've incorporated a different XP system that doesn't make it so easy to reach level 20. Let me explain: You can gain XP by killing monsters or completing quests. When fighting monsters, the XP amount is based on your level VS a monster level. If a monster is 6 levels or more lower then you, then you gain no XP from killing it. So when you start out at level 1, you'll be fighting level 2 monsters and gaining 120 XP when you kill them. As you level up, the level two creatures will progressively give less XP, up to a point where they give no XP. This forces you to advance to more challenging areas and to complete quests. You have no choice because at some point, your XP bar will eventually stop progressing.
When you level up, you gain attribute points which are spent on your profession abilities (examples: fire magic, blood magic, illusions, swordsmanship, etc). At any time, you can reallocate your skill point distribution so depending on whom you’re fighting or what role you'll be playing within a party, you can fine tune your character for specific missions. Magical items can also enhance your abilities. For example, my pyromancer has various items that make my fire magic +3 at the moment.
Skills:
Like I said, skills are basically spells and feat equivalents of D&D. I think there are over 450 different skills in the game at this time. You can learn new skills by completing some missions (NPCs you do missions for will reward you with XP, gold, items, Skills or a combination of these) or you can purchasing them from skill trainers in towns in exchange for special skills points that are earned in certain quests, and some gold.
At some point, you have an inventory of skills at your disposals but before you leave a town to adventure or go on a specific quest, you need to pick 8 skills from your inventory. These are the only 8 skills that will be available to you until you return to a town. So depending on what your role in a party will be, where you are going and who you are fighting, selecting 8 skills enable you to fine tune your character even more.
Crafting and materials:
You can hire a craftsman to build things for you. You will need to supply the craftsman with some materials. There are a lot of various resources/materials in Guildwars, and I do mean a lot! You can acquire materials by trading with players, buying from material traders in town, or by using salvage kits on some items. For example, if a monster I killed drops an axe, I can sell the axe, use the axe, or salvage the axe to gain a wood plank or an iron ingot for example. Magical weapons can yield some very interesting items when salvaged with an "expert salvage kit". You can retrieve magical components like bow strings or sword hilts, plus a bunch more, which or can then sell for a nice profit, or use to create custom weapons. Vampiric bow strings are the R0XX0RZ!
Trading: I find that I spend more time trading with other players than playing the game, but that's because I choose to! There is an entire economy system in Guildwars that is based on offer and demand. Some items, such as dyes for example, are completely worthless in the sense that they have no practical application. Dyes will not give you abilities or enhance existing ones. Dyes can be applied to your gear to change the appearance of it. Tired of your green gloves? Apply blue dye on them and voila! There are 9 basic dye colors, and you can mix dyes to form even more colors so you can really fine tune your look. Dye prices fluctuate constantly. I've seen black dye sell for 2,000g and for 20,000g (which is a lot of money in this game considering typical non magical melee weapons can be sold for 3-5 gold). Sometimes, I will purchase items only to resell them at a profit. I've made a lot of cash that way and was able to purchase the best armor I can get thanks to many many many hours of trading and negotiating with people, which is something I love to do anyway. IRL, I rarely pay the tag price when I buy something. Christ, I even try to bring down the price of a pair of jeans! So I can tell you that I get a lot of enjoyment out of making deals in Guildwars. It's just my nature.
The world: The world itself is huge! The only way to get to a town is to walk there. There's no teleportation or transportation. Once you do reach a new location, then it is added to your map and you can travel there any time in the future simply by clicking the town on your map. Some areas, you just can't get too on your own because you are too weak and the monsters will kick your ass. If you have a destination in mind, you can always hire another high level player who offers his services as "runner". Essentially, you pay a fee to join his party and he guarantees your trip. He'll ignore the monsters and run right trough, taking a beating on the way and healing himself up as needed. When you are in a party and you die, you'll come back to life when they reach the town so even if you don't make it, but at least one person from your party does, then you'll resurrect in the town when they reach it. The town will then be on your map and you can come back to it anytime.
Runners can make a lot of money in no time (imagine charging 2,000g to take people from point A to point B, and taking 5 people at once. You'll earn 10k right there). Beware of payment arrangements. Runners can rip you off by taking your money and then leaving. It's a good idea to find someone who is capable and trustworthy. Then you add them to your friends list and give them a shout whenever you need their services.
Maybe you'll want to run people yourself in the future. It's a great way to accumulate wealth if you're not big on trading.
Guilds:
You can join an existing guild or start up your own. You earn points in PvP which can be spend later to purchase a guild cape (which you'll get to select designs) and later, you can purchase your very own guild hall for all guild members to enjoy. You can also sell a guild. The more guild members and the more advance the guild is (has capes and guildhall), the more you can sell it for. Guilds don't really do anything expect branding you. It's like a counter-strike clan.
Conclusion:
Overall, Guildwars seems plain you first play it, but when you get into it, you see that there is a lot of complexity to the way the game works. It's just the way the interface is that makes it easy and simple. Sometimes, things may get repetitive, but it's not usually for long. I like the XP system. I didn't at first, but then I realized it forces you to actually move the story along if you want to get anywhere. The story itself is interesting. You need to read the manual that comes with the game as there is an entire chapter that describes the adventures of a party and some historical info. You will encounter those characters in game too! As you progress, you learn a bit more about the events in the story line. It's interesting.
Things like:I like the character tweaking flexibility. One minute you can play a pyromancer, the next you can tweak him to a geomancer. Personally, I don't really play around with the point allocation much as I like to see things burn all the time, but I still appreciate the option.
Trading with other players can be fun and addictive, but if you're good at it, it can make you wealthy. Sometimes, you screw yourself over because of the dynamic economy system, but if you're patient, prices will fluxuate again.
Graphics: They are great. The magic effects are not over done and I like that. Sometimes, too much of a spectacle is annoying. There are so many different types of monsters and they are well done. The world is breathtaking. Here's some in game screenshots:
clickclickAdventuring: I like the flexibility to adventure on my own, with a group of PCs or a group of NPCs (which have a reasonable AI BTW).
Inventory capacity: You have a back pack which holds 20 items. You can buy two more bags (holding 5 items each) and you can upgrade these to hold 10 items each. You can also get a pouch. SO that's up to 45 slots on you, and identical items stack in a single slot. You can also pay 50g to have access to a storage box (20 or 25 slots, I don't remember) which is accessible in most towns. The nice thing about storage is that you can exchange items between your own characters. With your Guildwars account, you can have up to 4 characters on the go. If your elementalist comes across a nice sword your fighter could use, drop it in the storage box. When you login as the fighter, you can pick up the sword from storage. (I read it works like this anyway, I didn't actually try it yet since I'm only working on one character at the moment).
Emotes: Your Guilwars character can exhibit behaviors to express some feelings visually, just like emoticons in forums. This can be a simple gesture like bowing your head to an elaborate dance. The thing is, not every character does the same thing for the same emote. My characters does a really cheesy dance, and at some point in his sequence, starts dancing like Elaine in Seinfeld! You know what dance I'm reffering too right? The kicking and the thumbs up dance? I've actually gotten other players to pay me 50g just to see the Elaine dance! LOL! I've seen other characters do some pretty funky dances as well. Altought it serves no purpose, it's still fun.
Things I don't like:
Armor that you craft cannot be resold to other players. It was custom built for your character so you only your character can wear it. On the other hand, you can salvage them when you upgrade to something new, and sometimes you'll get good components back.
Not enough variety in weapons/wands/rods/armor. I play an elementalist therefore I only have access to elementalist armor which pretty much the same armor with the modifies based on different elements. A pyromancer armor vs. the geomancy armor of the same caliber is identical, expect some modifiers are fire based instead of earth based. Also, I don't like the fact that different grades of the same type of elemental armor look identical. For example, a pyromancer robe with AC 60 will look identical to the one with AC 15.
Weapons can be customized for you (adding 20% to the damage), but if you do that, then the weapon cannot be sold to another player. Well, it can if the player is stupid enough to buy it, but he/she won't be able to use it.
Some people will try to trade with you and screw you over. You quickly learn what to watch out for so it's not a big deal. And I suppose you can try to dup someone else if you feel like being an ass. I don't like that.
There are two things that WoW has that this game lacks. The mail box, where you can "mail" items to other players, even if they are not online. And the auction system. You can sell your stuff by standing there and screaming "Selling fiery dragon sword! PM me for details!" and of course, some people try to capture attention by typing things like "******SELLING: FIERY DRAGON SWORD OF SWORDSMANSHIP!!!!!!!**************************" which can get annoying. There are different communication channels in the game (private message, all, trade, team, etc) so you can turn off messages from trading channel for example. The problem is some people will use the "all" channel to sell stuff so you cannot completely filter out the idiots. Having an auction system would be a great addition. You could post an item and let people bid without having to travel from town to town screaming like an idiot that you want to sell a large unit of some kind.
Overall, for what you pay, I'll give it 8.5/10.
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