My take on the campaigns so far

WARNING - may contain spoilers.

Some of these leave unanswered questions (Especially on the prophecies) so please, if you reply, make it tasteful instead of blurting "omg u r noob proph is t3h best0r!"

Also note I've also only been playing for 6 months so some of this may just be uneducated opinions - so please keep that in mind before flaming me.

On Prophecies:
I know this is the favorite of most people, but I must say it is aweful. I am usually good with keeping up with storylines, but the Proph one makes no sense.
First, you're in Pre-searing ascalon. You do quests for kids, actors, and princes. A hostile army comes alone and bombs the place. So far, so good. A generic "fall of the empire" template storyline. Unoriginal, but decent and popular.
So now you're in post-searing Ascalon, apparently your mission as a band of heros is to stop the invasion (or at least postpone is some more?) Kill as many charr as you can, and perhaps even save ascalon.

So far, so good.

Then this is where the game loses me. After the discovery of stormbringer, you make your way into the shiverpeaks and end up getting all in the dwarves business. I fail to realize why. You muddle through their little civil war to gain passage to kryta (even those there's plenty of water underneath it all. It would have been as simple as getting a boat ride from ascalon to kryta.) rorik dies, and you make your way to Kryta. Suddenly you're taking orders from a fanatical religious group called the White mantle, for some reason that escapes me. Suddenly, they turn evil (yay for killing innocents?) you escape, and BAM suddenly the undead want to kill you as well, for a reason that escaped me as well.

WHAT THE CRAP?!

Somehow I did make it to the desert, again I have no idea what I'm doing there, only to ascend for some reason. And that's as far as I've gone in prophecies, at killing the dopplganger. I never want to make a prophecies character again due to the nonsense and complete boredom the campaign gives me.

On the actual economy, And I do not blame this on anyone, it was extremely difficult to get any decent items/armor as I was constantly broke and it was way too hard to get money altogether. Maybe it's just me, but somehow I think the best moeny making areas are deep into the game, far past the desert or something. (I've made it to the desert before, the drops suck.) I only had one prophecies character once upon a time, I got my armor in cantha when i got factions >_>

On Factions
I was extremely excited when I got this. The storyline is most definately a lot more original, but the entire thing is obviously PvP based, as one could get to level 11-15 in a day of gameplay. I honestly don't think Factions is good for new players, even during the tutorial, I bet most of them chat with party members rather than paying attention. As the game pins you against level 8's and 11's in almost no time. (The leveling speed in prophecies to me is a tad slow, but I think it was too speedy in factions. Call me picky.) Which I don't think is healthy for new players, it may even discourage them, "omg level 11's already! I'm only level 7!"

all in all, the storyline is decent and it flowed throughout the whole game. In prophecies the main enemy shifted way too much for me to keep up. Charr? no wait, the stone summit! damnit no, it's the mantle! CRAP NOW THE UNDEAD? At least in Factions you knew who the enemy was the entire time. Shiro. although the lack in enemy diversity wasn't that great.

On Nightfall
I do believe, they finally know what they're doing.
The storyline flows, a central enemy is established while still giving you plenty of side-enemies to worry about. The storyline is a political war-time debate that everyone of all ages can relate to. Are you, as a sunspear, working for the greater good? Or have you just taken orders from a mad leader who wants a war? It's hard to tell, which I think is brilliant.
Although the question shifts quickly when you discover the famous Warmarshal Varesh want's to, uh, for lack of a better way of saying it, end the world in this event called "Nightfall" And thus revealing the source of the expansion title.
Short, simple, to the point. Awesome storyline.

Nightfall also introduced heros, which are henchmen on crack. Which is good, mind you. Each player/party member can equip 3 heros each of their choice, which are generally unlocked as you progress through the storyline. you can equip weapons of your choice, customize their skill bar, edit their attributes, and install runes into their armor. You cannot change their actual armor, but it does improve as the heros level. You can order them around making them attack, guard, or avoid combat altogether. You can order them and the heros to stop and stay in a certain area, too, untill you cancel the order. BRILLIANCE?

Let me take a second to comment on the armor that nightfall gives. In prophecies, the armor was relatively bland, and only the best looking armor went to the high levels who are deep into the island of fire and farm a hundred ectos a day or something. And in factions, you had a couple more creative types, but you were stuck with one style or another throughout most of the same (That much I didn't like.) In nightfall, you almost WANT to end the game with starter-styled armor. The armor is just beautifully crafted. Sadly, there is only two types again but that doesn't matter much as the armor is wonderfully created.

The nightfall storyline is so innovative and fast paced, that I've progressed farther in the NF campaign in a week or two than I have in any others over the course of 6 months.

I hope they take the best of all worlds and put it into Chapter4. Prophecies with their slow and easy pace for learning, nightfall with the leveling speed (Heros would be nice but I'm not worried about them too much) and nightfall again for their perfect storyline.

I agree with you on factions because we all know that one sucked. Prophecies I thought was really good. Sure you leveled pretty slow but the story was almost completely unpredictable and I liked that. If you watched the cutscenes and didn't skip any missions I thought it told the story quite well and wasn't hard to follow at all. There are still 6 missions in prophecies after beating the doppleganger and I highly recommend doing those six missions.

I would, but my prophecies character is long gone. Had them for 2 weeks after the ascension, with no clue on where to go next. I never found any runners that were all "running to next mission area" or anything like that, sO i never found out where to go.

And not only was it unpredictable, it was nonsense and pathetic. It changed way too often and didn't flow at all.
As I said in a quote in my review:
And I do watch the cutscenes if I haven't seen them, regardless of how many people want to skip. (7/8 want to skip? screw you guys.)

-Site is lagging, sorry if this post ends up getting double posted, I'll try to delete if the lag lets me.

About your proph rant, dude watch the cut-scenes more and pay attention to what your doing, you don't just go to the shiverpeaks and then to kryta w/o reason.

I read the rest of your post, but it was so biased to nf and untrue i just felt compelled not to reply about it.

Bias? Isn't that what opinions are? Who said opinions HAVE to be true or factual?

Please, enlighten me. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I want to know more about the campaigns I really do.

wow i can see this one getting ugly fast but anyways to the op play and learn like we all do. if you must know before you play check guildwiki.

I did say much of it was uneducated opinions. If people can't read it's not my fault.

I think he's right about Prophecies. Seriously, don't you agree that Prophecies's story is a bit......off? "We must protect Ascalon, Save Rin, Save the King" and then "We can't stay here, we have to leave for Kryta",

Now....this "leave for Kryta" part would be very understandable if Rurik wants to go there and ask for help. But instead he just wants to go and live there instead....Ok I guess. Leave your father and the rest of your people to burn. Who cares, right?

The Northern Shiverpeaks part is fine. You're travelling to Kryta and Shiverpeaks is in the way. Then, Rurik got killed while you're on the way out of Shiverpeaks, and you've arrived at Kryta. Guess what? Nobody gives a damn about Rurik. "The prince is dead", "uh, that's too bad I guess. Let's go to LA and do some trade, Ascalonian fellows!"

Where is the story between that? You don't just forget about your prince like that. And as an Ascalonian, you'd stay with your fellow Ascalonians instead of wandering around, following White Mantle's orders. Never, ever, unless you take some crappy fantasy books into account....

I think Prophecies has the best story of all three by a mile. The way you moved across the continent from one locale to another felt really epic, and the twists and question of who is the real power controlling who was complex and interesting - if you were paying attention that is. Most people rush through PvE not giving two shits for the story, and for those people I'm sure Prophecies made no sense at all. Factions PvE really disappointed me: simple and short, wasn't much to it. So far Nightfall is great (havn't finished quite yet) and has a really nice polished feel to it that Prophecies and Factions lacked; however it seems to lack the kind of diversity that spiced up the two previous campaigns.

You do though come back to ascalon and other places with the titan quests.

Ok I respect your opinions... Here is my understanding of the story in Prophecies up to where you are with a little I may have had to figure out on my own...

You are an ascelonian soldier who first needs to prove himself within the eyes of ascelon... In the process you come to side with the prince who wants to go over the shiverpeaks and seek help against the invading charr army from the people of Kryta now known as White Mantle... You have some trouble going over the mountains as you have to travel through the heat of a civil war... When Rurik dies your now to settle the ascelon refugees in kryta...

Here in my mind is a hint at some things they do not mention... It seems that Rurik may have known ahead of time that all the refugees including you are Chosen and are important in order to fulfill the flameseeker prophecies which is old and famous enough for any of them to know about...

So now your a high up soldier of ascelon in kryta where you need to gain the trust of the white mantle.... in the process you find that the undead are trying to kill the chosen so you get them back from, not the undead bu the shining blade... for the white mantle... as you chase the shining blade through the maguuma jungle(the chosen are ascelonians you are trying to save your own people) you find that the white mantle seek to sacrifice the chosen and the shining blade mean to save them...

now you are fighting t ostop the white mantle who you then find out are just puppets being used by the lich who is in cohorts with some crazy ass wizards called the mursaat... you also find out that you are the chosen and must travel to the crystal desert in search of a great power within yourself if you ever hope to stop the mursaat and the lich...

in the desert you do many things including ascending.... once you have gotten the power you need your next goal is to go help in the war in the shiver peaks as the white mantle have trapped the shining blade there and are going to take them out....

It makes more sense than the op lets on, but all the twists and turns are a bit lame. I especially dislike how useless ascension was, you'd think *that* should be the thing to let you fight the mursaat which would've made it worth the effort, oh no you need to go run through a mission to see some stupid seer to infuse your armor instead. Every single time you change your armor too. The origin and purpose of the muursat is not really explained by the end of the game very well, nor why Glint has you go through all of this for.

Nonetheless, it's still 200% better than Factions, which has a 5-minute story stretched over hours and hours. You think stupid plot twists are predictable? Try no plot at all.

good writing, I dont agree with you on some parts but I always respect ppl who read storyline. I know bunch of guys beat Prophecies many times still dont know shit about the story

? nf = bored after a week. someday i might finish it. maybe. proph isnt just about the story. look at how beautiful they made the landscapes it owns the other two games.

I don't want to knock holes in what you're saying, but if indeed you ascended in Prophecies, you finished the acsension in the next mission area. Beating the doppleganger drops you at Dragon's Lair, which in turn drops you in the southern shiverpeaks where the unseen gods of the White Mantle are revealed.

I can't help but feel that if you've used runners to get to the next mission areas, you've probably missed out on quite a lot of the primary story arc, which is made up not only of missions, but quests also.

I can understand some confusion with the storyline, not because its awful and it makes no sense as you say, but because you haven't finished it. I wont ruin it by telling you how it all fits together; but it does. And it's all the better for totally confusing you before explaining why everything; just as with many classic fantasy epics in literature and screenplay, you're dumped in the middle of the story, and the process of discovery makes the story great.

I want to encourage you to give it another chance, from the top, all the way through. I think it may just change your mind!

They are all trying to be different and appeal to different tastes. That's a good thing. A lot of people hate factions and love prophecies, but some people, like myself have it the other way around.
I think because each game appeals to different people, that they are all decent.

Also for others to see, I'm tired of hearing people say factions sucked! They know darn well that there are people who like factions, but totally ignore other people's tastes. Games are like movies and music and any type of art. Everyone has their own preference. It won an award for crying out loud.

Your whole reply is based on the assumption that he uses runners.

I've played, and repeat, the whole Ascalon > Kryta > Maguuma chains of missions/quests over and over and over ever since I've started playing Guild Wars back in Holloween 2004 WPE. I can't believe how someone would come up and say that Prophecies's Story is good.

Let's face it; It's FAR from good. And this is coming from the biggest fanboy you'll ever find. There're so many holes in the story. Why leave Ascalon? Did you leave because the prince told you so or you want to help Ascalon? Why didn't you return to Ascalon and help the king once Rurik is dead/You killed the Lich? (Leaving Ascalon because the place is ruined and there's no hope to survive there would be a BAD reason, story-wise, so please don't pull such stuff on me)

And don't even get me start with Rurik's death. So much for a prince and his fellowers, really.

I enjoyed factions the most. And yea, prophecies was good because it was original but the story line was really confusing. It skipped around a lot and whatever did happen with the Charr? Seems like we were fighting one enemy after another without resolving any of them. Just running away from one fight to another. Only one that had some sort of closure was defeating the lynch but then what happens to the mantle? Who really are the mursaat? What happens to the undead? /shrugs

to OP: you never really completed prophecies, if you would the story line would come all together for you. ascension is only half throgh the game, and if you did ascend, and beat your dopple, the game automaticly takes you to a mission called dragon lair, which takes you forward to the place where the other half of the game begins. the exciting half. before complaining about the story, finish it first, it will come all together.

about factions, the story was too "generic". i would call it a cookie cutter story. a bad guy came, destroyed everything and now we gotta kill him. but honestly i enjoyed the game rythm much more then NF, it was dynamic and straigh to the point.

about NF, that story was great, ya! but if you would complete prophecies first it would be even better cuz it explains much about the 2 previous games.

my advice: make a prophecies character (or brng over a character from nf?) and play till the very end of it. youll be surprised how the story comes together

how you do not understand what went on in the prophecies campaign is beyond me... ill start with the first thing you didnt understand... the humans became the dwarves business because the only way to get to kryta is to go THROUGH their land... second, grooble's gulch is the shortest route to kryta. However, the beacons to let the King ironhammer know its safe to open the doors are gaurded by the stone summit (they are at war, the dwarves and summit, because they pretty much worship different gods). The humans, (us), killed the summit gaurding the beacons. The dwarves were happy about that, so they showd us their hospitality. We did them good by looking out for ourselves cuz we were trying to get to Kryta. it was win win. We killed summit and took the beacons, they gave us passage. And as they stated in the cinematic, the dwarves and humans used to have an old alliance. Probably against the charr. As abck in the day, the Charr invaded Kryta, Ascalon, and Northern Elona (Orr).

I really think you need to actually listen to the words spoken during the cutscenes. I found it very difficult to "get lost." Everything was explained so simply. There was nothing complex about anything. Factions was probably the worst explained, but still, i found it difficult to get lost. The only think i dont understand is what was so dangerous about Shiro trying to become mortal again. However i do understand that the emeperor never wanted to kill Shiro, and that Shiro was a good guy, who was tainted by abaddon's Fortune Teller. That Fortune Teller was the means by which Shiro became touched by abaddon and became one of his "officers" so to speak

Not so, I mentioned runners because CagedinSanity says:

To repeat my main point: If you don't finish the story, you won't understand it. Please tell me what that's got to do with runners?

These are the thoughts and chat I got when I played all 3
Prophecies:
end-game: "so....what happen to Ascalon?? I know the king is an old fool, the land is wasted, and people are lazy(camping for 2 years...in capital...come on, even at war you should had rebuild some buildings in your capital), but that is my home land right?? Now that I am king of the world, and totaly owns...shouldnt something be done about the chaos there??"
(there wasnt any after story mission then...both titan mission and sf come later)

Faction
almost end game: "wait...so you can kill master Togo and get the same result?? so why bother invaded the palace?? And what is with the desire of be rez again?? Other then scoring girls you seems to be just fine...and trust me, with that face and that tamper, it wont matter if you are dead or alive"

Nightfall
about 1/4 way: "WTH... did the only important paragon npc just drop dead.....I can only imagine my future as a paragon now"(It realy look like the hunger was feeding on Komir>.>...I thought she was a goner)
End Game: "So...after almost 5+ years of fighting evil, all this dedication, ascend myself, become closer to the star, and actualy beat a god....she is the one became a god?? ....evil thy name is Komir"

But over all the storyline of GW arent bad.

That's almost exactly what my stepson had to say about it.

Overall, I actually agree a lot with the original poster. And I still <3 Factions (I went out with Eli and heroes to Echovald the other night and dude, I still love that place).

Oh, sorry. I did do the dragons lair mission. My memory of how far I went is a little shady, it was after the dragon lair mission i got really confused and bored.
I was thinking about making another character for prophecies only, but I would have to muddle through the boredom to get to the good parts first, and that's just.. not.. cool.

I do have a dervish I think would rock in it though. I'm at LA, where do I go from there to get to a mission?

KESKI: Yes, overall the storylines aren't too god aweful.

But why does everyone just forget about rurik and take orders from the mantle, and hell, even almost JOIN them? We're ascalonians, damnit.

Prophecies had a good story with a couple of twists, and in general the missions were fun and well designed (except for some of those boring jungle missions... but you can always get run to Sanctum Cay).

Factions, on the other hand, was crap (PvE wise). The story was the most clichéd thing ever, and some of the missions made me want to cry with their horrible storyline and rediculous dialogue (see: Tahnnakai Temple). Also, you're going through the game at breakneck speed, and then suddenly BAM, you get to the befriending quests, and have to sit there and play 10-20 ABs or do a bunch of menial quests for faction. The city atmosphere is boring, and it makes looking at your map for directions a pain, since you often cant see paths through the cityscape. Finally, it's filled with noob assassins who see to think being a A/Mo with mending makes them a tank.

Nightfall was quite good, although what I didn't like was when the story came to a halt and you had to grind sunspear points to continue. The 2 professions introduced were both strong and useful additions to a team, whereas most teams can survive without an assassin, and many without a rit.

Also, prophecies and nightfall have the best skills, both elite and non-elite.

Oh: I didn't get runs around the campaign. I watched the stuff.

On Grinding:
I didn't find it very difficult to grind for sunspear points, it was a little annoying at the second spear thing, but on the mainland when you had to get to general... At 4 SS points a kill, getting to 2500 really isn't that difficult.

You fail at one thing with Prophecies.

Who said you need a main enemy/antagonist? It's not all black/white, most of the world is grey scales.

Without a main enemy, there's no point in reading, watching, or playing a story. Without an enemy, the story doesn't flow and it just turns out to be pointless.

Now, Prophecies do have enemies, but way too many in way too many different situations.

I agree Prophecies had the worst story (and most creative at same time)

some notes
the Prophecies manual has 40 pages of game lore,
highly recommend reading it
http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/manuals.php

- in the end movie of mission 4,
Rurik was banished from Ascalon by his Father. The King refuses to seek outside help and it makes sense to continue to journey with Rurik to find aid against the Charr threat.

- Kryta was the destination to find that help (Shiverpeaks was just along the way). It makes sense to goto Kryta because you had the Krytan ambassador providing assistance outside of Old Ascalon.

- this is where the story loses focus, you have the new menace of White Mantle and Charr are forgotten

- Ascension did have a purpose. You cannot see Muramites (The Unseen Ones) without being ascended. I believe Glint says this in the end movie of mission 19. This movie is easy to miss because it plays after you exit killing the Warrior boss and before you meet Glint.

Titan Quests were not added to the game until the Sorrow Furnace update, 6 months after release
- and its only a side quest, not main mission

Leaving the Charr threat out of the endgame goal made no sense.

oops, srry about the double

This is what I know about Prophocies, its the hand book info+ingame story+some of my filling in...so it might not be 100% right but shouldnt be too far off.

In the center of the story is not the player or the Lich King or even Ascalon for that matter, its the fulfil of the "Flameseeker's Prophocies"

The main goal of our hero are not fighting or rebuild the kingdom that is dangling on a cliff, but to fulfil our part in the prophocies.

However we dont know that in the start, all we know is that, we are soilders, and supporter of the Prince(players like it or not, in the story we do stand with the prince=P). During these time we, the char are aim for drive charr out of ascalon land(this is what the prince want, the king just want to keep what they have left and rebuild the wall to prevent further lose).

These change after the Noalin mission, the prince realize that it is a lost cost to keep fighting like that, and the people of Ascalon will not survive if the kingdom keep fighting like that(yes...the war must be super harsh that they dont even have the resorce and time to build 1 house in their capital... ). Prince seek help, from their old enemies in the first Guild War(human were at war themselves before the charr invaded). Of course, as a person who fought the first guild war, the king is against the idea...and he do believe Ascalon can resolve their own problem. So we get our a$$ kick out of our homeland.

Now to the North Shiverpeak. Well our goal is Kryta, cant realy use the boat, cause Ascalon dont have a port...Ascolon is surounded by land and mountain. Why didnt anyone make it to the crystal desert at the south?? Who knows...maybe forgeten jump out and kill them all.

The North Shiverpeak are at war, a civl war for that matter. All because some racsim stone summit dont like the King be friendly with human. And the moment we get in the Shiverpeak those stone summit want to kill us too Now as a human, we know what to do we kill what ever is in our way and be friend with whoever offer their help

Its too sad that prince sacrifice himself when we were so close to Kryta. And as a trusted soilder the responsibilities of helping out those who follows the prince lies on our shoulder now.(This is also when Devona's team ditch us and went to faction to solve the Shiro things....some hero they are ) We have to find a place for the refuges that follow us all this way, and this is where the White Mantral step in, they are currently incharge of Kryta(Kryta also have a king..but he never show his face.... ) They offer us a place to settle if we help them with the undead problem they are having. After a few mission, we fitted in, and join them(where is my cool white armor??)

However when we travel to the west side of Kryta, we met with the resisdents "Shining Blade", those who oppose the White Mantral. They send us secret massage and warn us White Mantral were not what they claim to be. Soon enough we found out what White Mantral do with the chosens, which piss us off, "GOD FXXX DXXX IT, IT TOOK ME 6 TRIES TO SAVE ALL CHOSENS TO GET THAT BONUS, AND YOU ARE JUST GOING TO KILL THEM?? " This is where we lost it, forget the refuges in Kryta and kill one of the White Mantral Officer.

Now...we are in trouble, we are out power, most Kryta people dont support us, and we are in mid of no where. But there was hope, the great mage from the Old Orr(forget the name..and kind of lazy for wiki now) offer us help, if we bring him the scepter of orr. It does seems logical...it is the scepter of orr, and that guy is a mage from orr....doesnt seems like stealing We also find out the Undead problem in Kryta is that Mages doing. But the White Mantral caught up with us and capture our friends. This is also where we heard the Flameseeker Prophocies, which lead us to crystal desert.

Wiki have everything...so I am going to stop now

BOOM! Bang on the nail.

That's exactly as I saw the story too. Explained like this it's simple and straight forward. Makes total sense. Infact, it's like any blockbuster movie. I'd watch it anyhoo ...

Hmmm, I found Prophecies storyline rather good, perhaps the cinematics left alot to be desired though. The only issue I have with it was that it didn't flow in a very direct manner and required you to pay attention to the main sequences of the storyline to make sense. Nightfall did a more direct approach with a pretty good storyline. Factions wasn't exactly crap to me but the cinematics (and the sequence with which storyline was revealed) and voice-acting really did me in for the entire experience.

All in all, Prophecies did present a reasonably good storyline albeit being rather unpolished. Nightfall did a more polished job but it's storyline isn't really anything more extraordinary than Propechies' for me and the latter did felt more epic. Factions had the potential but its story-telling execution was rather poor.

I must agree, factions had a lot of potential but I find myself muting the sound everytime someone starts talking in a cutscene. Ew.

the biggest problem with Prophecies is the availbility of doing the quest out of order, most people skip the jungle and miss out on why the mantle hate us now. And then there is Villany of Galrath, really hard and this guy says he doesn't trust the mantle, why?

They kind of solved that with Factions locking gates, but NF has it better, some quest just aren't available until you do an previous quest, so the story makes sense.

Anyone else think this is a joke topic or this guy is a little dumb?

No, it's a serious topic.

Did you read ANYTHING at all?

I read, and its clear you never watched cutscenes. You know.. like use your eyes and ears, and get the total message not just stare at the "Skip>" button?

Well Sanity I guess you've had enough people retelling the prophecy storyline so I won't had my voice to the chorus.

But I'll voice my vews about the campains:
Prophecy: somehow remind me of heavier books like the Lord of the Rings, the story is long and slow going, it takes its time. There are a lot of easy to overlook details(like rurik's banishment from ascalon that every one (including myself) seemed to have forgotten). It takes you every where and makes you go through a serie of prologues and twists. The continent is separated(ascalon, kryta, maguuma...) and each area has it's own personnal history/lore/place in the greater plot.
As to know if it is boring, I still like to go through it only to look for some small details, every mission has a point (accept maybe 2 or 3 of them and maybe the first 2 mishes, but I think they are there to get you used to the game). Compared to faction where some missions were just a stop in your travel (like minister Cho's Estate or Zen daijun) or quest that were just data-gathering/Fedex.

Nightfall : Haven't done it yet, after cursing 6 mounth about faction i'm starting to like it, go figure (maybe it's because the mass has moved to nightfall). Anyway the story seem rether simple, big bad god wanna Bing-Bam-Boum everything, so go and stop him. Sure it has the best PvE of all the GWs and will probably be the most fun of them all, but I'm afraid the main interest will be to tie up Trilogy 1. I doubt a newby would really apreciate the story without knowing chap 1. If a new player was starting, i'd sugest him to get NF and chap 1, start in prophecy and make a trip in nightfall to get the heros and level them in Tyria (just to clear up PUGs problems).

(note that i haven't finished it yet, as of this writing, I left for NF at tannhakai temple (not responsible for spelling mistakes in that name))
Now about Faction : i think you have to admit that the story is pretty much worthless. Basically:" Hello, you're out of training, a plague is killing every one. Investigate, find out the big-bad-boss behind it, harm yourself (of course the answer is deep in the factions' territory (the urn and the spear)). So you have them? Good, now FINAL BATTLE!!!" The End. The only point I see in it (aside from the assass/ritualist, don't know why but I seem to love them) is the Factions' lore. The whole Continent is worshipping the ancestors, death is omnipresent and wandering souls are coming with it. Kursicks use soul-bound wardens and I still don't know how the warturtles and land-ships are working (soul-bound technology maybe...). Flavour-wise Shing-Jea and Kaineng are just plain boring, a training isle (that i'm sure wasn't meant to hold lore so it is understandable) and an empire. The city-land was a good idea and I still wonder why I never tire of finding my way in there, but the way they used the concept just doesn't work it seems.


Somehow it's like a video game, it is harder to play along but once you can play it, it'S much more rewarding than others alternative. I've never been good at FPS and I'm worse than anyone with CounterStrike, the game is just too hard (or too realistic) for me to get going. By the way you write I take it you prefer fast-paced action over a deeper plot (I know that was obvious, no need to remind me!). Fair game! just like my little brother find Fable's storyline interesting while I consider the game a waste of time.

By the way, I don't mean the last paragraph as an insult, let's just call it a parallel between the two situation.

Passing judgment on a game you haven't even finished? For shame. Everything before ascension is busy work, it gets fun once you get to the Southern Shiverpeaks.