READ ME FIRST: For the new player on a budget: Which Guild Wars Should You Buy?

For the new player on a budget: Which Guild Wars Should You Buy?

~by Red

So you want to play Guild Wars

Great! If you feel you already know how the game works and just need an opinion between your options, jump down to the section entitled “I only want to buy one chapter”. Otherwise, before deciding what version of Guild Wars to buy, there are some important things you need to know.

-) Guild Wars is completely online. You must be connected to the internet to play Guild Wars. The game won’t even load if it can’t sense an internet connection.
-) Each Guild Wars chapter purchased is free to use and play. There are no periodic subscription charges. Ever.
-) Guild Wars accounts are not allowed to be sold by their original owner. All purchases should be new units from stores. Using eBay and other such methods to gain an account is forbidden, and may result in your newly acquired account being banned for illegal activity!

What’s with this Chapter business? Isn’t Guild Wars just one game?

There are multiple “chapters” in Guild Wars. A new chapter is released every six months, and each includes entirely separate lands to explore, missions to complete, and skills to learn. Your game account consists of a series of access keys that determine what chapters you have purchased, and thus what lands you can access.

You only need one chapter to play Guild Wars, as each is a “stand-alone” game, much like movies like Star Wars and Return of the Jedi can be enjoyed on their own. At the same time, much like the movie series, owning and playing through multiple chapters is more rewarding than owning only one.

Names
The terminology can be a bit confusing. At first, the game was released in a box simply entitled “Guild Wars”. When the second chapter was released a year later entitled “Guild Wars: Factions”, the game designers decided that all chapters should have a subtitle, including the original release. They renamed the original chapter “Guild Wars: Prophecies”.

When someone says “Guild Wars” now, they are referring to the entire game world that spans across the chapters. The original release is usually called simply Prophecies, the next Factions, and the most recent Nightfall. Sometimes they are also referred to as chapter one, two, and three (C1, C2, and C3) respectively.

Much like the original Star Wars can be found in a variety of editions (full screen, wide screen, director’s cut, collector’s, etc.), the chapters of Guild Wars have multiple editions. The first chapter, Prophecies, can be found in boxes that read “Guild Wars”, “Guild Wars: Collector’s Edition”, “Guild Wars: Game of the Year Edition”, and so forth—but they are all the same chapter, with only minor differences between them.

Chapters
When you purchase your first Guild Wars game, you will create a gaming account tied to an email address (or a PlayNC.com account) and a password. As you purchase additional chapters of Guild Wars, you can add the content of those chapters to your current account.

Each account starts with four character slots for the first chapter, and two more slots are added each time a new chapter is attached to the account. Also, additional slots can be purchased from the in-game Guild Wars store, each costing $10 in the US, €9 in Europe, and £6 in Great Britain. Slots can be used to create characters in any chapter the player owns on his or her account, as slots are not reserved for use in specific chapters.

In general, a chapter opens a new continent in the game world of Guild Wars. Each chapter is entirely separate, using its own map and having its own storyline and quests. A character is created on one of these continents and, after a certain point in that continent’s storyline, is able to travel to the other continents to play through those storylines (assuming those chapters have been added to the account).

In addition, Guild Wars uses a system of skill sets, which has been likened to the card game Magic: The Gathering. There are roughly 240 “core” skills that appear in every chapter, but there are many more that can only be obtained by playing in one chapter’s continent or another. Any Elementalist can learn the spell Fireball, for example. However, only players who own Prophecies have access to the spell Chain Lightning, while Factions owners have access to the spell Lightning Hammer.

Professions
All Guild Wars chapters include the ability to play one of the six core professions—Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist, Necromancer, Mesmer, and Monk. The first chapter, Prophecies, allows only these six professions to be created; but each new chapter has introduced two new professions. In Factions, players could create an Assassin or a Ritualist, while Nightfall players can make a Dervish or a Paragon.

A player who owns only Nightfall does not have access to the Assassin or Ritualist professions for their characters, while a player who owns only Factions can not make a Dervish or Paragon. However, players who own multiple chapters have access to all professions, and can use a character from one chapter in the missions of another. For example, someone who owns all three chapters can create an Assassin in the Factions continent, and then transport their Assassin to the Nightfall or Prophecies continents.

I only want to buy one chapter. Which one should I get?

There are many factors to consider here. I’ve put together a small table for reference, with each line explained in detail below.

((Note: The term “PvE” stands for Player versus Environment, and refers to the adventure part of the game where players group together to complete quests and battle AI-controlled enemies. “PvP”, short for Player versus Player, refers to the side of the game in which human players can fight other human players in direct competition.))




Learning Curve
If this is your first experience with Guild Wars, the learning curve can greatly affect your opinion of the overall game. The original release, Prophecies, is widely considered to have the smoothest learning curve. Due to factors discussed a bit lower on the screen, Prophecies eases players into new aspects of the game much more slowly than the later chapters.

Factions is widely considered to have the sharpest learning curve, oriented more towards experienced players who played Prophecies than to new players. Nightfall falls somewhere in between the two, but is much closer to the slower pace of Prophecies than to Factions’ haste.

Price
Like many video games, the oldest in the series is the cheapest. While the newest Guild Wars release is always sold at the same price level as new releases of other PC and console games, the older games can be found at lower prices. Prophecies is easiest to get cheaply, but recently many stores sold Nightfall at roughly half the usual market price. Members of the GuildWarsGuru.com forums often post a thread in the Riverside forum when a significant price drop occurs, so a would-be player who is tight on cash would do well to shop around and wait for a sale.

Focus
By the admission of the Guild Wars developers, Arena Net (ANet), Factions was designed to be much more PvP-oriented than either Prophecies or Nightfall. If your ultimate goal is to play through traditional questing and saving the world from crime and the forces of evil, Factions is probably an inferior choice to the other two chapters.

PvP Importance
The balanced, sophisticated PvP aspect is one of Guild Wars’ strongest selling points. Most PvP is universal, with arenas located at a “core” area called the Battle Isles. However, owning the skills sets from multiple chapters allows you to have more versatility, more options in designing characters for battle.

Because Prophecies was around for a year as the original game before new chapters were released, its skill set might be termed the “normal” skill set, the default around which most builds are based. For that reason alone, Prophecies may be the most important chapter in terms of being able to PvP competitively.

Between the other two, Nightfall skills are perhaps more important than Factions, only because Nightfall is the newest chapter and so those new skills are very prevalent in the PvP scene. As the Nightfall skills become more integrated and players become more familiar with counters to them, this may change. Keeping up on the PvP scene by reading the forums like GuildWarsGuru.com can help players keep tabs on the current trends, but these can change rapidly.

Note: Though Factions is more PvP-oriented than the other two chapters, the fact is that it will be easier for new players to find help in making builds with only Prophecies skills since it was the only skill set for the first year of Guild Wars, or only Nightfall skills since players were only allowed to use that skill set in the tournament following Nightfall’s release.

Hero battles are exclusive to Nightfall. These are matches in which one human player and his three customized AI-controlled henchmen, called Heroes, face off against another team of one human and three Heroes.

Alliance Battles are exclusive to Factions. The two tribes in Factions, the Kurzicks and the Luxons, each have an area for players to group together into teams of four. Each Alliance Battle randomly groups three of these teams from each side into a cooperative group of twelve, who work together to defeat the opposing group by obtaining more kills and controlling more shrines in the huge arena.

Professions
All chapters have access to the six core professions—Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist, Necromancer, Mesmer, and Monk. A player must own Factions to create an Assassin or Ritualist, while only Nightfall owners can create a Dervish or a Paragon.

Heroes
As stated above in PvP Importance, only Nightfall offers the use of customizable henchmen called Heroes. All chapters allow you to use AI-controlled “henchmen” to fill out your group; but Heroes allow you to manually use their skills and edit their builds and attributes, as well as individually assign them positions on the map. Heroes are extremely useful for PvE, and even have their own PvP arenas called Hero Battles, which allow two human players to fight each other using teams of four: one human player and his or her three Heroes.

Environment
Each chapter’s setting has been inspired by real world geography and cultures. Prophecies was designed around the traditional medieval setting in the style of King Arthur legends. Factions has an East Asian theme, while Nightfall is a mix of North Africa, Egypt, Middle East, and Greek elements.

Storyline, Length of Story, Number of Missions, and Grind
While there is some debate on whether Prophecies or Nightfall has the better storyline, it is generally accepted that the Factions storyline is inferior to the other chapters. The games’ lengths can be roughly measured by the number of missions they contain. While quests in Guild Wars send your party out into the explorable world to perform tasks, missions send your party to a specific zone, where the group must achieve an objective under certain conditions. After a mission is completed, players will either find themselves in the next mission staging area, or else they will receive quests that will lead them to the next mission.

Prophecies remains the longest game of the three, with 25 missions in a linear storyline with very little grind but a slow pace. The large number of missions means that players spend a certain amount of time completing several missions in the first area of the game before moving to the next major area. Whenever a mission does not directly drop players off at the next mission, the quests they are given are usually direct. There is very little backtracking in Prophecies, as every mission or quest leads the player to someplace new. While Prophecies contains very little grind due to the slow rise in difficulty throughout the game, some players find themselves getting bored with the long story. Still, many players enjoy replaying the Prophecies storyline on new characters again and again.

Factions is much shorter, with only 13 missions, two of which are mutually exclusive in the storyline. The game may seem longer than it is due to the questing format of Factions. While Prophecies is more straightforward in that it follows a pattern of “Do mission A, follow quest B to arrive at mission C”, Factions tends to send players back and forth between towns before allowing a player to move on to the next mission. As a result, a player will see some areas of the game multiple times while attempting to proceed in the story. Factions contains only one real grind—but it’s a big grind indeed. At one point mid-game, players must accrue 10,000 unspent factions points for their chosen tribe, the Kurzicks or the Luxons, before moving on in the story. These 10,000 points take quite some time to gain through quests and Alliance Battles—but factions points are also account-based. The prepared player will take multiple characters to that point in the game, accrue the 10,000 points, and gain access for all characters to the next stage in the story before spending the faction points. Apart from this one grind, replaying Factions on new characters is a relatively quick affair—a fact appreciated by some players, tired of Prophecies’ drawn out story, while others are unsatisfied by the shortness.

Nightfall has 20 missions, almost exactly between the numbers in Factions and Prophecies. Like the pair of mutually exclusive missions in Factions, Nightfall features three pairs of missions in which only one is required to proceed. There is a grind in Nightfall, in that certain levels of “Sunspear points” are required to pass beyond certain points in the game. However, most players find that, through normal questing and fighting, their characters are already quite close to the quotas asked of them at these points. Because of this, new characters tend not to experience the same need to grind more points that Factions characters might.

Runnable and Explorable?
Prophecies is unique in that, while the storyline takes players through 25 missions, a player can finish the game by completing only four missions, reached by having someone “run” them between mission points through zones filled with high-level monsters. The game world of Prophecies is very large, with many areas that a player focused only on following the storyline would never see.

Factions and Nightfall are both not runnable. Access to high-level zones is only obtainable by passing through key points, which themselves only open after certain missions are completed. As a result, players are unable to skip missions in either of the later chapters. However, while Factions is extremely linear in that the completion of one mission opens a new zone which leads to a new mission, Nightfall opens itself to new players in sections. Several missions may be in one area, and the player is free at any time to explore the zones in that area without entering the missions, but may not move forward to the next major area of Nightfall without completing the storyline’s missions.

Skills
One major difference between Prophecies and the later chapters is in the acquisition of skills. All chapters utilize skill trainers, which will teach your character a new skill at a cost which starts out low, but rises with each purchase up to a maximum price level.

However, Prophecies alone offers new skills and spells as rewards for normal quests throughout most of the game. These ‘free skills’ are a major reason why players will create their warriors or monks in the Prophecies chapter rather than the later chapters.

Conclusion

Easiest to pick up: Prophecies. The learning curve is much smoother than Factions, and the gameplay less complex in its entirety, while Nightfall gets rather complex towards the end of the storyline.

PvE enjoyment: Prophecies and Nightfall. While these two are neck-and-neck among the GuildWarsGuru.com community, Factions is generally agreed to be an inferior game to the other two. While each chapter has its fans, there are many more fans in favor of Prophecies and Nightfall than there are Factions.

Group play: Nightfall. The largest population of players tends to be in the newest chapter, as old players move on to new content, while new players who have just bought the new chapter have nowhere else to go. Prophecies has seen less of a decline than Factions in terms of people playing in those chapters’ missions, but both have less players than Nightfall does. Of course, when chapter four is released, there will no doubt be a mass migration to that setting, leaving the Nightfall lands less crowded than they are now.

Solo play: Prophecies or Factions. While Nightfall’s Heroes make a strong argument in favor of Nightfall being the chapter best suited to the player who would rather avoid grouping with other human players, Nightfall becomes rather difficult near the end of the storyline and drives many players to grouping with others. Prophecies largely avoids this. Factions also lends itself to solo play—though not without a degree of frustration in later missions.

PvP: Prophecies arguably provides the best base for learning to PvP in Guild Wars’ environment, simply because older players are familiar with using builds made only from the Prophecies skill set, when it was the only available chapter—but note that most serious PvP players will insist that all three chapters’ skill sets are necessary for competitive play.

Which one should you get?

Unless you have a specific reason for choosing another chapter, the original Guild Wars: Prophecies is probably the best choice for introducing yourself to Guild Wars. Nightfall may have more people playing in it now, but much of that crowd will move on to the next chapter when it is released. Prophecies has shown that it has staying power, as many old players keep returning to what they consider the Original Guild Wars game. This, combined with the smoother learning curve in Prophecies, make it prime for being the first Guild Wars you’ll play.

*"Thanks to JR, King Symeon, Squidget, Inde, and my [MEEP] friends Baratus, Arkantos, Drizz'l, and my mate Rachel for their edits and suggestions."

Might want to consider adding "High End" type areas to the list.

SF
FoW
UW
blah blah blah

who can access, who can't...

FoW and UW wouldn't be much count on that list as they are accessible in each chapter after a certain point.
But yeah, SF, Tombs, Kanaxia(sp?), and DoA would be nice to add but I don't think there is a whole lot to say on DoA as of yet.

I didn't even think about that.
Then again, I have to wonder if the new player, looking to get his or her first Guild Wars chapter, is going to be overly interested in what they can do once they become teh l33tsauce. At that point, won't they naturally be looking obtaining into other chapters?

Or maybe they won't. Hm... thoughts?

Good post, and lots of detailed information. But I believe I can summarize better.
New Players should buy in the following order:

Prophecies: Cheap price, gentle learning curve and way more players that will party with you. The most story rich and activity filled out of the three.

Nightfall: Recent release, lots of people here. Unfortunately most good players choose to use Heroes/Henchman. Harder for someone to find a full party. Unknown if it will turn into a ghost town like factions when chapter 4 comes out.

Factions: DEAD. Virtually no one in later stage mission towns. Virtually no assasin or ritualist PVE player seen outside factions compaign. STAY AWAY. Only purchase if you need the skill unlocks for your PVE char. If you just need skill unlocks for PVP play, consider purchasing factions pvp skill pack online for only $39.99.

Just a quick thing I noticed, on the table, for skills, you should add that in nightfall you get hero skills, as well as trainers. Awesome post.

Just thought since a lot of new GW players are old WoW/Evercrack players and High-End content is paramount in those games.

Maybe an explanation about armor crafting and weapon customization differences between the chapters would be helpful too. For example the armors in Prophecies have their bonuses linked to their skin, Factions allowed bonuses to be applied to any armor skin, and Nightfall introduced the Inscription and Insignia system. I would imagine that a new player might want to factor this is because they'll also be on an in-game budget and while most insignias are cheap now there are still a few that are out of their reach (Bloodstained).

I think he should do as I suggested and just add in the bloody links of GO HERE NEXT! This would be better than causing this post to get unnaturally long filling in the gaps that other stickies already fill in ^_^
*whaps Red*

You should include African in the chart under environment for Nightfall, as Nightfall includes many many influences that are purely African in origin, perhaps even more so than its middle east influences.

Livingston

I disagree about Prophecies. I have told newcomers to mostly start out with Nightfall. Why? Because Prophecies isn't worth it. I have all three campaigns. I can be alright with beating Factions and Nightfall over again cause atleast you can get an end-game green weapon along with end game armor (that's if you can afford it).

After I beat Prophecies, I realized how boring the campaign is. You play for a long time to discover you get nothing out of it. It is probably the best campaign if one has nothing else to do in his or her life and cares of getting no material benefit other than bragging rights from it.

Nightfall and Factions are my top two out of the three. To me Nightfall is the quickest way a player can catch up because Anet built that game with tutorials made simply out to those purely new. Plus you get heroes. In most cases I found that doing pve is better with henchies than real people considering you are more than likely to get a bad player more than a good one. Atleast if you lose at a mission, you'll know there is no one to blame but yourself.

However, it would also depend on what your class you are dying to try out first. If you love ninjas, then get Factions and play the assassin. If you love to surround yourself with Asian culture, Factions. If you love an Afrocentric, gorgeous hunk of a muscular man with wings, get the paragon off Nightfall. If you want to feel like King Arthur of Camelot then get Prophecies. If you want a core character, well...I'd still say Nightfall cause atleast when you gain the savings to buy another GW Campaign you will be way more equipped than those that don't have NF. (Considering Factions and Prophecies, don't have Heroes.)

Well to each his own.

I agree. Nightfall is the best campaign to start a newbie off.

I just think a game with Chapters should be played like it was made. Play the first chapter and move on to the next, etc.

Prophecies, still remains the quintessential starting point of the meta game. It also has all the core skills that you can easily obtain as you play through.

Each chapter is truly self standing, but starting anywhere other then first chapter would be like watching Empire Strikes Back without seeing Star Wars...sure, still enjoyable, but think of what you are missing.

Prophecies definetly, its the main game
very close behind is nightfall
DONT even bother getting factions, it is pitiful

Get Factions, I think its the best for getting stuck in and has the best tutorial at the begining... But hell, getall of them, they aren't expensive

They are somehow different and I play all of them . ^_^

A month ago I would have said NIGHTFALL!!!!

Now sisnc eI jsut started my ranger and I have 1258 Sunspear points and need 2500before I can enter Venta cemetary, I am thinking Prophecies...I hate Grind...the sunspear quests and the factions allegience quests are my least favorite part of the game.

PROPHECIES ALL THE WAY for the new player

I am new to GW. Had WoW- hated paying a monthly fee for server crashes and buggy updates. I bought the first chapter because I wanted to start from the ground up- so that when I do catch up I know a thing or two about the game..

As I elaborated a few replies above, pick Nightfall.

The first one i bought was factions, i didnt like the storyline or the asian theme but when iut got to the luxons and kurzicks it got really good, probably the most impressive landscapes in the whole of guild wars and i loved the competition between the 2 factions, nightfall for me i disliked the scenery a lot untill desolation but the stor<line was much better than factions, phrophecies i liked the fact that u could run anywhere pretty much and people didnt have to do the whole storyline.

If a friend asked me, I would say get nightfall. Its got the most attention right now, and you can get prophecies later for cheap.

Personally I have all three and would recommend all three... you need it for metagame. But for now if only 1 then nightfall just because thats the current focus.

FYI, my local Sam's Club has all 3 games (and the Prophecies is the GotY version) in a special pack for $99.99.

Just throwing this out there:

While I agree that Nightfall is a very polished game, both in flow as well as the Heroes addition... I have to ask you people who are suggesting Nightfall as the first campaign to new players, do you -really- want new players throwing themselves against Jennur's Horde, or worse, the entire Realm of Torment?

I know experienced PvEers that raged at the Realm of Torment--not because it was unbeatable, but rather because it just wasn't fun. If some players like high-end insanity like that, good for them... but I personally wouldn't wish Realm of Torment exploration on a new player.

Experienced players know what skills to put on their monk heroes, or understand the power of AI interrupts, how to build an effective MM on the Master of Whispers (assuming they picked him! Remember, new Nightfall-only players can't get Olias!), and so forth.

New players who are just figuring out the usefulness of Protective Spirit and Broad Head Arrow? :/ Not so much.

I would say buy prophecies first, get use to playing it then buy nightfall. once ur getting into pvp play, buy factions and its a short storyline then ur up for pvp play. btw...nightfall is based in a north african place, not egypt-ur thinkin of another game called nightfall but is not guild wars.

The first one I got was Prophecies but that was mostly because it was £10 at a time when Nightfall wasn't out and Factions was still £30+ :P

I would recommend either Nightfall or Prophecies like most of the people in this thread, the only thing I haven't liked much about Nightfall was the Sunspear point grind, although I got 500-1000 very quickly on my Dervish at the Issnur Isles and Mehtani Keys

Personally, I feel Factions was the best, then Prophecies, then Nightfall.

I'm big on environment and setting in games, I got sick and tired of how so much of Elona looks the same, while Factions and Prophecies had wonderful contrast and areas.

Prophecies would have come first, however, I felt it was too long and drawn out. Honestly, Factions is just about the right length. If you disagree, keep in mind I'm the kind of player who does every quest and gets Bonus/Masters on every mission before progressing (even the Mursaat missions before you're infused =D)

So that's my take on things, if you don't know what to buy I'd suggest Nightfall as you'll find the most help and groups along the way.

I wouldn't suggest buying any GW versions. Everytime they add anything new to the game it causes many bugs in previous versions. Then you run into the patches creating new bugs , then the next patch creates new bugs ....

The seriousness of the server lag issues are growing daily instead of getting any better, but what do they do about it ?

GW solution that seems most prevelent is throwing another special event weekend at you and then causing more bugs. How many times can you disguise attempts at fixing bugs as a "special event download" ?

To further explain my reason for "no suggestion" would be that the game is in a perpetual Beta status. The streaming data insures that you will never have the same game that you purchased in the store and will always be subject to glitches that are caused by untested updates to the game. While other game companies advertise "beta" releases and sometimes pay people to test them. Guild Wars makes you pay and then force you to become a tester.

I personally got prohcies first then got nightfall and then factions, and heres my sum of the three. Prohcies has the best board out off them all and gets especially good after Yac. Nightfall for me was the best because you get heros and the missions are a little less boring, i have most of my characters started in nightfall. Factions has the best drops by far but i don't like it that much because its easy to get to the mainland and once you do your screawed unless you have beaton all of the quests on the mainland because as soon as you hop across the pond you face level 20-22's, so my advise to you is either get nightfall or prohcies first,its probably better to get nightfall though.

I only looked at the table, but Grind for Proph isn't "low" by any means.

Hey,

buy the orginal..

Wow, I been playing C1 of and on now, and wasn't sure if i should by the others.
I am more of a PvE type of player and this really helped me out, in fact that factions is mostly PvP... i did not know that!

Thanks so much Inde!!! (btw Nice chart)

If you're a PvEer like myself, i definitely recommend prophecies as a start if you're new to MMORPGs even though Guild Wars it not considered a MMO by everyone, it's cheaper and the learning curve is very smooth. If you have some experience with MMOs i recommend Nightfall, you'll get into the action earlier. On the storyline side, i believe prophecies storyline was the best one. In any case don't buy Factions as your first Guild Wars.

I second what tijo said

Hey,

I third what he says

Man.. I wish I would've ran across this site and post yesterday. I'm a wow player, or was, and was looking for a new game last night so I see Prophecies and Factions and as far as I knew factions was the newest Gw so I got it. Didn't know anything about Nf and didn't think it would be wise to buy the original Gw when I figured everybody played Factions so... lol so far I don't find Factions hard at all, but it's pretty confusing at the moment. My chars lvl 13 already but I still don't know that much about the game... I guess it'll come in time just like it did with Wow, I couldn't name how many times in that game when I 1st started I said "screw this it's too much to learn". Anyways, after reading this post I think I'm gonna try to get ahold of Prophecies and play it all the way through before I go any further in Factions, just to learn more about wth I'm doing. Nice post though, good info for a noob

You guys might not agree with me but i think the faction is by far the easiest to start with. Altho proph. is a good chapter, it is pretty damn long in the beggining and many newbie might want to stop playing GW just because of it.

The first chapter i brought was faction. I made a ranger and had a lot of fun. A few month later I bought NF wich was Highly addicting and insanly fun. Then I brought proph, It was soooo boring, receive and average of 100 exp for quest harder and alot longer then those in Faction that gives 1,500 exp... If I would've have started by proph i would've most likely stop playing GW by now.
In addition Faction and NF character are way richer then proph one.

Facion starts to be fun when you reach level 20 since you're gonna die badly if you're not 20, yet achieving lvl 20 takes less then less then 5 day of playing (heck, its possible in 1 day...).

Nightfall start to be fun second after the tutorial mish. You get hero and start with enought cash to get some skills.

Proph. start to be fun once you arrive to kryta but if you dont get run, IT TAKES TIME. Also you normally only achieve lvl 20 around the last quarter of the game.

Go with Faction or NF.

Prophecies has one advantadge- skill quests. They give u a sense of growing.
But its excruciantingly slow leveling, you will only see the Elite skills quite late, the AP quests are late, very loooooooooooooong missions and by no means easy.

Factions is fast paced, but not very interesting, the city landscape is quite annoying and the Flood...er... Aflicted are ugly enemies. The good is lvl 20 comes soon, good money good xp, lvl 20 henchies quite soon.

Nightfall have heroes, and heroes are smarter than most players. Problem is new players wont have many skils to equip them nor the experience to do good builds.

If u starting with a friend, by all means go nightfall. Its quite enjoyable with a friend (all are, but nightfall seems designed for it).

An advice, start with a Warrior or Monk. Rangers and Dervish are good 1st character too.

Stay way from Mesmers, Assassins and Ritualists.

Hi, I started this game about 40 days ago~, wasted about 20 days on a necro, and the rest on my ranger. I thought of buying guild wars, so I bought Nightfall seeing that it was the newest and would have the greatest focus. I literally learned the whole game through my ranger, with the very helpful tutorial quests. I simply loved it, and it went smooth, I finished the whole campaign with 81% explored of whole Elona recently. Then I thought that if I actually bought prophecies it would be much better. Why? Much because most skills in the builds posted of recommended are either prophecies. Not only that, but proph as stated by thread starter is a much longer game which gets the player more experience and helps him/her general game play. In addition, these are chapters, and starting from 1 would be more fun wouldn't it? I'm getting proph next week.

This is my own opinion, you might have a completely different one.

Properties is defenetly the best for bebginners. its cheapest and its easyest.
In Factions u meet lvl 20s almost before u meet lvl 3s.
In Nightfall u have to get of that stupid island, belive me beginners hate it.