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

As usual everyone is gonna flame Factions (the greatest chapter of GW history)

Hey, I already have Nightfall and I am planing to buy a pack which contains prophecies and one of the other campaigns. Should I choose Factions or Eye of the north? Is eye of the north viable on a longer period, or you just finish it then it ends there?

id choose factions personally, more bang for your buck

GW:EN is 29.99 Canadian at Futureshop until Oct 25th.

Hello my question is will someone on C1 be able to access all bonuses from other Chapters if he have them or they restricted to their main expantion, i mean if i buy all of them and want to make a Factions/Nightfall profesion and use it on the story of the other chapters (it is posoble?) also will it have access to each chapter options built/exp mod/insig/items/etc or do i need a diferent Character for each Chapter to be able to have access to all their benefits? I use to play FFXI (i got tired of it when there was more Gil sellers than players and quit after 3 years) also played WoW, my respects to the ppl still playing i could not, i have 2 months checking between Lineage and GuildWars but GW pull more my taste on jobs/profesions options so if u can help me with that Info it would be amazing and greatly apreciated Thank You ^^V.
Ack almost forgot, can profesion from diferent chapters can be use at the same time or are restricted to each chapter ex: job C1/job C2-C3-C4 or viceversa Warrior/assassin ,assasin/ranger ,Paragon/necromancer and be able to use them on each chapter?

I tried to find an answer to this question and couldn't find any.

Here is what I would like to do:
1. Prophecies sounds like a great start
2. I really enjoy solo PVE and would rather never have to group
3. I really really really like Assassins. I always played the rogue/stalker/assassin types.
4. Money is not really an issue

Is there any way to make an assassin and play him through all the chapters and into GWEN? Can I start with an assassin in prophecies or do I have to get him to level 20 before I can move to another chapter?

you MUST own factions to create an assassin. Assassins and ritualists can only be created in the factions campaign. However you can take the assassin through any campaign as long as you own that campaign.

so basically you can make an assassin and take him through all the campaigns, but you must start in factions.

So if I buy both Factions and Prophecies, can I make an assassin and start him level 1 in prophecies? Or, do I have to play through Factions first before I can start Prophecies with the Assassin?

you have to make an assassin in factions.

Well I started off with NightFall and have to admit it was fun to play and kit out yourself aswell as your hero's.

I then decided to buy Factions, it was easy and storyline was fairly good, qquests gave ALOT of XP and you level up quickly. (Everyone wants to be 20 ASAP and out of those lower levels I'm sure.)

Prophecies was latest I bought and found out it's missions are really complex and seem to drag on and on until you fall asleep, also if you die during one of those missions you don't go to a resurrection shrine, you have to start it all again instead, which I'm sure a new player wouldn't want to waste an hour on a mission and die riht near the end. Like I've experienced .

No not really. Once you get to a certain point in the game (for example, if you start on prophecies once you get to lions arch you can change chapters but thats alrdy partway though so you wont be lvl 1) you can get a quest or something that will take you to the prophecies campaign. Now if your able to do that and still be at lvl 1 idk but I doubt it.

When you travel to prophecies as I said you'll arive in Lions arch which is actually a little into the game alrdy so you'll have to backtrack onto ascalon if you want to do all the misisons. After that you can continues on with kryta and so forth.

I have read most of this forum but it mainly mentions PvE.

I am only interested ( atm anyway ) in playing PvP. I have prophecies but want to buy either Factions or Nightfall. I understand that Fact has Assassin and Rit and AB and NF has Dev and Par and Hero Battles but what about the skills-sets.

Which one is better just for PvP and nothing else???

many thanks

Well... If you want to play serious PvP, you'll need all of the campaigns. You can buy PvP unlock packs in the online store, not sure if they've been added back in though.

GW:EN for £12.99 when i looked yesterday. it went down
EDIT: lol why bother posting. its gone back up now ive checked again. price is still £17.99. Still a bargain

The original 1st chapter, Guild Wars Prophecies, will be on sale for Friday and Saturday only at Best Buy.

Price = $9.99 each

(Black Friday is aka the day after Thanksgiving)

i think personally that nightfall is best for begginers,prophecies is great but just to slow, people who don't usually play compputer games get bored of it by the time they get to kryta. While Factions get level 16's in level20 areas. Nightfall is somewhere i the middle fo all of that which makes it great

I'm seriously considering checking out Guild Wars. I've been playing WoW for a year and a half. I love it for a lot of reasons, and I hate it for one big reason: PvP. There is basically no World PvP, despite Blizzard's best efforts, and playing on a PvP server is more frustrating than exciting. So I'm stuck PvPing in a few battlegrounds, which gets boring after a few hundred rounds, and I don't play enough to log the hundreds of hours required to get the gear to be viable in the arenas. In general, the fact that WoW is so gear dependent makes it frustrating to be a casual PvPer. I have to spend so much time attaining decent PvP gear, and by the time I get to arena play, the expansion will come out and I will be stuck grinding for the next batch of gear again.

I've heard GW is much more dedicated to PvP, and it sounds like the combat system makes PvP a lot more balanced. Also, I assume GW pays more attention to class (profession) balance, something that WoW has a lot of problems with.

So, on to my questions. I plan on picking up Prophecies and playing the PvE content to get a feel for the game and the combat system. I do enjoy PvE as well, but the main reason I want to try GW is the PvP. If I only have Prophecies, will I able to get a good idea of how the PvP works? More importantly, will the lack of extra content from later chapters handicap me so much that PvP will do nothing but frustrate me? If I end up digging it, I will certainly buy the other chapters, but will I be able to tell if I dig it based only on what Prophecies offers me? I don't understand if the skills available in later chapters are better, or if they just give you more flexibility. If it's just a matter of flexibility, would a Prophecies-only character be seriously hindered in PvP?

I guess a final question would be: Does it make sense to buy Prophecies first? From what I've read, it is the best way to become familiar with the game mechanics, and I wouldn't mind experiencing the game from the starting point that the devs intended.

Whatever you do, buy Prophecies first. It has the best skills for the six core professions, and it's challenging enough to at least make you learn how to play and not how to farm. Also, you can get a feel for PvP and Guild Wars itself, as the other expansions basically add a few new classes and skills + a crap load of PvE content.

Yep. bfads.net (a site dedicated to Black Friday ads) is showing Guild Wars @ $9.99. http://bfads.net/Guild-Wars-PC-at-Best-BuyGreat price if you have a friend interested in getting into the game.

They're also having a bunch of other prety good deals.
1GB PC5300 DDR2 Desktop Memory = $27.99
http://bfads.net/1GB-PC5300-DDR2-Des...ry-at-Best-Buy(yes, it's a single 1GB stick)

100 stack of Dynex 16X DVD-R's = $6.99
http://bfads.net/Dynex-100Pack-DVDR-Discs-at-Best-Buy

Seagate 7,200RPM 320GB internal SATA HDD = $59.99
http://bfads.net/Seagate-320GB-35-In...ve-at-Best-Buy

I needed to get a new HDD anyways.

well i bought prophecies, played for a bit, and then didnt play at all, then i picked it up again and learned the basics. then i wanted the assassain class, so i got factions. turns out my guy lvled up quite quickly.

I started with the original game when it first came out. I then bought Factions, couldn't get into it. Then got Nightfall, installed but didn't play it...

And then a couple of months ago rediscovered Nightfall and wow, really got me into the game. With the heroes I now finished Prophecies all the way, I am at the last mission of EoN and almost done with Nightfall (NM).

So when my daughter got started a couple of weeks ago, she went with Nightfall. Great tutorial, great chars, pretty story. I don't find the sunspear ranking point thing to be intrusive. It kind fo comes along as you play.

I also brought my char over from Prophecies, got heroes, and went back to kick butt on the stuff I had left to do. Prophecies with Heroes gets much more interesting and fast.

Today, I would tell anybody : start with Nightfall. If you really like it and want more, get Prophecies WITH GWEN. And then, for completion and for more hard core, get Factions.

Note that I am 100% PvE and don't even know how the PvP functions compare between them.

I would say that Nightfall is the worst campaign to start with, simply because I found the starter area so boring, and it was so long as well. I took a Dervish through because you cant start one anywhere else, and if I wanted another Nightfall only char, I wouldn't make one, simply for the fact that I did not enjoy the start of nightfall.
I agree that Prophecies would be the best choice to start with, as it is an easy going start and the storyline is strong and linear, with no offshoots like the other campaigns.
I would also say that factions is a worthwhile buy for people with more gaming experience for the fact that the start is quick and its easy to get to level 20 and start playing with the majority of players. Although I did not like the gameplay in the campaign itself.

My views.
~A Leprechaun~

get factions, it's the best starter guild wars

A lot of the stuff here seems really helpful to some people but there is a crucial element left out. I am planning to buy guildwars and play with my friend, we are mainly interested in PvP, can any1 help as to make the best choice? At the moment we are planning to get factions and nightfall, since factions has alliance which is more what we are used to (used to play WoW battlegrounds all the time) any advice would help.

Also what professions would be good to choose, I used to play a balance druid specced for PvP, for those who dont play WoW the basic idea was a healer/spell caster hybrid, i would just throw around light heals to keep people alive (not hardcore where i keep everybody on 100%) and cast lots of debuffs to screwup the other team, like rooting people in place etc, I also dished out some damage, not to good at getting ppl down from 100% but in larger battles if people were low i could easily throw out a spell to finish them off.

The professions i was leaning towards were a Necro/Ritualist, not sure if this is the right forum for this ><

Anyway any input on which chapters to buy would be helpful (Main focus on pvP)
EDIT: Also campaign length is not an issue, I pick up game quite fast and am not too concerned about learning the game.

Thanks for this post, it has helped me much on which gw expansion to buy. ^.^

Nightfall is the best campaign or expansion.

I have got all of them, however I consider Prophecies is the best. Both to start with and for later on. It plays on Tyria which has got very different regions: Mountains, deserts, jungles, apocalyptic landscapes, tropical area's and even a vulcanic island. While factions has a shanty town, a pretty beautiful island, a petrified forest and a petrified sea coloured jade. Then nightfall is also very beautiful, although it is only arabian themed: savannah's, deserts, wastelands and jungle.
In prophecies' tutorial area, you are on your own. You discover the game for yourslef with sometimes some nice tips in the top-left corner. If you have learned and 'studied' the game, I bet you know about it for the rest of your life. While in Factions and Nightfall, you simply do a tiny complex quest and then a little bit of this 'on-your-own'-aspect. Besides that, the prophecies game builds up your level pretty slowly, later on annoying, but in the beginning, very handy for you won't see yourslef fighting against lvl. 20 mobs in the second stages of the game. In factions, you might arrive in Kaineng within lvl 13. And then you'll see yourself fighting against lvl. 20 mobs. This is the same with Nightfall, but the mobs are somehow not so very dangerous as they are in Factions. Another 'pro' in prophecies is the world is 'open'. And you can give your character a unique way to get through the world of Tyria.
Next to that, there are more beautiful parts in prophecies: the death of Rurik and Saidra, or the distruction of Ascalon. While I don't notice these things in Factions and Nightfall. A negative thing about prophecies is that you havent got access to Dervish/Paragon/Ritualist/Assassin. Altough you can do without these new professions. The core ones are still the best.

Ive been thinking of getting the factions, and was wondering, do i need the other chapters to play as the other classes?

You need nightfall to play as a Paragon or Dervish. You need Factions to play as a Ritualist or an Assassin. The other classes are available in any of the campaigns, although the skills available for each will be limited by what campaign you own.

k thank you = )

Wow, great post... Made me think a little

So, just to add my two cents, I'd call a general tie between Prophecies and Nightfall. Prophecies was deeper story and definitely more expansive (SF is awesome) but Nightfall was same genre and a lot of fun. I really, really don't like Factions (and this comes from someone who has 3/5 main charas who were "born" there and all 5 have beaten it...). I bought this one for my son strictly so he could AB with me.

The reason i wanted to get factions was because of the setting, i thought the asian theme was really cool. The other two look good but factions caught my eye

i would get proph or nightfall because it has the most useful farming spells and pve such as for monk would be SoJ Warriors:Riposte and Eviscerate Mesmer: Illusionary weapon Ele: Meteor shower Rangers :idk yet havent played them much Necro: SS

for nf its also a good starter campaign cuz u get to learn the basics of usin heroes and etc also has alot of useful skills to.

Very good post by Twan4188, that's my impression too. I'm surprised at how many people seem to dislike Factions though, I thought the huge "slums" was a good change and something I've never seen captured in a game before. I also enjoyed the challenging mobs in factions, although it's true it has *huge* mobs and you have to be very careful sometimes. In fact some of the mobs are so big it makes it almost impossible to beat them only using henches. However this is what made the game memorable for me.

I liked the factions plot more than the nightfall plot, I think - it was cool watching the progression of Shiro from a lowly guard to a terrible leader to his downfall I didn't "connect" with nightfall very much at first - it took me a while to appreciate the landscapes, and the overall feel of it. The only thing I really enjoyed about Nightfall were the heros and the harder desolation areas near the end. As far as heros go, you don't need them for any campaign, and I'd suggest playing a good bit without them at first. It makes the game go faster and less tedious if you aren't worrying about configuring your heros with the perfect skill-set/build, armor, runes, items, etc.

Using henches will teach you how to play the game, and you'll appreciate heros more later. The primary benefit of heros is once you get into titles such as protector, explorer, guardian, vanquishing. You'll have trouble finding parties to help clear out the mobs in order to obtain these titles, and heros will seem extremely vital then. However, heros are not really suited to people just starting out in guildwars.

In fact, until you have played the game a while, learned what all the best builds are, accumulated many items that you can equip on your heros, etc, you might actually do worse using heros than henches. For a total newby, they are definately better off with henches since they come ready to use with builds/items/etc. Once you have beat a chapter once you are probably ready to make use of heros, if you like. Or earlier, if that's what floats your boat.

Like others have said, prophecies has the most beautiful PvE environments, and a deeper plot that reminds you more of a story or movie. The Nightfall plot was more forgettable IMO. Prophecies has plenty of places to farm (UW, FoW, SF, Droks, etc). Prophecies has most of the best elite skills, while Factions and Nightfall only introduce a couple more each (most of the skills unique to Factions and NF really do not add much at all in terms of PvE play). Prophecies gives you the most bang for your buck since you get more missions and it takes a lot longer to fully explore the maps. I wouldn't be so concerned about the fact that Prophecies is the first chapter, since each chapter is totally different - however there is something to be said for playing the games in the order they were released to get an appreciation of their history. Like others have said, Factions will be very empty so you may get lonely or may have a hard time if you're not very resourceful or good at solo play and doing it all your own.

The faction grinding aspect of Factions was a good change for me since I'm not into PvP that much and I really appreciated it. It didn't take long at all to get the required 10k faction, especially since you get half of it via quests. In fact, it doesn't even come close to qualifying as "grinding" IMO, it's more like 10-15 hours of fun PvP play.

Like others have said Prophecies is slower to level up, and it's more like a long term journey where you develop your character over time. In Factions and NF you'll level extremely fast and will go through the game equally fast. A bonus of Prophecies, is it's the only chapter where you can be "run" to areas you aren't high level enough to make it to on your own. Getting a run is usually costly but it makes the game more fun IMO if you can get a run halfway through the game so that you can get high level armor, then go back and play from the beginning Especially if you are going to play all six character classes, it would be really annoying to have to work your way up to the max armor in each new character you create.

Prophecies is also nice the way you get free skills like others mentioned - you'll appreciate this if you are the type that plays legit, casually, and doesn't like to grind for gold or buy it online. Personally I would play Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall in that order. It should also depend on your personal preference for the environment, character classes available, and elite skills. As far as skills, here is my opinion of which game to get based on what character class/build you want to specialize in (assuming you can only own one game). For necro minion master aka MM (can create up to 10 minions at a time, that fight with you) get Factions for the "Flesh Golem" skill. For curses necro, use "Spiteful spirit" (Prophecies) or "Spoil Victor" (Factions). For blood necro, I guess "Blood is Power" (core/common) and "Life Transfer" (Prophecies) are nice. Axe warriors need Prophecies for "Eviscerate" skill. Sword warriors might use "Hundred blades" (core skill, common to all chapters) or "Dragon slash" (Factions). Hammer warriors might want "Backbreaker" (Prophecies). For PvE Rangers "Barrage" is a very good core/common skill. "Word of Healing" is a good core/common monk healing skill, but all three chapters have essential monk skills IMO.

For elementalists, "Meteor shower" is *essential* and it is only in Prophecies : ) For mesmers, the core/common skills are the most essential ones so doesn't really matter. Although I like some of the mesmer elites in Prophecies more than the other chapters. As far as the chapter specific character classes only available to Factions and Nightfall, I haven't tried them yet. The assassin and ritualist in Factions seem more fun to me however, than the ones in Nightfall (Paragon and Dervish). If I played any new classes they will be assassin, then ritualist, then dervish, then paragon...in that order.

I know this is a long post but I wanted to try to consolidate all the great points I'm seeing people make in one place. Hope this helps.

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Edit by Earth: Please use the enter key in the future. Thanks.

Something else to consider as far as skills go. Even if a skill (even an elite skill) is not in the chapter you want to purchase, I believe you can still get the skill by doing PvP to get faction, then unlock the elite skill (to learn it on your PvP character), then use an elite tome for that skill (to learn the skill on your PvE character). Note: I believe this is true but I have no way to confirm it since I own all three chapters.

Elite tomes cost around 10k (might take a casual player several weeks or more of PvE play to accumulate this much gold). Standard tomes are usually less than 1k.

So, suppose you wanted Prophecies but wanted "Flesh Golem" (Factions skill), then you could buy Prophecies and just use an elite tome to get the Factions skill.

no, i am afraid thats not possible. you got to own that campaign to be able to use their skills, i believe.

For starters I would start out with Prophecies because it's cheap and it will help you with the concept of the game. After than have fun and buy all the other versions that you want. xD

I have found many friends that I tried to get into GW, that like action-RPGs, to be frustrated w/ the slow pace of Prophecies. Factions and NF, OTOH, have a much quicker pace and really don't sacrifice too much in the way of story.

Prophecies *is* more forgiving overall, having a slower pace of progression, thus allowing you to experience tougher and tougher enemies a little at a time.

Overall, though, I still think Nightfall has the most to offer the person that can only afford 1 campaign, and both the Dervish and Paragon are quite useful and fun to play. The Assassin and Ritualist, while IMO good professions, are very particular in the type of person that would want to play them...

now that i have all 3 chapters my advice would be to get nf first then if u really like gw and spend some time get premium (proph+gwen), then factions. like some people before me said.
phrophecies is great for new players with the facts that it introdouces players in game mechanics much better, areas are unlocked and u can access them with runners(and i think that makes up for the slower lvling) and there are some of the most beautiful and coolest areas in game. the only big downside players should consider is that there are not so much players in phrophecies and in some mission and outposts u will be all alone (if u have nice guild or friends that can be avoided).
nihgtfall has the best storyline imo, it has 2 new professions that can be played whitout lack of skills from others campaign which is very important to say. it has nice new skills and also core skills that exist in every chapter. lvling and progress is not slow as in phrophecies but not so fast as in factions. it has beautiful areas some that can compete even with phroph but its pretty much same type of landscape that is in most of the campaign. u also get heroes who are very useful and bring one new and fun aspect to the game.
in my opinion i would only buy factions first if i really love asian theme, assassains and ritualists and alliance battles. other thatn that i wouldn't reccomend it as first chapter to get. the chapter is good but nf and phroph are just better.
so in my opinion the best choice is getting nf first. you should consider that whichever chapter u get first u did not make mistake.

wow, that was a really good fourm I read the whole thing. I got propechies. really great job on that.