What exactly IS Guild Wars?

Harvey Birdman

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jul 2006

Guild Wars is supposed to be an MMORPG that's focused on gameplay rather than slavery of its community. It's still working out some problems, but I think it does a decent job of what it's trying to do.

4thVariety

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2005

European Union

ADL

E/

The main difference is the character development. It is not level-based as most players will quickly reach maximum level. Getting to Lvl20 is only the part of the game during which you learn the controls really.

After that the real character development kicks in, which is getting all your skills together. Unlocking the skills for PvP and hunting down all the elites is an undertaking which will keep you busy for at least as long as other games require you to reach maximum level.

On the other hand, if you really want to play PvP, then you will not need to grind all those skills, as you will most likely specialize in one or two classes and the builds themselves only require you to unlock a fraction of all skills.

PvE does not force you into one direction. You can do the storyline, you can hunt for rare items/armors, you can hunt for titles, the game is very unspecific about it and players have to find their own meaning. It is not like there is any one uber-goal everyone wants to reach.

The Omniscient

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Oct 2006

Mo/

GW has a very good pvp structure to it. I also love that it's more fast paced than other games.

hallomik

hallomik

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: May 2006

The Illini Tribe

N/Mo

It's interesting to re-read this thread of a few weeks ago. You can see the seeds of the current debate as different people defined what Guild Wars is. Given the way I defined it, you can see how pleased I am (see below my comments from a few weeks before the PC Gamer news came out). But you can also see why others have been disappointed.


Quote:
Originally Posted by hallomik
My ideal version of a GW 2 game might go something like this. PVP continues to be UBER characters that even the most casual player can create with ease so the skill factor - not the time invested grinding - is the key to victory.

In PVE, however, we change quite a bit. The level cap is raised significantly (50 seems about right). There are many aspects of your character that you can constantly improve: Wealth, Trade Crafts, armor, weapons, mounts, attributes, etc. Selective zones are opened up to larger and multiple groups of players. However, whenever you engage in PVP combat (in a PVP setting or PVE), your character is temporarily raised to the max level along with your armor and weapons. This ensures that you can invest as much time as you like making your character stronger and better (and not just acquiring vanity gear / titles), but that this investment doesn't result in an imbalanced PVP game.

This, to me, would be the ultimate GW game.

Grammar

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Aug 2005

1. Low and easy-to-obtain level cap
2. 8 skill slots
3. instancing

From a core gameplay standpoint, this is Guild Wars. Everything else is just icing on the cake.