Should I buy this game?

Hello,

First off I just want to say I play/have played MMO's, and I was looking into playing this one. The big thing that caught my eye was the no monthly subscription fee. Then I dug into the details and was quite suprised with how good this game looked. But I have a few questins before I get the game.

What do the professions really do? Like I'm sure in this MMO there are Damage Dealers, Main healers, Tanks, things of that sort. Also, if you want to level more than one profession must you create new characters for each profession?

Those are my basic game questions, but then some more questions arose while I was digging up information. What is it with all the talk about buying "One Chapter"? Can you only buy part of the game? Or can you buy each part together, like each expansion set together? Also I saw talk of Guild Wars 2 coming out. Should I just wait for this to come out instead of buying the current Guild War(s)?

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read my post and reply, I know it is a mouth full.

Regards,

Tavv

There is no better free to play game in this genre on the market. Guild Wars doesn't have a little "catch" where you find out later you need to spend more money to get a an item to stay competitive or to access areas in the game.

Just decide what Campaign you wish to buy and there's no "gotcha's" waiting for you. It's all upfront.

I own all 3 chapters and get all the variety that comes with it. Each chapter varies in game environments and story line, and each can be linked together for full access for any character regardless of chapter.

The game has great PvP and challenging PvE, and it's not too heavily slanted to one or the other, though some would argue.

Guild Wars is a great game to play with friends, that way you don't have to find friends once you are in the game, lol. But, if you prefer to solo (with AI henchies), you can do that as well through most parts of the game.

Guild Wars 2 has been announced but early betas aren't planned until around a year from now.

More importantly: a large global expansion for the whole Guild Wars Trilogy will be released well before that time, it will require that you own at least one previous campaign to play. ANet has stressed repeatedly that support for Guild Wars will continue and that it will remain free to play. It's the huge success of Guild Wars thats sparking them to make an even larger, more ambitious game based off the franchise. GW2 will be based on the same world as GW1 but 200 years or in the future.

I played WoW for 2 years, I liked WoW but I just started not liking the time it took to get ahead after a certain point, Guild Wars has been my home since last November, even though I had the game since release.

Lastly: the Graphics are great, lag is usually a non-issue, Anet keeps adding content like more storage, Looking for Group functions and user skill templates.

Professions fall into fairly standard categorys. A quick and dirty rundown - For melee, there are warriors, assassins, and dervishes. For ranged attacks, rangers and paragons. Then you have the magic casters: monks for healing, elementalists for high damage spells, necromancers to cast curses and raise undead fighters, ritualists to raise spirits with various effects, and mesmers who can interrupt and disable others skills.

As for leveling characters, I would first like to note that there really isn't much level grinding in this game, and in my opinion this is great. You can get a character to the level cap in a weekend without much difficulty.

Also, you don't need to roll a new character to try skills from a different profession. When you start a new character, you pick a primary and a secondary profession. You're stuck with the primary, but you can change the secondary profession as you go as often as you like. You won't be quite as effective with skills from your secondary due to constraints around armor and runes, but well enough to get a feel for it.

For the chapter thing, there are three right now - Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. Each one is playable separately. When you buy another chapter, you can link them into your account and your old characters can travel to new lands. I'd suggest getting Nightfall, as its the newest and probably most populated. It also has some nice new features, like heros, that the others don't. If you like it, you can always go back and buy the others later. I hope that helps.

As for professions; Yes, each one fills a niche of damage dealer, etc. But within each profession, there are a great variety of ways to play that profession. Monks can generally be used as healers or protectors, Rangers can use traps, pets, and interruption skills, among other things. With your first chapter of GW, you'll get 4 character slots (when you add a chapter to your account, you'll get 2 more), and each character can have a Primary profession and a secondary profession. One of the beauties of GW is that once you reach a certian point in any of the chapters, you can change your secondary profession.

There are 3 chapters to GW - Prophecies, factions, and Nightfall. Each one can be played as a stand-alone, or can be linked together in the same account, like expansions. If you do decide to get multiple chapters, be sure to CREATE one account, and ADD all of the access keys to that account. DO NOT create seperate accounts for each chapter.

Guild Wars 2 is about 2 years away, so getting GW now won't be a bad investment.

Guild Wars Professions are fairly unique:

Melee:

Warrior: Core Profession. Tank&Damage Dealer. Uses either Sword, Axe, or Hammers to attack.

Assassin: Factions Profession. Damage Dealer that uses chains of attack skills to deal more and more damage. They use Daggers as a weapon. They also have Shadow Arts to heal themselves and Deadly Arts to help kill enemies along with their attack skills.

Dervish: Nightfall Profession. Damage Dealer that uses Enchantments(Buffs) to enhance their attacks along with Forms, skills that change you into an avatar of a god or goddess.


Long Range Melee:

Ranger: Core Profession. Your basic archer, can have an animal companion, use traps, and has many survival skills, uses a bow as a weapon.

Paragon: Nightfall Profession. Uses Shouts and Chants to enhance party members, which are a different type of buff than an enchantment, also uses a Spear as a weapon



Casters: (all casters use staves and wands)

Monk: Core Profession. Your average healer. Can use healing skills to directly heal allies, also can use Protection skills to stop allies from taking damage in the first place, and Smiting Prayers to kill foes. Divine Favor grants an extra healing boost whenever you use healing or protection skills.

Necromancer: Core Profession. Deals with death. Death magic is used for raising armies of minions and damage, while Blood Magic is for healing yourself and others and giving energy to others, Curses is for severly hurting enemies and sometimes having to sacrifice health yourself. Soul Reaping gives you energy every time a creature near you dies.

Elementalist: Core Profession. Uses either Fire, Earth, Air, or Water magic to deal massive damage to foes. Energy Storage raises your maximum energy by 3 for every rank.

Mesmer: Core Profession. Deals with shutting down enemies. Domination is a more damage based attribute and killing other casters, while Illusion deals with health degeneration and kiling melee characters. Inspiration deals with leeching energy from enemies and recieving it yourself. Fast Casting allows you to cast your spell faster the higher the attribute is.

Ritualist: Factions Profession. Channeling deals with damage through spells. Communing is for summoning spirits to deal damage. Restoration is for healing yourself and others. Spawning Power raises health of your spirits.


Each class has it pros and cons, and each has its own playing style. I would suggest reading around in the different forums to find out what each of them do. Go to guildwarswiki.com to take a look at thier skills and see exactly what they do before choosing a profession.

You can gain a lot of information about the game details such as professions, armor, weapons, skills, etc. from the wiki at http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page

There is a sticky at the top of this Q&A forum, which describes each chapter.

Note: Dean gave you a different wiki address. An "official" wiki has been started for reasons given in guru's Guildwiki forum, but it is not yet as complete as the old one.

Nice description on the professions, except for mesmers (no love for mesmers? lol). They do more then interrupt and disable. They can also cast conditions, amongst other things.

I suggest the OP look at the official GW site or wiki, as someone else suggested.

Thank you very much for the information, I hope to join Gw soon!

YES, WE HAVE ANOTHER MEMBER JOINING!

Welcome to the club!

And yes, we have a great community here on Guru, and I'm sure you'll fit right in. And of course, its a great game. I can only recommend buying one campaign at a time; buying all 3 at once makes it feel very rushed.