thinking about getting guild wars--questions

Hello, I'm thinking about getting guild wars, but I would like some questions answered first because I don't want to regret my purchase. Is there a lot of grinding involved in Guild Wars? I hate games where I have to play all day just to be decent at it. I want to play a nice and somewhat casual game. Also, is the community mature?

Thanks!

Good news: Guild Wars in remarkably grind-free to meet your basic requirements. You can run along the storyline and quests perfectly fine without ever needing to grind out levels or gold. You can even create a PvP character with maximum gear without grinding at all.

Bad news: The community sucks, it's been said the lack of monthly fees attracts all sorts of riffraff.

There's little grinding in Guild Wars. The level cap is at 20, and is fairly easy to reach with casual play. It could take a week to over a month or so, depending which chapter you get. Guild Wars is more dependent on character skills than character level.

The Nightfall chapter has a bit of grinding with respect to the Sunspear and Lightbringer title tracks, which are necessary/helpful for gameplay there. However, as long as you pick up the appropriate bounties during normal gameplay (questing and missions) you shouldn't notice any extra grinding, at least with Sunspear.

There are a lot of good people out there too. But just like real life you will have some bad eggs that annoy the heck out of you. Nice thing with Guildwars is if you wish you can play totally solo. The only time you will see people this way is when you enter a town. If you are getting annoyed by the chat you can become a hermit and shut off all off the different chat channels.

From my experience, a big part of the community is mature and decent. There are however some people acting like kids and there's also the elitist part of the community that can become really annoying at times.

The nice thing about guild wars is you only grind if you want to. Simply playing through the game and messing around here and there will give you max armor, a decent weapon, and enough skills to do what you need to. The community in general is pretty good (Upcoming player event in May, check it out here Ascalon Royal Ball. Like any game you will find the people who only seem to want to annoy you or prover their pixels are better than your pixels, but overall I am happy with it.

You can max out in a few days by doing the missions and being smart about trading your earned items. You dont need more than 10K at once unless your investing in something that should not be needed.

Pros-Good for Casual play
Cons-Trying to make a guild,A few really messed up people here and there.
(Even WoW hasa few nut jobs in it)

If you want to play PVP well it is really too late...since everyone is like rank 10 now and you will NEVER find a group if you are unranked. Also, the community is NOT MATURE AT ALL...I could post examples but this isn't the place to do it in.

I just bought the game (Prophicies, always best to start at the beginning I say) just about 3 weeks ago. Before that, I only ever played solo RPG's (Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc.), this is my first online game. I'm kind of anti-social and was worried that I'd be forced to deal with people all the time, or somehow lose out on experience and rewards if I couldn't "be there" in the game world all the time.

The great news is that GW is very solo friendly overall. The "henchman" are usually pretty good, and only twice now have I asked for others to help me in particularly difficult areas, and going out with other people has been a real pleasure actually.

GW gives everyone their own, private virtual world, so you don't miss out on experience or treasure, and you can take things at your own pace. I don't think its a grind because you can really choose how you approach the game. You can just play it through, or you can try to accomplish certain goals or earn titles, etc.

One caveat - it IS an online game, and thus, there is no "pause key". You either have to go back to town, or pick an out of the way place and hope no monsters wander along. Also, there is no cheating. If you get "stuck" in a tough place, you can't just enter a console command be done with it, you have to ask around for help.

My advice - stay in "pre-searing" (search the forums for that) until you are level 8 or so before moving on. Pre-searing has no henchmen, but I was an Elementalist and was able to do it solo with the notable exception of "the gate".

There is next to no grind in the game so dont even think about that.

The max level cap is only 20 which may seem low, but reaching level 20 is only the start of your Guild Wars expirience. The game as a whole is based around being level 20 (outside of starter areas). Once you get to level 20, you wont be far in the game and you will have MUCH to do. I have been playing for just over a year and i see no stop in my daily playing any time soon....there is just an endless amount of things to do...play the story line, all sorts of PvP, farm for gold and other good stuff and work on getting some titles.

Definatley start out with the Prophecies campaign. Play through it and if you like it, get the other 2. Each chapter is both simmilar and very different....you will be pleased with the game!