Three cheers for Prophecies!

Prophecies was entertaining.
Prophecies was epic.
Prophecies had variety.
Prophecies gave players more freedom.
Prophecies seemed complete.
Prophecies gave skills as quest rewards.
Prophecies was a brilliant game.
Factions was good.
Nightfall was mediocre.
EotN is also mediocre.

That's my opinion. It's probably biased, since games are always more fun when you're new to them. But Prophecies did have some qualities that the others were lacking in.

The 'skill > time played' statement that people so often bring up was ditched once the reality of a rapidly growing PvE population hit ANet. People came to Guild Wars from all over because it had no subscription fees, which set it apart from other MMORPGs. Some came because of the balanced PvP gameplay and skill > time motto, but the vast majority couldn't have cared less about those things. The PvE was all that they were after. These people gave ANet money; ANet had to cater for them. ANet needed to give players more stuff to do, but they couldn't cause any imbalance. The solution was, partly, optional grind. In addition, they made wealth harder to acquire, and created more money sinks (having to buy every skill, for example).

Guild Wars still has very little grind, the most part of which is optional. Having that good looking armor or weapon doesn't give you any advantage, unlike in other games. Guild Wars is balanced entirely around skills, not gear.

As long as GW2 doesn't have subscription fees, we can be fairly sure that it won't have too much grind. What's the point in forcing players to stay in the game and do boring stuff when they're not paying for it?

I don't use PVE skills at all, not even in the most difficult dungeon. so the grind doesn't really affect me. But then I have to agree with those saying grind is badly implemented in the form of PVE skills and environmental benefits.

Grind for an elite armor or item is fine as these do not offer any advantages, only a prettier version. But with skills, there is an advantage. Though not against other people but in the end, if two were going for that 7/8 party, one with maxed PVE skill.... not to mention the environmental benefits provided by titles.

I for one would rather see PVE skills somewhat tied to primary class attributes than be totally free from them. So even with mediocre title rank the amount of points invested into your attributes can still make them rather useful.

Hurrah for prophecies, when we were all noobs and didn't mind to team with other noobs.

Hurrah for prophecies, where we didn't mind to spend a lot of time getting through the game (at least on the first char).

Hurrah for prophecies, when we didn't have to have all the end-game gear the minute we left pre.

/cheers

Prophecies is still my all time fave.

Hurray!

Noob loving!

Yays! Good ole days of Frenzying non-stop thinking it's worth it! oh snapzs i em takiin damge, thakn gawd for heal sig yea!

Good times.

/cheer /cheer /cheer

Very good Quote My friend i 100% agree that quote relates to the 1st campaign only and none others cause hero/hench is not team work its AFK Battles and by AFK i mean c space and watch TV or a Movie
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Well, I just finished off the last mission in GW:EN. I'm still working my way thought dungeons, with only about a third done there. However, I was a bit disappointed after finishing the story mode to see that there were still a number of armorers who wouldn't give me the time of day.


Quote:
The game is designed to reward player skill and teamwork, not time spent playing, so you won’t need to spend hundreds of hours levelling up your character to compete.


I remember back in the days of Prophecies when that was actually true. So, rather than go on a rant questioning why I should continue to grind to get the NPCs to like me after finishing off the main story, I'd instead like to just give a short bit of praise to the one that got it right. Prophecies boldly went out with a new paradigm of skill over time spent in MMOs against a field of competitors that made grinding the standard. So, I raise a glass to the first in the Guild Wars line. Hopefully someone will pick up this idea and run with it again in the future.

Lol I still do that sometimes, just to get the noob feeling again.

Like someone already said...

Online games at the best when everything is new for everyone. It has little to with new campaigns if the game itself is same.

Come on, what's so great with prophecies except the nostalgic value it certainly has for many people?

The thought of fighting through an endless horde of devourers with level 7 and an ascalon axe of fortitude 6-16 req 3 - while my screen shows exactly two colors: brown and a reddish hue of brown - for days and days makes me want to get down on my knees and praise the gods of anet for factions and yes, even nightfall. Take the rather lame cut scenes and the corny dialogue ("I used to play here as a child...") and I'm even more grateful. Ok, the Tutorial is sweet, but rather limited.

Of course, it's a discussion of principles here, but how long can you stay true to your principles without getting boring? And to skill over time spent: Wouldn't it take even more skill to beat the game (nf, gw:en) without farming for possibly unbalanced PvE only skills?

I think prophecies has something that the other Chapthers don't have:

In prophecies, you want to do quests/explore because you want to:

1- Reach lvl 20
2- Get your skills
3- Get the Elite Skills

Now, in the other chapters you get leveled very very fast, sometimes you leave the "noob" areas at lvl 20 already and with plenty of what will become your "main" skills....

So, what I mean is that Prophecies has a better character development curve while the other chapters pretty much burn everything right at the begining.
What happens is that you don't actually notice that during the first time you play that Chapter but as you try to repeat it that feeling of "I've got nothing left to do here" comes sooner and sooner...
imo.

Factions better than Nightfall? Factions is great if you need to get a lvl20 character quickly. I liked Nightfall more than Factions though.

Nothing compares to the first time through Prophecies though. Though the game was very different then. We didn't have half the things we have now. No traders, just storage and a merchant. Prices of everything were very high. Getting into a PUG for any quest was easy. My first time though I only used henchies a few times and it was never a full group of them. Those were the days. I am hoping GW2 brings some of that back.

I don't think needing to work a little to have better looking armor is a grind through. If you don't have to do it to get max stat armor then it is not a grind. To me grinding means you have to do it in order to play the game normally. RF Online is a good example of having to grind to lvl30 in order to compete in PvP. You can't get around it. If you don't NEED it then I think Anet can make you work for it. No one complained about FoW armor....

Yeah,

The only campaign which I ever pug throughout the whole storyline.

Prophecies is nice

Faction has some great looking weapons

Nightfall ... Put an end to my pug experiences (Introduction of Heros)

Can't beat nostalgia. I brought it in my bar for a bit too, until I died <1 sec against 3 chilling whisps.

Prophecies was great. I'm having trouble staying even remotely interested in GW:EN - the plot's fine, but we start a quest and suddenly it's time to hunt the various monsters inthe area, and talk to a norn, and then more hunting, and talk to a norn, and hunt some more, and norn time...

Sure, you don't need to do it that way, but everyone wants to advance these titles, to unlock stuff and boost PvE skills and all. I'm just not enjoying it much.

Prophecies had it right. Sure, there have been countless improvements, and I don't miss the old attribute refund points, nor the incredibly crowded storage (wihth no room for materials!) and I really enjoy Alliance Battles (yes, though they're a bit silly, they're fun), but most of that is just extra. Prophecies felt more free. Yeah, there was Drok's running etc., but you could wander. I remember the joy of just exploring, trying to fight your way to the next area - tackling Lornar's to Droknar at level 19, fighting through with 6 players.

Yeah, it was irritating to have to remember what NPC in what area had a skill, but it was also enjoyable to work to get them, and it didn't feel like grind so much, since you could pretty much get to any outpost quickly enough.

Three cheers for the original GW, and for the goals they set themselves.

I'm all for PvE skills, in that it is a smart way to allow for effects that ae imbalanced in PvP, but the title-linked garbage is annoying.

Prophecies was awesome!
Factions was awesome!
Nightfall was awesome!
EOTN is awesome!

Those of you that have given up on human groups in favor of Heroes/Henchies should either (a) decide that you just enjoy the game more with Heroes/Henchies, (b) Join a decent guild with good players, or (c) develop some patience while searching for PUGs.
I remember in the days of just prophecies when you would wait around for an hour or so to get a good group for a mission. I'm sure that instant gratification has just taken over for a few of you.

I can say this, I've gotten several people hooked on Guild Wars, but only by starting them in Prophecies. Whenever they started in Factions or Nightfall the hook didn't sink in deep enough. The reason? Too quick and rushed to level. I think the developers have figured this out, hench GW2.

But man, if you guys spent half as much time exploring, killing, questing, having fun in the game as you do complaining, you'de have armour for all 4 titles by now. Everyone just seems to have their idea of just how the game should be played and if ANet gives you something you're not expecting, you want it to be "fixed". Perhaps your enjoyment of prophecies comes, not from the idea that the game was better, but the fact that you didn't have all kinds of set "expectations" for how it was going to play out. Maybe you can get some of the wonder-eyed kid in you back that can look at the game as what it is, and not the cranky old man who demands what you think it should be.

Symeon killed it. This needs to be put in a banner or sig... or something.

Since when did not being able to talk/buy armor in GW:EN affect your ability to compete? I'm lost
Anyways I remember back in the very early days of Proph and even months down the road you still had to grind balth faction at a very slow rate in order to be competitive....

Right! There is a MASSIVE amount of grinding to get FoW armour, or 15k armour in Prophecies. Excellent point. I remember my first character had to run around outside of Droks just killing for no reason in order to save up enough for just the 1.5k armour. I'm personally LOVING eotn. I hope it's an indication of what's coming in GW2.

Prophecies is great, its the one that made us stick it with GW until now and buy the chapters and expansion

Great argument here... It certainly explains why the game industry is dominated by Mortgage simulators and venture capital adventures... /eyeroll.

Most of us have much better things to do with our time than grind for anything. ANet (or any deb/publisher) is lucky to have someone playing their game, they are really pushing it trying to create a vocation out of something that is supposed to be entertainment. A game should never be work, even if you're going for the best of the best item... it should always be entertainment first. The path to riches in a game should always be the fruit of *entertainment* not virtual punchclocking.

prophercies is fun but is slow to level (it has been for my prophercies chars)
factions is fun but has a very steap learing curve (especialy if, like me, it was the first one you got)
nightfall has been good for farming and having heros but just doesnt agree with me when srarting a new char.
havent got EoTN yet.

i prefer factions, but there is a reason i have a perma pre!
yay for prophercies!

King Symeon pretty much has the right of it here. You're basically looking at an evolution of the game and its audience.

Guild Wars was originally conceived as a PvP game that happened to have a PvE backstory. The PvE play existed primarily as a way to give players a way to earn their skills and differentiate themselves from others in the process (given that my collection of skills would probably differ from yours). The original vision was complicit in the terminology the devs used. When media people called it a MMORPG, the Anet devs corrected them by calling it a MMOCRPG - a MMO Competitive RPG. The whole point of the low level cap and the relatively shallow effectiveness curve between the levels was to put the emphasis on the skills and the strategic and tactical abilities of the teams in PvP.

As it happened, most people who bought the game treated it like a standard MMORPG and, in fact, were mostly uninterested in more than casual PvP. After a year, I imagine it became rather clear to Anet that their bread and butter gaming audience was, contrary to their design and expectation, the PvE crowd.

The follow-on expansions have been their ways to address the problem of a changing audience while simultaneously holding onto their PvP audience. Guild Wars, after all, is supposed to refer to the wars between the current player guilds, not to the historic guild wars of Acalon's past. Factions attempted to make everyone happy. There was new PvE content for everyone, but the level curve was adjusted so that the PvP crowd wouldn't have to spend an inordinate amount of time on a PvE game that they really didn't care about. Given the number of complaints about Factions being too fast, they adjusted the curve in Nightfall to a happy medium, or so they hoped.

The PvP game is still very active, of course; but I'll wager that there are a lot more players who think of themselves as PvE players than those that consider themselves to be PvP players. Anet has to take that into account when they design new content. The "grind" for titles and armor and such, basically vanity content, and even the changes in the Divine Favor are intended for the PvE audience. A player who cares only about PvP won't give a hang about those things because they're meaningless within the context of his gameplay.

Given that GW:EN has even more PvE-oriented content and, from what I can see, very little in the way of new PvP-oriented content, it simply says that the PvE game has become the more important aspect of Guild Wars. This fact appears to be reflected in the design of Guild Wars 2, in that the info about it seems to indicate that GW2 is going to be less like a MMO-flavored CCG/Combat game and more like a traditional persistent-world MMORPG.

That's essentially why Prophecies is the best chapter. It's the only chapter that adheres to the original vision. Whether future chapters ought to return to that vision is moot, given the changed player environment and the continuing rumors that GW will be replaced by GW2. Personally, I think it's a mistake for Anet to decide to halt GW development entirely, but they know their resources better than an armchair game designer does. In any case, I haven't seen anyone quote an Anet developer as saying that GW will get no more development after GW:EN. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

So, yeah, three cheers for Prophecies! It's still my favorite chapter and I still feel sad at the finish of Prince Rurik's storyline despite having lived through it multiple times. If Anet ever does produce another chapter of Guild Wars, maybe they'll try a return to basics if they can feel confident that Prophecies-style gameplay will sell boxes rather than drive away the people who want things fast and convenient.

how true factions was so underated.

Agreed. I remember being absolutely mesmerized by Pre-Searing and just being blown away by everything. Ah, the memories . . .

If anything, I believe that the one thing that ruined co-op play was heroes, because now you could make an awesome NPC to your specs. Sure they might not be quite as good as a player, but they still do the job better than that spamming nub. Before Nightfall, I would PUG all my missions, and it was fun. Enter Nightfall. Suddenly I am forced to do nothing but set up my H/H party and pray. Why? There was nobody to play with anymore. Thankfully, then finally decided to limit H/H in PvP battles to 4, otherwise it would be henchway all day!

The "unnecessary but necessary" grind is also annoying, and is a product of the titles. YES you can go without massively grinding 25 hours a day, but if you do grind that 25 hours a day you get a huge bonus. So 3-5 months later, those crazy lifeless grinders dominate the servers.

Factions was the line at which the originality of GW was drawn. To be perfectly honest, in my opinion, Nightfall ruined GW and turned it into yet another grindfest MMO.

P.S.

I still play it for the PvP. And the story. Something about the story gives me the warm fuzzies.

Yeah those were the good ole Days when you actually got more ecto and shards back then.That is when farming was good as well as running.I do know of some player who will disagree that Prophecies has no grind to it sure there was if you wanted to PvP.They had to play the game and get to unlock things anyway the PvP was better back then as well.

You didn't need to get them grinding just being good at farming.

I think the biggest reason why Prophecies was brilliant is that they didn't have a fickle, petulant, and often witless player base to placate. The more they try to go where the wind blows on the forums, the worse their game becomes. The best feature of GW:EN---the dungeons---are not the result of pandering to any player demands. The worst features of GW:EN---the armors, the PvE skills, the reputation treadmills, the hall of monuments---are all the result of trying to please and occupy existing players.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: ArenaNet needs to learn when not to listen to the players. The players are very good at finding problems with skills and mechanics, but they will kill your game if you give them any kind of control.

Yeah I agree.

Prophecies was the best and you know why? It was slower, slower paced more relaxed.

With factions/nightfall grind became more a issue then titles made the game far too quick. The slowness of the original was gone. The relaxed enviroment from the original ignored for a new grind title now type of game.

If the original formular of Prophecies could be found again by Anet and made into gw2 or even updated to Gwen it be the game we all remember.

well, the good thing is they stated that pvp and pve will be on separate servers. No more hearing about how the nerfbat from pvp ruined the mesmer(I-can't-get-picked-in-pve-because-SS-is-better) for pve.

The original concept of everyone eventually going pure pvp may have been good on paper, but Heroes ascent is so elitist/demanding the overpowered buld of the moment, that it's impossible for less hardocer players to even get into it.

I really like the world pvp idea: Persistend Aspenwoods in wich npc's take over when there are not enough players.

The game is designed to reward player skill and teamwork, not time spent playing, so you won’t need to spend hundreds of hours levelling up your character to compete.

And why is everyone complaining about armor? Do you need armor to compete? You can play just as fine in droks armor as in the GW:EN armor. Grinding title to get armor isnt a problem at all, you dont need the armor to complete the game.

Grinding for titles is optional. Buying a certain type of armor is optional. You can compete fine without grinding and without the armor.

[QUOTE]JEFF STRAIN calls the bullshit flag on that

TBH me making like a gazzillion ectos was really fun. IMO it was the most fun I had in GW.