Playing through the different campaigns

Hey peoples, I am a new Guild Wars player

I bought Guild Wars factions and guild wars phrophecies. I actually bought Factions like 9 months ago, but I never got past level 10 because I didn't like the game for some reason...

Now I bought Phophecies and I'm loving it! This campaign is so much better, the gameplay is funner, and the characters look way cooler.

But I am wondering now, how to play all the different campaigns?

Should I level up my ranger to level 20 and then finish the Phrophecies campaign, and then travel to Factions, and do the campaign there (if there is one there, I dunno) and after that travel to the campaign in Night Fall (when I buy that one) and finish that one? And lastly buy Eye of the North and finish the campaign that comes with that game?

Or is that even possible?

Or am I supposed to start the new campaigns entirely by making a new character in Factions and playing with him/her through the Factions campaign.

I am wondering this, because I thought I would miss out on a lot of pre-level20 content if I could play Factions with my Phrophecies character.

hi, because you've got a lot of ground to cover, but you also want to experience all of the games...

i'd suggest complete the prophecies campaign start to finish..
then do factions with one char from birth to finish..
then nightfall with a new char to the end..

then take one of those 3 to GWEN and finish it.

that way you get to see all of the campaign areas, including noob areas, which shouldnt be missed... but you're not spending excessive amounts of time in each campaign because of multiple chars.

The game is set up so that you can play through the campaigns any way you like.

With Factions, taking over a character from another campaign does give you a bit of a jump start as you miss the starter island, but you can still go back and play the starter island with your prophesies character if you want to, it just isn't required.

Either way you want to do it, taking characters over or creating a new one for each campaign, you will never run into a situation where there is content you missed for doing so (with the exception of pre-searing ascalon in prophesies, which only prophesies created characters have access to)

Myself, I really liked my proph characters and have taken them through all the campaigns, taking breaks to create new characters and work on them for fun when I get bored. When you do buy nightfall, you might want to try making a dervish character at some point as they are awesome!

If you're completely new to Prophecies, best idea would be to play through, yeah.

You might have trouble in parts though, as neither Prophecies or Factions give you access to heroes. While there's very little or nothing in the PvE storylines of these two that is impossible to do with only henchies, many people have trouble henching their way through some quests and missions.

At least a fair amount of people still play in all the campaigns, but many of us are sporting heroes and don't join up with PuGs as much as we did before heroes were available. If you ask nicely (i. e. speak to people, ask questions, ask for help, come off as a human being rather than a bot programmed to spam LFG!!!!!, etc.) I think you can still find help if you get stuck on something.

You'll probably have to look harder for help on secondary quests, as fewer people do every quest on all their characters. But in the end I still say it's worth it to see everything at least once.

Factions and the games beyond are set up very well to allow you to take characters from different campaigns and play through most of the storyline there. What you miss out on in Factions or Nightfall with a Tyrian character is quest progression on the starter islands, Shing Jea and Istan. A Tyrian character can travel there and play the missions, but they don't get any primary or secondary quests in those areas. Similarly, non-Tyrian characters can travel to Tyria and explore everything but Pre-Searing. They don't get any primary or secondary quests before Lion's Arch in the story progression however. There's a lot more storyline in Prophecies between pre-searing and LA than there was on the starter islands of other campaigns. Seems that way to me anyway.

If you don't like the idea of making a new character to play entirely through each campaign, I'd suggest making a Tyrian character and playing through Tyria, then Factions, then Nightfall (if you get it,) then GWEN. You're not tied to that order, but I always figure why not go in order if you can? You can sample the starting areas of the other campaigns by starting a new character there and at least playing up to the point in the story where the Tyrian character arrived. Then, you've covered almost everything story-wise. And at worst you have a Factions and a Nightfall PvE mule character to hold the ranger's toys.

Even if you're new, I'd recommend taking your Tyrian ranger to Factions once you get to LA and grabbing max armor. True, it's not following the Tyrian storyline exactly. But it saves you about 4 steps in buying higher armor levels before you can get max armor in Prophecies.

And if you never got into playing Factions but are addicted to Prophecies, then I'd guess you'll like Nightfall and GWEN. IMO Prophecies is still the best, but Nightfall and GWEN PvE feel a lot closer to the ah-this-is-so-cool!!!ness of Prophecies than Factions did.

Oh, and don't think in terms of "First level up my ranger to 20 and then play through." Just play, leveling happens as you go. The only time I'd ever stop and just work on leveling up in Prophecies would be if I were a lower level than the local henchies. If you're exploring and doing secondary quests, you should be fine.

Cheers, Congrats & Enjoy!
Luny

Take you're time to play in prophecies, don't miss all the fun in ascalon

Thanks alot for all your replies! All of them were helpful

I am wondering though, isnt there like a bonus if I complete all campaings with just 1 character? Or is it like totally okay to have 3 different characters and do GWEN (eye of the north I assume?) with one of those three, like one helpful person here suggested?

There's a lot of content in each. Although you can jump around between them as you please, doing so can easily get you overwhelmed. Unless its to grab some skills unique to that campaign from a trainer, its best to start one and finish(or come close too) before moving on.

As for moving your Prophecies char to Factions, you can do that once you get to Lion's Arch, where you'd normally be around lvl 15. Its not advisable as once you get to Factions, its off the newbie island and meant for lvl 20 players. NF is a little more forgiving. And you can't even get to GW:EN without being lvl 20 and its hard without full access to some end-game skills.

And no, there's no real bonus for completing all 3 with just one char. There are a bunch of titles completing the missions + bonus/masters reward, but they are only for show.

If you want your characters to move through all the games you need to link them when you input the access key. If you keep them seperate then you will not be able to move them through the various campaigns.

The only current bonus for finishing all three campaigns on the same character is show off stuff, titles and more monuments in that one character's hall. ANet tells us the monuments in the hall will have a bonus in GW2, but there's no telling what said bonuses are yet.

And Griff has a point, you can only move chars between campaigns if you've installed the access keys for each campaign to the same account. Making two separate accounts doesn't let you share the access.

Alright... well I will have to think about whether to stick with my character or not, then I will finish Phrophecies with him for sure... if I don't grow bored of my Ranger/Necromancer before that time hehehe...

and yes I did link my accounts together, in fact I forgot about that at first because I had not played Factions for more than 9 months or so. But then I reinstalled it, and instead of creating a new account I just typed in my email and the "usual password" and it actually WORKED... then I added my phrophecies key. Thank god I didnt create a new account by accident, then I would've had splitted account

Anyway, what is a hall you speak off?

And also, I can change my secondary profession later, right?

Oh sorry, the hall I referred to is the Hall of Monuments. It's a thing in GWEN that's supposed to let you carry some of your GW1 accomplishments to GW2 in the form of bonuses. Like I said, there's no telling what the details of that will be.

And yes, you can change your secondary profession later on. There's a global way to do it in the PvP area. Then each campaign has a way to do it, too. I don't mean to encourage you to read spoilers, but there really is A LOT to this game. GuildWiki is great for learning about GW, looking up what things are, etc. And it's well organized. Guru here can teach you stuff, too, but the info here requires more work/luck to find. There are spoilers about the storylines in both places, but you can avoid them by simply not following the links to quest or mission walkthroughs.

The only *real* bonus to completing all 3 campaigns on one character is that, your one character has easy access to all skills, all elites, all armor types (for that perfect wardrobe )....
As far as experiencing the game, I think the fact is if you do it on 3 different characters, diff professions... you'll experience more of the game. You can always take all 3 through each campaign if you wanna also.

You don't even need to buy Nightfall unless you want the skills don't worry to much about heros as GW EoTN has them as well. GL and have fun.

Given the titles and elite armors that take so very long to aquire I would recomend just focusing on your main char and taking it into all 3 chapters + GW:EN.

Once you are certain your char has reached a point where your very happy with it, then start new chars of diff professions in the other campains just to see the difference.

Alright, thanks again everyone

I guess I'll play with my ranger and decide later about the other campaigns and how I'm going to play them...