My general overall view of GW as a new player

Yea I know, for a ranger it seems pretty worthless to even have a 2nd proff, since you can only have 8 skills up and the ruddy pet takes away from that too. LOL
I was just messing around; i am going to reset my skills though for a ranger though as I am not sure what proff would really benifit them, since you have a pet too.

im also a pretty new player to guild wars and i hav to say i agree with ur overview as i came to gw for pretty much the same reasons as u did, though i was just tired of grind in general and having to repeatedly wait for the "fun" part in mmo's only to realise that pretty much all of them hav rly boring unimaginative gameplay

i especailly like the way gw keeps true to the rpg element of mmorpg that is missing in so many of them, and particularly the "game" part of mmorpg instead of making it into a mmo2ndjob

I suspect he means that Elonian and Canthan characters can't access presear, primarily. The inaccessible tutorial areas in NF and Cantha are so small as to be functionally irrelevant.

Get Nightfall first if you can only get one of those two.

It is so much better than all the rest of the things put out for GW that I have trouble envisioning the game without it.

Note that the choice is per character, not account wide. You can choose one hero on one character, and a different one on the other. And even though each choice leads you to different missions, you can can go on the other missions with the people who made the other choice - if they and you have not yet progressed too far beyond that point on those characters.

By contrast in Factions you will at some point end up choosing a Faction - it is account wide, and you might have already made the choice even without owning Factions if you have joined a guild. However, the impact of play for this choice is minimal.

I found the pet useful in pre-searing but once more skills become available you may prefer to focus on your bow more and use some traps to soften up your foes as you lure them, also some powers from other classes can be useful like for example Resurrect or Rebirth are good when your monk dies in battle.

Pretty much what I thought. But only one thing bothered me,

This is completely wrong, prophecies was the bomb. Course, I guess it's all opinion. Some of my guild mates think NF is best whereas I think it's the worst :\
According to ratings though, proph was the best, then it constantly went downwards.

On the topic of inaccessible content from non-native chapters.... For non-prophecies characters, than means no pre-searing and no quests until you reach Lions Arch. You can do the missions, but you get a message saying you have non-native characters and are reliving past events or some such.

Going into Factions from other chapters, you get the same thing with all the quests from the Shing Jea island and of course have to wiggle your way into the Visunah "Local" quarter.. Than again that goes also for locals getting into the "Foreign" quarter. You also get the reliving past events on the first two missions.

Going into Nightfall is much the same in that you are limited on some of the newbie area quests, although there are a few quests made for foreigners, so it pans out ok.. you also get that reliving past events thing with the first 3 missions.

I've been playing GW since release with a break or two and still have so many things I can do that I dispair of ever actually doing EVERYTHING..lol Enjoy

Don't really have the time to read the whole thread, but suffice to say, this review made me very nostalgic. You seem to be having fun with things I haven't touched in ages (been putting off vanquishing old ascalon, and I generally stay away from there).

I hope to catch you ingame at Dark lord nitemare.

Hoping to spread the message that not all experienced and some would even say elite pve players are not all elitists.

Ok so let me see if I got this right. Factions and Nightfall are new campaigns that have new missions and quests as well as 2 new classes in each with new skills. Each campaign has new areas to explore. If you have a pre-searing char you can access these area and do the missions? How would you do this by some quests or just traveling to them? The 2 campaigns since they come with 2 new classes have a seperate start area which is like the pre-searing only for the new chars? So if you want to explore everything you would want to make a new char in each campaign?

This is the typical response of the smart World of Warcraft players who give Guild Wars a try. They look on the bright side, rather than trashing it for lacking. I liked your review, it gave imaginations and wonders for all, except you're wrong on the timing.

When you leave the pretty green area, the searing happens, and only 3 or so years pass. Because, from Prophecies to Factions I believe, it's 7 years.

All characters can access nearly all of the content in chapters 2 and 3 - but it will be different for characters not built there. That is to say, the order things unlock might be a bit different, and in some portions you won't be able to team up with 'native made' characters.

You can take a chapter 1 character over to the starting zones of chapters 2 and 3 - but you'll be over leveled for the challenges there once you get there, and as soon as you have those chapters you will realize that what you really want is to do the opposite. Chapter 2 and 3 characters just look better.

As do I, and it's so true. I remember starting out so long ago, and the game seemed so expansive. Then new chapters and content came faster than I could keep up with it, and now there is so much to do it's a tough decision every time I log on as to where I want to go and do.
Man I love this game. Hopefully you enjoy it as much as we old-timers have, Ladybadone.

An example will be best:
Jure Simich, my first Warrior, was created in prophecies. After a bit of questing, he reached Lion's arch, a port city that is a travel hub. Once there, he was:
-ordered to report to the White mantle authorities (quest continues Prophecies storyline),
-asked for help by Mhenlo (takes you to Cantha, where you start the Factions storyline) and
-asked for help by Kormir, the Sunspear leader, in preventing a demonic invasion (takes you to Elona, where you start the Nightfall storyline).

You don't have to stick to one storyline, you can travel freely once you unlock a travel destination (my favourite approach: start in Presearing (PR), reach Lion's arch, travel to Kamadan (NF) to grab the heroes, travel to Kaineng city (FA) to level up and become Weh no Sui (change secondary class freely), and then continue with whichever campaign I feel like most). The free travel can allow you to do mission 1 in one campaign, travel to another campaign and do mission 1-6, and return to campaign 1 to continue with mission 2 and on.

As I said before, you can't quite get ALL of the content with a "foreign" character. You miss a bit of the introductory storyline. Hard to explain without spoilers. Let's try this:

A character created in Factions will start on the Shing Jea Island, training at the monastery. You will do a few quests which will familiarize you with hte game and get you the starting skills. Then, a plague will start in the area, and you will help solve the trouble. After a while, Master Togo, the head of the monastery, will make some disturbing discoveries. You will travel with him to the capital to further investigate the happenings. At the same time, Master Togo will send a message to his former student Mhenlo and ask him for help. In the capital, Kaineng City, the students accompanying Master Togo and the heroes of Ascalon accompanying Mhenlo meet up and from then on, they both do the same things.

So, a Canthan gets a bit more storyline here while a foreigner joins in later. However, the differences are not great. The foreigner can still go to Shing jea island and pass the three low-level missions there, but won't get the whole storyline quest line.

The reverse also applies: a Canthan, once he reaches Kaineng city, can travel to Prophecies lands to help with the local undead problem. He'll start in Lion's arch and continue from then on equally as the locals. he will also be able to travel over to Ascalon, and do the missions there, but they are "historic" to him. He also won't get the connecting quests.

Summation: it pays to start a character in each area once, to see the bit of story that foreigners miss. But in essence, you're not missing a lot.

Only prophercies has a pre-searing style startng area, whichh is set in the past. Factions and Nightfall you start on what people affectionately call "noob islands" where you do relatively easy quests and missions.

Then you move onto the main land and do the harder stuff.

You can explore 100% of all campaigns with characters from all campaigns. You dont need to create a "local" character to get full access to stuff.

Usually to travel between games you do a quest which asks you to travel to cantha or elona or tyria (names of the other continents or areas) and once you do that, you can just use the boat symbol on the map to instantly go there.

When you travel between maps, you end up in the capital city for that campaign. The place where most of the trade and commerce happens. So its always the busiest location to be in. Expect a tiny bit of lag when you get there sometimes.

Its not hard. Nothing in GWs is hard to get. Its one of the beauties of it.

...its only 2 years difference. not 200.

No, you can't do very much with a pre-searing character. You are limited to the pre-searing game world. Once you feel ready to cope with the real game, you do the quest which which gets you into the post-searing game. From there, you have to progress through missions and quests until you get to Lion's Arch, by which time you will be around level 16 if you're being thorough.

At Lion's Arch, you get the quests to take you to the other areas.

At Kaineng you have access to level 20 henchmen, and quests that give good gold rewards and about 3,000 xp each. Get all the quests you can, and then when you start one, scroll through the others and look on the map where they all are. Do all the quests in the same area together; it saves a lot of time and you can end up adding around 12,000 xp when you go back to collect your rewards, so you level up really fast.

However, before you do that, you may want to go to Kamadan first and collect your starter heroes. Swap them in and out of your party when you collect the XP; that way you can level them up really fast too.

Likewise, the other campaigns have a certain number of missions and quests you have to complete before you're ready to travel abroad. Factions is good for levelling up fast (do all the quests for all the secondary professions; it's not compulsory to replace your preferred secondary profession skills although you need a hex removal spell for one of the quests. There are two sets of quests. They will give you lots of gold and lots of XP, well, lots by starter standards.)

Nightfall is good for the heroes, and is also quite profitable. In Nightfall you also get hero skill points as you develop, which you can exchange for free skills.

Prophecies is the only campaign that has skill rewards for quests after the starting area, so that is its main strength. You'll be quite poor until you get to Yak's bend; from there you will start making a fair amount of money through better drops and stuff en route to Lion's Arch.

Thanks for all the info guys. I am going to correct the a couple things in my article later today, when I have time and also tomorrow I am going to write a follow up article using all the info you guys have provided me.

Starter landing of a Elonian char, Can't be accessed.
Sarter part of Cantha , can't be accessed normally (only during dragon festival boardwalk games).

Come on as lgmc you out of all people should know that

Piffle!!! Thats a tiny amount of land

Also keep in mind that Heroes become very powerful with the new Unlock Skill Packs. (Not sure if they're available at Online Store yet, only saw the PvP packs yesterday, which also work but are more expensive). You can purchase these skill packs to use for heroes and Hard Mode Tomes. Tomes are a new way to unlock skills for your character. Once you have a half party of heroes -- using skills you choose for them -- the game takes on a completely different complexity.

I too came from WoW, and now having played GW for about the same time, I can agrue without hesitation that GW is far more user friendly; an improvement and evolution from the Evercrack grind-fest formula; and ultimately, feature for feature, a better game. My main character having completed all the campaigns, still has some 500+ quests available in his log (known/Found, about 800+ available I think). The game world becomes wide open early on, and re-playable -- and it's huge. Still so much to do, definitely won't get to it all with GW2 looming on the horizon.

Best thing about GW though is that you can lead a real life and still play with friends that play hardcore. You're less likely to come across Guild Mates and friends that are ruining their life, threatening to leave their wives, destroying their health, the way you do in WoW. Makes me cry every time I visit my old WoW guild's forum.

Is that why people buy those skill packs?

I just pick a toon with the right class and go cap the elite myself - but then I have 13 characters and the only class I have not made as a primary is assassin.

I recommend getting, if you did not already, the 'game of the year' upgrade - it gives you several max stat bonus items. You can create an unlimited number of them, and hand them out to all your heroes.

I also recommend PUGing a lot. Many people will disagree with me, but I suggest doing it as a way to meet people, learn the community, and learn how to play in a team. You'll get some bad ones, and some immature ones, just as you do in WoW, but over time the bulk of it will be good. One difference is that because you can Hero / Hench the entire game, PUGs in GW don't get better as you get further into the game (unlike in WoW, where the bad players get weeded out early on) - the quality is about the same across the board. But overall its not bad, though the few bad examples are always easier to remember.

800+ quests available??? Geez I had no idea there where so many.
Yes we had the WoW drama for over 2 years. Call me crazy but at one time we had the 13th largest guild in WoW. We ran 2 MC groups, a BWL group and several 20 mans. Hmm I was crazy after all that. So you can image what a relaxing, refreshing time I am having here.

Your graphics card must not be that good.. GW looks 100x better on my comp then those screens.

Yea I realized that I had the settings turned down or off after I looked at thos pics again. Now when i take pics i have them at max.

Honestly, don't take pics with the settings turned up if you're trying to show what game play is like - take them at the settings that work well for playing the game.

Yea I guess that would be different for each peron then depending on thier computers, connections and vid cards. I can play it at max with no problems, for some reason I had was messing with settings and forgot to set them back.

BTW Lady. If no ones mentioned it yet, there is a wiki for guild wars at guildwiki.net which holds absolutely everything you might want to know about the game.

Its alot more user friendly then wowWiki, because it actually shows weapons and armor sets outside of their icons. You can preview armor, weapons and other items in nice big photoso and full sets before you buy them.

It also lists all...

Quests and how to do them,
Missions and how to do them,
Locations,
Dungeons and how to do them,
Explorable areas,
Areanas,
Armor,
Weapons,
NPCs,
Merchants,
Traders,
Crafters,
Collectors,
Dye combinations for armor,
Creatures and their skills in both Normal mode and hard mode,
Normal and elite skill information and boss locations to capture them,
Skill bar builds if you want to use a "cookie cut build" pre-tested,
Explanations of elite zones (such as the underworld, sorrows furance and the fissure of woe),
Lore information,
Heros and their information,
Pets and their locations,
Bosses and their skill sets,
etc, etc, etc, etc!

All of which is in a far easier to understand and reference then the WoWwiki website. I tried using the wowwiki when I played wow for 2 months and I found it be alot harder to reference information. Guildwiki is far easier.

Anything and everything is there if you need it.

Okay, am I the only one to say 800 quests was a huge exaggeration there.
I'd be surprised if there is even over 150 in each campagin. And the exapansion has the fewest.

200+ per campaign not including missions. Check official GW site; the description for each campaign, and use simple addition.

http://www.guildwars.com/products/default.php

Also keep in mind that quests like Zoe's diary consist of multiple quests, quest chains. Also remember that many quests have been added since those product descriptions were posted, so I'd say more like 900+ quests/missions.

Key thing about quests: the vast majority are totally optional.