I'm new to guild wars, which should I get?

I've never played guild wars before, but I've heard it was very good. And I've been looking into it and saw that they're not expansions and they are "stand-alone" games. So I would like some suggestions on which game to buy.
Please help. I also have a few questions about the online portion of guild wars. What can you do online? Like can you get items and sell them to other players online? can you do quests together? can you trade? please answer these questions but more importantly please tell me which game I should buy. Thanks.

all your questions= yes

buy nightfall

I second that

i personally prefer Prophecies. But because Nightfall has heroes and includes a larger variety of professions, i'll recommend it instead.

well the first game, prophecies, is a bit more newbie friendly to new players because it steps you thru the game slowly + good storyline + longest storyline + big map + slow leveling, 25 missions

the second game, factions, has a short storyline but you can lvl quickly, its more focused on pvp, 13 missions i think, +2 new classes assassin and ritualist

the third game, nightfall, has a story line in between, 20 missions. The leveling is also inbetween the first and second game, good story line, heroes + 2 new classes dervish, paragon


its ur pick you can start anything you like

There is a sticky at the top of this forum, "player on a budget", that covers the differences between the three campaigns.

For more general knowledge, visit the wikis at
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

what about if I like online? which has better online (pvp i guess)? thanks for the responses tho. and which has more people online, cause I want it to last as long as possible

i dont understand what your asking but u can do everything "online" :S this is a massively multilayer online role playing game

well the thing is a lot of people have more then one campaign, and u can connect them together, do a quest and u can go on both maps with that characters, so they are everywhere

The only way to play GW is to play online. PvP and the story itself must all be played online. As far as player population goes, I'd venture a guess at Prophecies. Can't speak for Nightfall because I don't have it.

You can also pvp from any of the campaigns. As already stated, everything is online and you link the games together so all three are busy with players and trading, etc. Read the posts about the different games because as you can see it is all a matter of opinion.

Prophecies was the original game and most agree it was the best. Factions moves your character along very quickly and gives you the options to do alliance battles. In my opinion it also had the best end game reward although to be honest it was my least favorite of the games. However, the ritualist is an awesome character so it is still worth it. Nightfall is better than factions as a game itself (imo) and the heroes are one of the best additions to the game in a long time. Heroes are henchmen that you can set skills and secondary professions for, once your character unlocks them you can use them most anywhere.

I believe there is a free trial that you might check out...think there is a link on the home page here, you could look at all three and see what you think.

Good luck and welcome to guild wars

Check the sticky at the top of the Q&A forums, and I suppose you've already gotten your answer. closed.