Some Advice for a Returning Player Needed!

Hello,

I've just reinstalled Guild Wars and Guild Wars Factions (thanks to people on this board, thanks!) and I've placed an order for Nightfall and Eye of the North.

I played this game 1-2 years ago and I'm wondering if there's anything new I need to know.

Back then, every party had to have one or two good monks in order to survive. Is that still true?

And are the new Dervish and Paragon classes any good?

Also, how is the community going? Are there a lot of people now? Is it easy to find people to do a quest?

thanks.

Yep, 2 monks in an 8-man party is good, unless you play specific builds.

For help, join a guild. A new Party Search was implemented, type "P" to access it

With Nightfall and EotN you'll get access to heroes, sort-of henchmen whose build and equipment you can customise.

At the moment, it's the Wintersday finale, so very busy servers every 3 hours!

Welcome back!

Dervishes are a good class yes especially for running people places and surviving, i still think warriors are by far the best melee class around though.

Paragons are there for boosts to your party with there shouts, not really damage dealers as such so personally i don't like em as i like to deal the damage rather than be the support.

you dont really need a good healer to survive.
just a good hero or healer henchmen.

Basically yes, but once you get Nightfall or EotN, you can get Monk heroes which can handle the healing quite well (if you set them up properly).

Yes, they are, but they are kind of "high maintenance". Both can be played in a very basic manner, but IMHO, to get the best use out of them you have to pay a lot of attention to your skills, the order in which you use them, your energy level, etc.

Now that GW covers 3 campaigns plus an expansion, there is a lot of people playing, but they are spread over a much broader area. It's more difficult to find a PUG in some of the more remote areas - but if you're in an active Guild or have a good group of Heroes (again, and I can't stress it enough - properly set up.) you shouldn't have any problems getting through the basic game.
The "community" is basically divided between good helpful people and "leet" twits - not too surprisingly.