Why none of the chapters live up to Prophecies...

I still contend that my vampiric 14^50 req11 fellblade was the coolest weapon I ever owned.

I got me sum famez with it

Maybe it's just me being shortsighted, but methinks all the Prophecies haters did not play that game first.

CONSIDER:

Propehecies was ANet's first game. They had no past experience with making games, they had yet to earn respect among the gaming industry, they had no idea how players wanted things. ANet has a tendency not to update their older games to meet the standards of their newer games, so, it's understandable.

Prophecies is still the best. Besides, it's better than THIS. Behold the horror!

wrong, prophecies was my first game, i began playing shortly 3 months after the game had gone out, and the only reason why i managed to s urvive until faction came out, was because i was playing with guildies.

yes, it was their first game, yes, it was good, at least good for making one char, but when i made other professions, it was slow an d boring, and only second char got beyond the crystal desert.

when factions came out, i was slightly afraid that it would be like prophecies, slow and long, i didnt even thought i would be able to make it through with my monk. but unlike prophecies, it was a lot better, at least to me.

It depends on your gameplay style. People eager just to PvP or reach the endgame stuff want Factions. People who like traditional lore, a slow-paced story, and steady learning curve, like me, go for Prophecies.

Nightfall is somewhere between them.

ill agree to a point, i liked prophecies, i really did, enjoyed it playing it with my warrior, but, there was no way in hell i would do prophecies more than once, at least not as i did factions and NF and eotn, what i loved about the last series, is that i was able to play with the other professions, and not get stuck with my warrior, was able to learn the strenght and weaknesses of all the classes in less time that it would had taken me with prophecies, so the "shortness" of them, was a big plus to the variety play of the classes.

It's preference more than anything.

The time of Prophecies was the best because it was revolutionary...in 2005.

After that, the GW engine was outdated, and none of the expansions raised the bar. Gotta love Moore's Law.

I can relate to the op, in a few ways, for me Prophecies will always be the best chapter. For me some of the best and funniest times or groups i pugged with back in the day were the ones that didnt rely on build specifics.

Just a group of people who needed each other to fight thier way through a mission, no pinging skills, just get a group and go, no-one cared if you finished with a -60 dp, it was a lot easier to get along with people and the community as a whole were a whole hell of a lot nicer .

There's some overlap here between your notion of 'the game' and 'the community/mindset/whatever'. Then again that's a thing that has been influenced by newer game features, e.g. discussions about titles etc. I think for a lot of us the way people approached the game and the inventiveness (and probably ineffectiveness!) of builds and free-form, 'oh wow, everything is new' feeling of the game in 2005 is a precious memory; it was certainly the most fun time to PvP, for me at least.

I like the pace and tone of Prophecies, but yeah- the differences between the chapters is just preference, what you really miss is the feel and mindset of those days.

Prophesies:
Complete L1-L20 Tutorial mode (8hrs)
Complete Story mode/outpost mapping (6hrs)
--->Time before you can start playing 14hrs +-

Factions:
Complete L1-L20 Tutorial mode (2hrs)
Complete Story mode/outpost mapping (6hrs)
--->Time before you can start playing 8hrs +-

Nightfall:
Complete L1-L20 Tutorial mode (3hrs)
Complete Story mode/outpost mapping (7hrs)
LB Grind (20hrs)
--->Time before you can start playing 30hrs +-

GWEN:
Complete Story mode/outpost mapping (8hrs)
Rep Grind (60hrs)
--->Time before you can start playing 68hrs +-

Imo Factions had it best, but prophesies runs a very close second. If I had a gripe with the first game it is the amount of dead content - You are left with the southern shiverpeaks, the fire islands and the 2 god realms to play in, the rest of the world is made up of tutorial zones.

The best thing about prophesies was the community for the first month or so after release.

Traditional slow-paced, noncombat-oriented RPG.
Example: Zelda, because even though the enemies were not frequent and really didn't offer that much challenge, the puzzles and the boss fights were the biggy. The lore was rich, though I doubt anyone who plays it really got into it since it's too bedtime-storyish.

Fast-paced, adrenaline-pumped, combat-oriented RPG.
Example: Diablo 2. You can't go anywhere without constantly blowing something up, and that was the main attraction of the game. Hack-and-Slash requires no lore, no interesting quests or puzzles, because blood spilling everywhere and something constantly dying is undeniably fun.

Prophecies tried to pull off the traditional one, and it failed miserably because the storyline sucked, the lore sucked, the boss fights (what boss fights?) weren't exciting, there were no interesting puzzles, and the game took way too long.

Yes, Prophecies was my first game. I got into it in Presearing because it was actually fun. Then as soon as I hit post-searing, I got bored. I understand that GW was trying to pull off the skill-over-time thing, and it clearly hasn't worked out as soon as they introduced things like titles. Not going to get into the worst possible grind with no reward debate. But I agree, Prophecies was sort of the "golden age" of GW because it actually felt like a MMORPG with so many people on it.
I am not a big fan of the weak item system, but the GW PvP made up for it. But now the meta is boring and really, recent updates are...
For example, on one of the jungle missions I had to redo it at least 8 times because I kept falling asleep during the middle of the mission and wake up an hour later...

Because GW was successful by accident

Prophesies will always be waht i call home. I loved it. None of the others even got close to how good prophesies was. i loved the openness and the scenery. none of the others offered even a close 2nd to the scenery, unless maybe gwen. It does have some lovly areas. In prophesies, there was always something new around the bend to catch your attention. Factions drove me nuts. I did not care for the kurzik side of the map at all. To closed in. I prefer open areas. and nightfall was just bland. the monsters were a challange but the scenery was bland. it did have a few good areas..kodash bazaar and places like that, but not near enough to match prophesies.

Whatever campaign was your first, the chances are the others won't live up to the experience. Since Prophecies was a lot peoples first foray into GW, its always going have its bias. Just call it gamer nostalgia.

wiki may not have existed then but then again there was alot less to remember as things were simpler then (ie. u could buy all non elite skills in the game at emberlight camp so u didnt need to work out how to get all the skills etc.) so to be fair wiki is more needed than it was during the prophecies days

Thats not true in those days there was more repetition. farming was more rampant as money rewards from missions were lower, there was less to do in general. This resulting in people having more time to remake characters, have multiple characters complete the game and even more time for people to help friends do things (which helped the repetition become more fun and doing things with different people made you meet new people to play with and chat to)

Prophecies isnt really any more or less open ended than the other campaigns as you can still go back and do other things u missed. explorable areas may have seemed less crampt but in reality there was alot more pop-ups in prophecies than the other campaigns so there was probably the same amount of creatures per area on average. The only real difference being prophecies mission areas being only available during missions compared to the later campaigns which allowed you to explore these areas while not in mission.

Personally i still think prophecies had the best storyline as it wasnt as far-fetched as some of the later ones, it seemed more thought out. Your time in Ascalon gave to an affinity for the land (seeing the before and after) and the whole concept of having an npc who joins you but tragically dies was more original (perhaps not so in a general form but in the gw world it was, which would later be repeating in virtually all the campaigns)

I loved the longer leveling process of getting to lvl 20, it was fun and in those days the game felt alot less rushed, it could simply be due to the experience i had gained by the other campaigns but prophecies grind was alot more casual (with the exception of farming which to be far was only needed for the elite or rare items which werent really a necessary as collectors items could have the same stats)

all in all id say prophecies was the best campaign but alot came from the feeling of community that resulted from having a smaller land and less push to do things. Id also say prophecies was the best in terms of difficulty as the game wasnt overly hard neither was it overly easy but it seemed just right for the pro and the beginner (although this has since changed alot with the skill changes of the years resulting in a power slide of the players skills)

Exactly! This kinda sums it up.

You nailed that.

I do not totally agree to you, I like the Wiki for example, and GW really improved over time.

But they also had some ideas that really violated the original spirit of the game. It is getting closer to the standard MMO every day, title hunt has become the game.

I just hope they learn from GW1 and stop this trend and come up with something new, or GW2 will become GW 1.5 and continue some bad trends. I think they finally got the idea to do more for PvE, but to focus balancing on PvP and increasing PvE content even more could tear the game apart and make it fail in both.

I much prefer to start characters in Factions and level them with their heroes up in 8-10 hours of game play. Prophecies is too slow and no cash.

Woot, week-bump. I feel this can be discussed in more depth.

Truly Prophecies was home to some of our best moments, which may be the real reason it was so great.

Somehow when I think of the primary story quests, I remember Prophecies as exciting and lengthy quests that conveyed the story in an interesting way. For example, I loved the whole concept of going through the Northern Shiverpeaks, everything that had to be done, preparations, and all the problems.

For Factions and Nightfall, the primary quests to me are nothing more than "go kill thing, talk to NPC".

Just somehow, Prophecies felt different, it felt deeper. It definitely has a lot to do with the whole "everything was new" feeling, a feeling I truly love in every game.

You're confusing your nostalogic feeling with game quality.

Really.

Well I like proph the best, but I like the wiki. Why? Because after 3 years I already have discovered everything but I don't want to memorize the elite skill locations.

Titles.. Loved them, but I'm talking Survivor and Cartographer. Not the farm ones.

Factions comes next for best armor, music, proffesions, and the jade sea.

EN After that, I feel that the patrol system in EN's mobs allows you to dodge your way though zones. AKA Run yourself. It's also beautiful, and just all out fun to explore.

Nightfall.... The features were AWESOME. The campaign, I couldnt stand having soo much desert and like 40 groups of balanced enemy NPC teams per square meter.

Long live proph!

Wikis and forums like this is a reality of the modern gaming environment. I believe that developers will need to come up with new ways of implementing quests so that they are not always the same, and hence there can be more enjoyment in the exploration.

One example of such quests is the The Cipher of Blah quests by Kerrsh in Tarnished Haven. Instead of the quest objective being in one place, it could possibly spawn in a variety of places.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Kerrsh

Another great thing about Tyria, is that it has a lot more zones that are not related to the primary quest lines than Cantha and Elona.

Perhaps only 1-2 zones after Eternal Grove and Gyala Hatchery that are optional zones in Cantha, other than those, every zone is along the way of your primary. In Elona, only a handful of zones in the Desolation are optional.

I always enjoyed seeing the scenary from these optional zones for the first time. As for exploration, once you have a decent team setup, you should be able to go to almost any place in NM as you like. You should build up your skills and builds to be able to do this.

Cartographer and Vanquisher, while tedious titles, are great because it gives people a reason to experience every single nook and cranny of the game.

I also believe that all grind-based titles should be account-wide or have a smaller impact on the game.