I miss the old GW.

I'm sitting here listening to the soundtrack of the first Guild Wars, which came with my friends collector's edition...
You have no idea how many wonderful memories came rushing through me; kinda like diving into a freezing swimming pool or the feeling when your girl-friend slowly slides her hands down your pants..

As you can tell by the title, I really miss the old GW, and when I say this I mean before all these stupid expansions.

I remember getting out of pre-searing and entering the devastating Ascolon, it was as-if all hope was lost and you (along with the other 100,000 new players) were the only hope for the world of "Guild Wars."
As you fight your way through all the charrs, and learn more about the history and get deeper into the story, you find your way to Shiverpeaks.
I can remember the first time when I entered that zone; all the joy and tranquility! The beautiful flutes and violins playing in the background, the soft snow and then, OMG, NEW ARMOR SETS!
Then we get to Kryta, where the real action begins! The dreamy white beaches with all the undead that would spam you with poison, haha. This gave the game a whole new thrill, with fast and vigerous music. Not to forget that insanely hard quest, something that starts with "ashes." Ashes of Althea or something..
We encounter more twists in the story and get to the mysterious jungle. The missions were great and alot of fascinating scenery. But, imo, this place was not worth going back for ^^
We cross the sea and get to the great deserts. They seemed endless but still, very enjoyable. I could spend a long time running around there, exploring with friends (or npc's) trying to find all the huge statues.
Southern Silverpeak was meh.. And then we have the volcanoe islands xD
Now that was again, something very different! It was really hard, thats what I can remmeber.. A pain before getting your armor difused lol. Not to forget killing the evil roknark, or wutever his name was.

After completing the game with your main, you could still do alot of things. You could explore around, take the big challenges of going to FoW or UW (if your region had favor!) That was fun! but also very frustutated when you join PUG's that die instantly, because of some nub healer or a warrior that takes alot of aggro.. I have wasted so many 125g's on that lol. You could also join the "elite groups"; E.g. the 3man ranger trappers xD That was 1337! Or the FoW groups, my god that place is HUGE! Takes you hours to clear..
Then there are the chest runs at the fire-islands, and even FoW
If you were really really really bored, and not even the PVP was your taste, you could zone to Grotto and chill with the other's that have too much time to waste.. haha.. Run around on the ice that slows you down ^^

Then we have the holiday events They were great fun! Grenth vs. Althea (I think thats the other god's name) for Xmas, then there was Halloweend ^^ I still have my old Antlers and Christmas hats

The One thing that I always enjoyed, and still do, is Pre-Searing. On the very very rare occasions which I logg on GW again, I go straight to my lovely and sexy, female ele who's still in Pre. Out of the whole game, thats the only place which hasn't changed dramatically. There are still many people to talk and discuss with and alot ready to go out and have a great adventure with the chars ^^

You guys might be wondering what I actually miss about GW. Basically the community. Back then, I found it fun to play. You could always find great people to talk or evne debate with. And most importantly, it was filled with people! Now, LA is almost empty, the same with Ascolon city, the fire islands, drok's forge and so on.
Why? Beacuse of the expansions obviously.
But I think that there is a flaw with the expansions regarding the community. The only expansion that I got was NightFall. Yes, it was something new and doing the missions and getting into the story was fun. However, the community never was the same as the original GW. There, people focused on getting the game done, so they could get those end-game armors + weapons..
The most recent expansion (although it is a "new stand-alone game) is GWEN. I assume everyone is there, since Nightfall and the Original GW is almost completely empty =(

I'm sure that there are some other people that feel/think the same? It hasn't just happened to GW but also other mmo's such as World Of Warcraft (in my opinion.) The new expansion (the burning crusade) has ruined the "true spirit" of the original game, and I quit.

I will certainly keep GW installed though, and logg on once in a while and have some fun in Pre-Searing =)
One thing that the developpers could consider is adding more content to Pre-Searing. A patch with a new litle area, some new monsters, npc's and quest. Nothing too big though. Now that would be great!

Thanks for your time!

I miss it too, so does many other ppl, there have been loads and loads threads about it so why make new one.?

I lol'd. Great story though

Someone needs to get out more.

I rember in the Desert the hordes of monk bots at the mission Elona Reach. And when the new greens came out all the "Queen Farming" groups. And in the southern shiverpeaks a run from Becons Perch to Droks cost 5k.
Guild Wars has changed.

Well that would be interesting thing to do to Pre-Searing. I would not like it though as you mentioned it is mostly unspoiled. The Biggest change there is something that has little to no effect on the community at large. That is the ability to display the title Legendary Defender of Ascalon on your toon after reaching lvl 20.

I have only got 6 toon slots and 4 of them are perma-pre toons. I have a mesmer lvl 10, 2 war and one monk.

The thing that I like best about pre is that almost all of the toons there are real people. Some of them are because people have more than one account running but there is a RP behind all of the toons. This has kept the spirit of the game alive in this part. It also seems that as time goes on there are more and more people in Ascalon. The other day friday night there were 5 districts chalked full of people.

Must have been 300 people in Ascalon alone not to mention those that were out there killing charr and death lvling.

So come back to presearing and lets kill something.

Bob Thee Tomato is my monk that I made for the guild that I am in. Can you guess the name of the guild?

Althea's Ashes was in Ascalon not Kryta..and if you look back on that with fond memories...*shudder* i hated that quest


It's not. It's Dwyna

I agree with you, I really miss the good old days.
I have a lot of great memories of GW and did not want to give in to the change.
Now I'm at the point of just accepting that it are great memories but nothing more.
I stopped looking at the past and moved on.
Getting my hall as full as possible (for me at least) has become my new goal.
Although I hate grinding titles I'm at my 10th max in a few days now.
And the Zaishen keys give me something to look out for every month, they paid for 11 fugly destroyer weapons and my first ever FoW armor set (finally after three long years!!)

In short I love dreaming of days long gone listening to the old soundtrack.
But instead of dreaming all day I started to take action and prepare for things to come, whatever they are.

Well, let's hope GW2 brings it back.

fixed for you

haha, oh man. The first holiday event; where the cities got a transformation. Everyone went nuts.

The game evolved.

Villainy of Galrath was a bitch. that was the long one through 3 zones.

i do agree that i miss the old days. the runs from beacon's to droks, the insect queen farming groups, the days when AOE didn't scatter enemies.

one of my fondest memories was capping FoC with my friend. took us ages, but it was a great time.

how about the invasion of the murssat. lions arch had 43 districts during one of the holidays

Fix'd for the gaming community.

On topic, I actually wasn't a big fan of prophecies. I didn't really get into Guild Wars until Factions came out. Factions missions are fun, the new classes were interesting, the focus on high level content was awesome, competitive missions were a really fun idea (that was dumped ). By extension, I'm sure there are newer players who are nostalgic for the early days of Nightfall and older players nostalgic for the beta days.

Nostalgia is a funny thing that way, we're likely to disproportionately like the first things we get into. Your high school girlfriend was always the best one, the shows you watched as a kid were better than the crap on now, and the ham sandwich you had yesterday was better than the one today.

gw over the years has become more increasingly competitive
if thats teh word im lookin for
(hm, titles, standardized farming)

an example would be...
everyone wants tormented weaps
and so ppl have done things like create a standardized ursan farm build
"standardized" being the keyword

this is much like doing a factory job
it pays very well...but very repetitive and boring

this has removed the fun factor of jus doin random wacky stuffs

people would rather grind and grind and grind


the secondary (aka unnecessary) quests were pretty fun
a lot of ppl dun bother wit em nowadays tho cuz they dun reward well nuff

if they start rewarding better
gw would become a lot more fun

but it wont be that way...
the most difficult tasks r the ones that will be rewarded
and the most difficult ones r teh ones that ppl will run standardized boring farming builds

Don't forget Sorrow's Furnace. That place got pretty full too. Clearing it with a MM and a thousand minions was one of the more entertaining moments in my GW experience.

If you played(and listened) to MGS4,you'll get it.

For some reason, my brain immediately went to (Guild) "War, war never changes".

That was a funny. I remember logging on to see a small message about things "changing" in Tyria. People speculated for days on what a Mad King was and what he would do when he arrived.

Still if we were stuck in those old days GW would be long dead by now.

Q F T

Sir, hats off to you.

Old GW was sooo pro <3

Tomb of primeval kings being the pvp area.

Superior absorb runes where 100k z0mg good times good times.

I want it back it was the best game I ever played, now its all about teh titles.

I'd kill for it to return, no other game enjoyed as much as Guild Wars Prophecies alone...

Old School...

These are the good old days.

I keep thinking of making a pre-searing character, as I kind of miss that place, but all my character slots are full (and I refuse to use the ingame store until I get full hero parties or can buy a full hero party at it) so I tend to wander a bit in the rest of the game, look for things to do, sometimes I find something to do; mostly though I end up playing RA or minimizing the game and playing Dawn of War.

Speaking of Dawn of War, the Tyranids are confirmed

Don't worry, when GW2 comes out we can all be noobies again.

Yeup, it happens from time to time. It's good to remember the good ole' nostalgic times of Guild Wars.

However, I quickly remember why I wanted things to move on ASAP everytime I go back to Pre. Man is it boring!

Yes, Guild Wars has changed, but for the better.

Oh RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO.

What? Huh? Where? Oh, you mean it's STARTED to change for the better after plunging 50 km down the road.

OK, lets imagine that the "evil" expansions had never happened, do you really think there wouldn't be few people around in outposts? The game would have had nothing new for 3 years (the expansions was the basis of the business model, so yes I think it is fair to say this).
Given the number of people complaining about the lack of content updates in the last year, imagine if that were 3 years of nothing.

If anything I believe the expansions have led to there being a few more people around compared to if they had never happened, but we will never know.

Basically, you just miss the past.


Well I presume you mean DoW II, and why haven't THQ emailed me about this!?

If you think it'd "dying" after all of the balancing mistakes, it would be rotting to this day without all of the new content breathed into it.

Yes, it's changed for the better.

Yes, I remember that, and finding Gwen's flute ...

Eye of the North did an excellent job of bringing back those memories, in game, in character. And you bet that we felt joy in hunting down and slaughtering the Charr reinforcement troops that were heading south through the snow.

And further east the Charr homelands brought back memories of how Ascalon was before those beast unleashed the searing. And down we came from the mountains, our hearts beating with with joy as we sang a song of vengeance while our swords and arrows came down upon them.

I really appreciated these moment in Eye of the North, well done!!

Things that changed for the better... I for one am happy for:

-the introduction of the Skill Templates
-the removal of the Attribute Refund Points
-the addition of the Skill warm up bars (so you could actually see an enemy casting
-the PvP-isles
-the addition of the rune traders
-...

Probably some more things that everyone now takes for granted but weren't there when GW:P was just released.

Ugh, these nostalgia posts are TRULY annoying.

Dr Strangelove said it all: "Nostalgia is a funny thing that way, we're likely to disproportionately like the first things we get into. Your high school girlfriend was always the best one, the shows you watched as a kid were better than the crap on now, and the ham sandwich you had yesterday was better than the one today."

Of course when the game was fresh and new to everyone, it LOOKED better simply because we had no parameters to criticize. As the game ages everyone gets to notice and criticize small loopholes and flaws.

Seriously, Prophecies had as many flaws as the game has today, plus it had a lot of annoying features (or lack of, i.e. party screen, anyone?). We cannot deny that the expansions added a LOT of good, fun things too. The game definitely evolved and gained more depth, some like it, some don't. I see some GWGuru people QQ'ing about "how dead GW is" but what I see in a daily basis is quite the contrary - full districts nearly anywhere I go in PvE, even some less popular Faction missions are still easy to get people to PUG with.

If the expansions didn't get released, people would complain there was no content update for x+ years. We had expansions and people now complain they ruined they old nice game.

I certainly do not miss the old GW, without 4 professions, skills, party screen, heroes, hard mode, all that. Then again I'm mostly a PvE'r so your mileage may vary: game gained depth for PvE'rs, but might have lost some appeal to PvP'ers (athough I don't believe it, when we look at the past we had unbalanced shit like IWAY, so no one can say it used to be perfect...).

That's it, please stop bashing on such a great game, it has flaws, yes, but please learn to deal with them, as nothing in life is 100% perfect anyway. And what is past is past and won't return.

the soundtrack feels like this?
WHERE CAN I BUY IT!!!!????

...


ill go actually read the post now.

edit:
the community's changed because the game isn't new anymore. the "good old days" you described were like that because everyone was new to the game, there were still things people didn't know. the expansions aren't really the reason the community is now more jaded.
gw2 might be kinda like that if the gw community doesn't implode from negativity and whining before it comes out.

one thing i found that i liked about EoTn was that it was on the tyrian Map. i find the map changing very annoying. i liked everything being on 2 maps. (tyria and the GH/Pvp area map)
but i remember all them days that were mentioned.. going.. "O.o green weapons", great days they were. still gw can be great these days. IF YOU LET IT. depends on where you get enjoyment from the game imo.
but still days old and new are just as good as each other imo.

well, im glad you posted this. i fondly remember the old GW. i even still have my first gold drop. the best feeling of the old GW was not knowing what was out there. no day speed runs through a campaign, no guides on wiki to tell you exactly what to expect in The Deep... they really need an area that changes depending on the professions and skills a team has equipped.

LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE!

This is a game. On topic:

Yes, we all miss the days when you couldn't ping skills (bliss! ^_^), when there were no pve skills... pretty much just prophecies. Let us all hope that the GW2 debut is as jaw-dropping good as Prophecies. (and not as jaw-droppingly bad as Nightfall...)

Prophecies really is superior. A proper storyline (Nightfall... so much fun /sarcasm). Respectable cutscenes (everyone knows how awful factions scenes are!) . And yes, pre was amazing.

/sigh...

Even though I already started playing in Closed Alpha 2004, I kinda hated Prophecies (PvE-wise, of course).

The missions were/are (an often ill-designed) long and tedious pain in the ass. Luckily there wasn't even an incentive to do all of them, so most people (including me after the first char... and I had a LOT of chars, because there was not much else to do) just got runners for everything, effectively beating the game by playing 4 or 5 missions - although I don't know why beating the game would have been desirable. Reaching Perdition Rock for Elite Skill caps was already enough.

I also don't miss the non-existing flags or heroes, so I was stuck with uninfused crap-henchies that would do whatever they like, or even crappier PUGs, with most of the people running around in starter armor, with random skillbars, and the whammo-stereotypes ruining every mission.

I don't miss being stuck in Thunderhead Keep for days and weeks, because of above mentioned obstacles.
I don't miss being bored to hell, with no incentives for nothing in PvE.
I don't miss having nothing to do, being bored, seing my guild, friendlist, and mission outposts becoming emptier every day, while waiting for the big "Summer Update" (Sorrow's Furnace) that seemed to take forever to be released.


Sure, I do have a lot of fond and fun memories of old Guild Wars. But that's not because Prophecies alone would have been such a great game, but simply because Guild Wars was fresh and new.
I do realize that the current Guild Wars is a far superior product compared to the old vanilla ice that used to bore the hell out of me.
Now I am able to play the game alone or in groups, with plenty of goals (artifical and grind-intense as they might be, they are goals that motivate me to play and explore/beat *every* aspect of the game) to achieve, which I am able to do in bits and pieces whenever I have an hour or more of free time.


Anyway, that's just PvE-wise. When it comes to PvP, I do think that the original Guild Wars without any expansions was the better game. But that's another story...


[e]Speaking of which, I always thought that all the stories - Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall - were ridiculous naive and boring. Not to mention that even a 12 years old could see the major twists in the Prophecies story coming miles away.
Just because over the past years I saw so many people praising Proph for its story...

i play GW naked now, its opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me.

I think all of the "older" players miss it.... kinda a poignant post there my friend, but it's still one of the 100 others stating the same thing that you could find on here.... sorry if I'm just QQing

Hopefully, a new and refreshing breeze will clear out the haze with the coming of GW2.
And it will be a new beginning once again for us all.

I totally disagree that nostalgia is nothing but false, white-washed memories and it's all a lie. I have played a lot of classic video games and they are still fun.

The truth was that when Guild Wars first came out, it was extremely innovative in a time when the MMO market was absolutely terrible. Everything else was either a Korean MMO (i.e., grind-fests) or World of Warcraft. Even WoW is not exactly all that innovative in all honesty, it just does what it does better than anybody else.

When it first came out, Guild Wars had a lot of crazy ideas including NPC henchmen, low level cap, easily obtained max armor and max weapons, and highly-limited skill bars. The game also promoted extremely low grind for games of that time, and even more surprising, virtually no gold grinding. The latter is extremely important because many older MMO games forced you to grind for hours for money (just look at Final Fantasy 11's model) to afford the weapons and gear that you'd want.

Were some of the skills unbalanced? Sure. Were attribute refund points a dumb idea? Sure. But that was a minor complaint when the game was so fresh and so creative that you could overlook the flaws.

What happened was that, in time, other MMOs simply caught up and made them a lot better. Or they just made them really cheap to match Guild Wars (many new MMOs are "free"--and I say that in quotes since they aren't really free). Conversely, Guild Wars has effectively not kept up with the innovation that was seen in the first game. Each new chapter fixed some problems and tried to improve the game, but it's not like they were breaking the mold each time.

Also, it is obvious to me that ArenaNet really didn't understand the gaming community, and they also implemented changes to the game without realizing what impact they would have. For instance, I seriously doubt that if Factions was released today, they would still lock all the gates to towns. I bet that Jade Quarry would have been totally reworked or simply removed from the game. These are just a few examples. The point is that in time, a game community gets frustrated when it feels like the developers aren't really aware of what gamers really want, or they do know and then just say that they can't do anything about it.

I can definitely rant about this topic all day, but I think that I've made my point.