Why did you originally purchase Guild Wars?

Honest to god story

I bought GWGOTY because it was sitting next to WoW and I bought the wrong one, I meant to buy WoW. I was playing GW for almost 2 weeks asking myself "where are all the elves and crap?" After ! figured out I had the wrong game I went back to Frys and bought WoW, figured out I had to pay 15 bucks a month, the graphics looked like Disney on crack and the main cities were filled with emo kids that annoyed the crap out of me. Quit WoW went back to GW and never looked back. It's been almost 3 years since then and I have to say it was one of the best mistakes I've ever made.

I picked up this Game because I read it was skill > time, that was Revolutionary bak then. No other game I know of today even is like Guildwars even tho the skill > time may not apply PvE anymore its still one of the best games ever

A couple of friends at Uni bought it for me (Late 2005) because they felt I should branch out from the normal games I played. Before I was into strategy based games such as Civilization (I, II, III & IV) and Age of Empires (All) and had never tried my hand at online gaming. At first I was a little sceptical about it because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. After a few weeks I gradually became more addicted to it and although I've been on and off playing it the past year or so, I still feel the "need" to play it.

As an added sidenote, the friends who introduced me to the game stopped playing after about a year.

@Robbeh The Mad: lol at that mate, great

best reason so far

Ha ha ha. That's a brilliant story.

I was due for a new game and GW looked pretty. It was an impulse buy really. I don't regret it for a moment.

Beta Events rocked my socks off ;d

Then, a lot of factors decided, like the best business model that seemed most fair, one world - no separation to different servers, amazing graphics, balanced build wars PvP concept seemed really cool and innovative... I could type a wall of text full of reasons, but overall it was closest to an ideal game of choice I could find then... and might still be even today. Now GW2 getting rid of what I didn't really like about GW1 will be an instant buy for me.

I was going to get WoW first, but the $15 a month was a turn off.
I saw GW on x-play and got it because it was free and had pretty graphics.

Wandered into EB Games when they had a sale and browsed idly for any RPGs that looked interesting. There were a couple of boxes of the GW Special Edition available at half price, the box's screenshots looked nice, and it was an MMO that had no monthly fees so I thought I'd give it a try. At half price, if it turned out I didn't like it I wouldn't have lost much, and if I did like it then getting the Special Edition with the art book and music code was well worthwhile.

Had a few buddies I played Dawn Of War and MOH:AA with that were participating in the beta for Guild Wars so when it came out I decided to pick it up because they said it was a good game.

Saw the box in a store, went home, checked it out, fell in love with the ranger ranger's beast mastery line and nature rituals, tried to torrent it and failed.
So I kinda had to buy it if I wanted to play it.

being a diablo fan id heard ANet devs were part of that team at blizzard, i thought that worthy enough reason to check it out.

Ha ha ha ha that made me roll over laughing.

Played the beta and really like it however, I didn't have the money at the time to purchase the game when it launched. In August of 2005, my friend who I had played the beta with gives me a call and says he found a copy of Prophecies for $2.99 in a plastic case in a bargain bin at CompUSA. He got it for me and I've been playing ever since.

While I'm not as hardcore a gw player that I once was, I still enjoy playing a few times a week and chatting with the few remaining "old timers" left from some of my former guilds.

I'm really hoping that gw2 provides me with the same enjoyable gaming experience that I"ve gotten from gw1.

I felt I was missing out - the whole world and its dog were playing MMORPGs, be it WoW or Evercrack or FFXI. Didn't want to pay monthly subs, so GW was the way to go.

Never regretted it for a minute.

i was working at compusa back then when ALOT of people started asking for gw factions,so i decided to get a copy for me tried it and i still love it ,i started playing arround june of 2006.

The only other RPG type games i had played in the past were Neverwinter nights, dungeon siege and way back when, Darklands (yeah, google it). I was tired of MOH:AA and had read some stuff on Guild Wars. I have had lots of love for Guild wars since it came out. I took a few breaks here and there but every game i played didnt have the staying power of good ole GW.

1st game on first comp, didn't have a subscription fee, lmao

I actually bought it because I loved the random PvP game play during the beta event for Prophecies. It was so casual-player friendly and easy to pick up. Bummer that it didn't stay that way when I bought the game years later.