Why did you originally purchase Guild Wars?

For me, I didn't have any other games on my PC that interests me. At the time I heard about Guild Wars through several peoples and they were saying it's a fun MMORPG without monthly fees. After sitting out the initial launch, I picked up Guild Wars like 3 months after it was released.

Primary reason: Dual classing and skill versatility. When I found out GW let you pretty much design your own class I was determined to buy it. No more "llolololol ur a enchantment shamen!11 go resto nuub" that I had gotten used to from playing WoW. No more getting shoved into a single role, spamming two buttons for an entire 20 minutes on a boss while getting chewed out by some dude in his 30s.

Secondary reason: Low level cap, more emphasis on story, rather than killing 20 of this, then 40 of this, then delivering some letter to some guy. Repeating that every day in a different order until level cap. On top of this, the big thing was that power wasn't given to players through items. Once you reach the top, you don't have to worry about someone with 10 hours of free time being better than you because they can spank a boss once a week.

The back of the box (game of the year edition). Who doesn't want an awesome looking ranger in awesome looking armor shooting awesome looking arrows out of an awesome looking bow at an awesome looking bone dragon? That, coupled with the "Your skill decides your fate" claim, and I just had to have it. Ah yes and the "Free online play" on the side of the box.

I was looking for an online game to play so my brothers friend gave me his spare account to try it... Played it for a day and decieded i loved it so bought my own account.

Haven't looked back yet.

My brother had been playing GW for a few months when I decided I wanted to give it a try. So he let me make a character on his account (an E/N), and I played it for a while, but kinda dropped it because I didn't really care for Ascalon after the Searing.

A year later, he's still playing it obsessively, and another of my friends got into it, so I decided I'd give it another chance. Picked up Prophecies, started playing...again, didn't get far. One of my friends got me Factions for Christmas (gave it to me a few weeks early), though, so I started playing that. I was hooked instantly. I quickly bought Nightfall and GW:EN. Haven't looked back since. I've never really been much of an MMO fan, WoW bored me, and FFXI was downright terrible. But GW, lacking in grind (for the most part), having instances that don't require me to deal with random idiots, having very cool settings (I absolutely love Elona), and of course being free to play, sucked me in.

Had my brother recommend it; figured I had nothing to lose since I could buy it and just play it whenever without a monthly fee.

i started playing because my best friend and other friends were playing it at the time ironically they have stopped playing (after nightfall was released i think) and i am the only one who still plays....

[Animate Bone Horror]

Exploiting the corpses of party memebers was fun before everyone got used to it.

It was originally something to play while my guild was waiting for the release of Lord Of the Rings Online, after having a great time on the open beta weekends, we've been playing Guild Wars ever since. (and not Lotro!)

Woaw great thread!

I was playing Silkroad Online for 2 months, started enjoying it past the early grind, then I saw the GOTY box in a GAME store (while the NF collector's edition wasn't very far up on the shelves), love the graphics for no monthly fee and in particular the artwork-lead game. Tried it, bought the other games and now GW is my MMO home .

I had a gift card from Christmas. I'd never played an online multiplayer before, and I'd seen XPlay (Morgan Webb wowser) review GW and knew it had no monthly fee. My susbsequent addiction has saved me tons of money I used to spend buying new games.

I was in my freshmen year of high school in the spring of '06. I overheard a couple geeks in my winblowz office class talking about this game where you play online with anyone, anywhere in the world. After checking it out on various google appropriated sites of recommendation and seeing no monthly payments I bought Prophecies. I'd have to say the one thing that keeps me around it is the one time fund transaction; conversely after paying for 1 month of WoW I just couldn't justify it...

Because Guild Wars could run on dial-up.

"Skill over time played" tagline. Fun betas that backed up the marketing. They need to fix that line for GW2. "Poopsockers game with no monthly fees!"

My friend got me in to the WPE in Oct '04 followed by the Beta events. We played every event ALL weekend long while hopped up on junk food and pop. I've been at it pretty much ever since (just not near as intense!)

elk

I played in WoW beta and was planning to get it, but kept putting it off until my classes were done for the year (May). Then I heard about GW just a few weeks before its release (April) and zomg better graphics and no monthly fee. So I got GW instead.

It looked good, ran well, no monthly fee, and PvP!!!

Same here plus free to play. It has been a great time sink ever since. Almost four years I have been playing and still enjoy it.

I didn't "originally Purchase" it.

I stole it when the guy in the store wasn't looking, Guild Wars just happen to be the closes game box to the door.

Of course now a days they don't keep the acctual disks in the game boxes, they are simply for show. So after getting home with my empty game box I took a look at it, saw it had PvP and NO MONTHLY FEE and thought, "Wow, this guy on the Box has a Bow in his hand fighting a Bone Dragon with Hamstring and Firestorm on his skill bar, I got to try this"

So I returned to the store, explained that when I was there earlier that "the wind" must have caught the box and blown it outside and into my hand just as I was leaving and that I was there to purchase the game.

They asked me to leave.

I went across the street to EBGames and bought a copy there.

Then stole an empty PS2 Display Box on the way out.

I gave my nephew the empty PS2 box for Christmas that year and acted surprised when it turned out empty. Man can that kid cry when he's dissapointed.

My Brother asked me to leave.

I guess he's not too big on Christmas.

A friend got it for me one day and it was awesome so kept playing it.
Then I saw the game play for factions, nightfall, and eye of the north so I went and got them.

Good reviews (8+/10 in Poland's biggest PC magazine), focus on Skill>Time and PvP.

Ho-HOOO I noticed after 2 years it started slipping.

because I was a magic the gathering junkie

Well as of last year, my friend had been playing gw for about a year, and I was all into Age of Empires III, CIVilization IV, Empire Earth II, Rise of Nations (all of them are historically accurate (some more than others) RTS games). He showed me the manuals, for all but Nightfall (I didn't care about it at the time) and eotn (I started playing on explore eotn week, so it wasn't out yet).

I enjoy reading my game manuals front to back, I also enjoyed fantastical literature. I instantly was sucked in to Tyria.

I spent an hour or so (I'm pretty fast) reading all the lore that Arduinna mentioned in the link the next night.

Was at the game store a few months later, I had forgotten Gw, but I saw the case, I remembered the lore, I picked up the box (Prof: GotY), I was re-assured of its awesomeness, I had around $75 in gift cards (save them when people give them to you, its a nice boost when something new comes out). I bought it (2005 was the last good RTS year imo) so, seeing as 2007 (December) had no good new games for me, I was confident that this should be a nice addition to my games (my first CoRPG , My MMo bank consisted of the fact that I played Runescape for a month, and WoW for half an hour). I was so pleased with gw, I haven't played anything else for more than a week since. (I don't play 4 different games a week, I play one for a few weeks another later etc.).

Lore brought me into Gw, and the new books will keep me here, and bring some new "Lorisitive" people into gw. (lore+inquisitive, gotta love poetic liscense)

My friends from another game told me about this new game that had some really nice graphics coming out. They showed me some screenshots and I thought it was pretty cool and nice looking so I got the preorder and we all played together. ^^;

Sad though.. none of those friends from then play now.. and here I am.. still playing. xD

Got it as a present.

A friend told me to. She hardly even played, and after the game was released she never even figured out that the entire game wasn't just Presearing.

Online friends I played Quake3 / Enemy Territory with started playing GW's so I checked out the website and the original trailer is hands down the reason I wanted to buy the game. After that I was just addicted Also like others those friends no longer play.

Here is youtube link to that trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94_U8byqTBg

Ok, try not to laugh to much at this...

A friend talked me into playing WoW. Before I could I had to replace my old Pentium III computer...

So after purchasing a custom built computer I went out and picked up a copy of WoW and a 2 month membership card. Installed the game and found myself waiting for about 300meg worth of patches to download. Then the game crashed...

I tried twice more, then replaced the game from the store twice. I took the game and my computer back to the store that assembled it and they tried to instal and run WoW.
Still it would not work.

So I went back to the store to return WoW, I was stuck with a card that could not be returned and was useless after keying it in to start the patch download. That was when I spoted the pre-sale for Guild Wars.

Five minutes after I got home I was running around Pre-Searing Ascalon and for nearly 4 years I have enjoyed the game. Never have I been more thankfull for a computer incompatibility in my life.

Side note my computer is still runing strong and I have never come across another piece of software that wouldn't run on my system!

Nov. 19th, 2005

My ex boyfriend made me buy Guild Wars, when we were at the mall about to go line up 4 hours early to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. >___> He thought it would be nice that I too play the game with him other than Starcraft and Warcraft. He had bought the game for himself in Oct. A month before I started out.

I sat there waiting in line reading the manual for Guild Wars. lol.

i bought it to play with friends who were raving about it

I heard about it but never really gave it much thought.

Until I read alot of reviews saying it was phenomenal. So I got it and tried it out.
Haven't stopped since

THIS
...and my friend told me it was 1337

The mmorpg I was playing was being switched off and some people on there suggested this as the next 'thing'. Was the best 'money to game time' investment I ever made. =)

I gotta say for not having user-made content, this does indeed have a crapload of game in it.

I had my 16th birthday in 2005 and I usually wished a game for a present. I didn't have anything better in mind so I wished for Guild Wars, because a magazine had praised it. So I got it and it was my first online game. I was shaken that there were other PEOPLE playing the game with me and was too scared to talk to anyone at first. But I enjoyed the game until 2007 or 2008

1. no monthly fee
2. henchmen, so I could play by myself if I wanted
3. instanced world, so no griefing (this was my 1st MMORPG, and I had heard about griefing happening in those other games)

After almost 4 years, I still love this game, still average ~3 hrs a day.

Played Diablo II for awhile. Some of the D2 blogs talked up Guild Wars prior to its release - decided to give GW a try - obviously liked it: I'm still here.

Computer Gaming World FTW! I used to skim my dad's CGWs when I was supposed to be dusting their room (though in its later years, when I was older and it was considered more appropriate for me, I just started hijacking it as soon as it arrived in the mail - even today I've usually read his new issue of PC Gamer in its entirety before he gets home from work the day it arrives), and while I only barely glanced at the Prophecies review (though I would be unwittingly stealing elements of Cynn's armor for my own character sketches for quite some time after seeing her on the cover of that issue), I was completely enthralled by the Factions preview. Something about that big picture of Nika crouching, dagger in hand, on the cover made little 14-year-old, newly minted otaku me go "Wow, that looks like a neat game" and when I saw the screenshots of the environments and armors, I knew I had to have it. I'd been dying to try multiplayer games for a while (I'd been eyeing WoW too, and I won't deny that the appearance of that one elf gal who was in all the ads for EQ informed the looks of my Star Wars crossover character, Xuta Ahnenjei, in her younger years), but I knew my dad refused to play them because of the fee. So when I saw that Guild Wars, in addition to being stunningly beautiful and seemingly very fun to play, was simply paid for once like any single-player game, I figured I stood a chance. Being a kid, I was too nervous to ask my parents. So I employed all the cheesy things kids do to push parents towards a particular present (that's right, Factions was my equivalent of an official Red Ryder carbine action, 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time ), reading and rereading the article whenever we were all together, and subtly hinting about it. No cigar. I kinna gave up on it for a while, though the Nightfall ads looked enticing.
Then, in freshman year, I don't recall why (probably because I was finally getting sick of Oblivion), I decided to take a look at the game online. I googled it, came up with GuildWiki, and immediately began to browse. I started to look at the professions, their roles, their armors and dances, and was completely enamored of the Ritualist. In my head, I started to build a character. At that point, getting the game was inevitable - this always happens to me; I'll tell my dad I won't play his game (most recent example: Fallout 3), but then my mind'll start to form a character, from looks to stats to playstyle, and I have to make it or I'll go bonkers. So when I started running off images of a Rit, an Assassin (yep, li'l Gui got her professions reversed in the creation menu - she was originally supposed to be an A/N), an Elementalist, and a Ranger (Xuta was initially created as a ranger before being reworked into a Monk when I felt it was more Jedi-ish and less self-insert-ish), marking down their general builds, armor color, age, Luxon/Kurzick association (at the time I thought it was on a character-by-character basis), and a few Chinese names I'd gotten off my friend Lidan (I even got backup names, which was a good thing - Qing Guang and Gui Qiang were originally supposed to be Ai Ping and Fu Mei, but they were taken already), there was no way I was not getting that game. I dug up Dad's old magazine with the Factions preview, gathered my parents together, and asked them if I could get it if I paid for it myself. Surprisingly, after a few questions about the game from my mom and the extraction of a promise that I wouldn't get hung up on the game (right, like that one stuck), they said yes. It arrived just as school was wrapping up, and I blissfully spent the summer exploring Cantha.
*nostalgia moment* Ah, that was before the drama. See, I never have those "oh, remember the good old days before ANet did this/released this/nerfed this" moments. But I do remember the innocent days before the nasty breakup of our guild's leadership (we never expected it would happen, given that they all knew each other in real life - ironically, that was precisely why it happened - guild leader had a big fight with his brother, then another with his roommate, then got dumped by his long-term girlfriend - and all of them had been officers - and poof! the old hierarchy disintegrates). Things are better now, and our little splinter guild is staying afloat (and except for the two leaders, we and the old guild don't hate each other anymore)... but I still miss the days when it was just me, Jordy, and Sarah saving the southern continent yet again.
Still as good a game as when I bought it, though, IMO, and I definitely don't regret getting it - heck, I've talked two of my school friends (one of whom was a WoW player until she couldn't afford it anymore) into playing it with me.

well my sisters boyfriend had it and i tried it out, it was pretty fun and i was sick of FPS's

It was free [besides buying it]