When was the peak of Guild Wars?

Not that ArenaNet really cares about balance these days, of course.

I think as long as they didn't introduce any new game mechanics, it wouldn't have been too hard. New mechanics are mostly what made expansion classes so difficult to balance. Ritualist spirits. Shadow stepping. Chants.

Chronomancer, for example. Time slowing spells? Hexes that slow enemy move/attack speed. Old mechanic, counters are already there, easy to balance. Speeding up? Enchantment that boosts allies.

qfe. there was no "hello players, welcome to the game. i hope you enjoy it and have a good time with us." again. the tournament made the game well-known and showed a nice connection between players and developers. too bad i never get the same feeling gvging as when i watch the promotion videos from the gwfc.

SF , and when we for the first time saw green items ! and also when HA moved and in Tombs we had green items , that time was great !

but I believe there was a peak before SF , I remember when they nerfed the smiters monks many people left GW.

***sorry for double post***

For PvE>> when SF came out.
For PvP>> When they still had world championships.

The original spirit spam, not the later rit or n/rit versions. Back in prophesies days ranger teams would block of corridors doorways and ramps with hoards of nature spirits because you could have multiple copies of the same spirit and on top of that NR removed all hexes/enchants every time one died. It killed tombs because you could practically guarentee yourself a win in halls once you got your first win and people would hold it for hours at time and then pass it off to friends.

Honestly, I think GW right now is pretty goood...I've gone through the update notes for back then and I must say, the game was retarded.

No rune trader, no inscrips, infusing 1 item at a time? Sounds like a horror movie (cue flames from 4 year vets telling me I am noob for WANTING the option to have inscrips & runes readily available...)

<--- 4 year vet here...

I want Inscription and Mod trader (hell, would be good for farmers too)

you did miss the worst thing though, attribute refund points, thats the best update they did getting rid of them

-The SF update month-thingie: More PvE and no more refund points? Thank fricking god.
-Around Factions with World Championships. Ooooh those were awesome as hell...

Samies, please. Trading should be hugely centralized around vanity, not utility.

I think I enjoyed PvP up through the Winterfest Tournament. And my interest was waning then.

Good catch...I forgot about those...

All these ppl in game and guru wax nostalgic about how great GW was back then because sup absorption runes cost 100k & Sins were useless & *insert retarded "feature" here. But I remember when my Sin was my first toon, I had just started playing GW and everyone hated me in Pugs. I stuck to my guns, my Sin is my main to this day, and I could give a shit about SF nerf because I've used my Sin just fine for 8 months BEFORE they buffed that skill. Right now, things are good. GW is HELLA refined, with all the stupid shit taken care of, and anyone who says "lol GW is dead" needs to gtfo the GW forums and go play WoW.

They never really were.

I'm going to go against Popular Opinion and say RIGHT NOW is the best time to play Guild Wars.

The Zaishen Quests have rejuvenated the game. I can actually do Hard Mode with PUGs now. The Traveler is frickin' genius, the farming is not too bad, and you never know what you're going to get for your troubles.

I've even started playing PvP, and while PvE is still my favorite, it did allow me to finally get 100,000 Faction (much easier than I thought) to get those dreaded "PvE only skills" everybody hates...

and guess what: I'm not complaining about "Save Yourselves!" because I can finally do Hard Mode now.

Wow. That update at the end of Septermber... just wow.

I was only starting PvP around that time, so I haven't really felt that change because I hardly played prior to it... but looking at it today, I can see how many modern builds that update created and how much degenerate stuff it killed.

who the hell knows, lol. hard to pick a single peak amongst 4 years of gameplay =P

Sorrow's Furnace easily. Prophecies had that one last Hoorah.

Early November '05. Sorrow's was going great as everyone else has said, just had the first in-game event with masks and the Mad King, and it was before the first-of-many bad AI "updates" (the original scatter nerf, that later led to all sorts of weird and stupid AI changes and bugs), before loot scaling, before hard mode, and before the overpowered-skills-escalation begun with Factions culminating with EoTN and the PvE/PvP split.

I agree with Sorrow's Furnace as well. I remember the excitement that expansion generated, the additional skill level that was required, etc. Insanely fun.

I really didn't like the introduction of Green Weapons, but meh...at least they made the area replayable.

To me, Guild Wars had a peak of about 12 months after Sorrow's Furnace. Factions had its downsides, but it introduced a bunch of new concepts that continued to make the game exciting. Toward the end of Factions (and at the beginning of Nightfall), the game started to take a pretty steep nosedive. Not sure what drove this, but I'm guessing that the introduction of some of the "new" features of Nightfall was partially to blame, along with the continued spreading of the player community and the simple aging of the game.

When they announced GW2

For me, Sorrow's Furnace. There have been ups since then, but mostly downs.