Least favourite Guild Wars campaign, and why.

Factions. It started the downward spiral into shit state the game is currently in.

Original Guild Wars aka Prophecies

Long..rather boring storyline,to much evil (Charr, Mantle, Stone Summit,Mursaat, undead, Titans...pick 2 or 3 not the whole lot -_-) Long long long distances in between outposts, missions are quite fun,,,not all of them, slow character development, all the elites cramped into the last areas of the game.

Im just glad i started out with Factions find it more fun and faster. Closed dors are there for a reason. Bad voice acting but otherwise F.U.N.

I cannot say that I hate or dislike one game any more than the others. After playing through all 3 stand-alones as well as the expansion on several characters/classes I have found ups and downs to each game.

A loooong while back I may have said that I disliked Prophecies most, because it is long and drawn out. You lack your full attribute points until almost the very end of the game, and the hench suck for the most part. Yet, on the other hand, being drawn out is also a strength of the game if you are a beginner with the class you are playing. The slow progression of the storyline allows you to fully learn the class you are using by giving you skills slowly as you move forward. The skills quests are another plus to Prophecies, who can say no to free skills? However, after playing through once or twice, it gets repetitive and you just get tired of waiting for it to be over. You end up being bored with the missions taking so long, with taking forever to run anywhere, etc. In addition to this, the storyline was sometimes disjointed and hard to follow.

Factions was radically different. It offered a smaller campaign and removed the ability of being ran to the end - at least in the tradition sense of that it occurred in Prophecies (lvl 2 monks in Ember Light anyone?) - which was one thing I greatly liked. After all, if you're not going to play the game, then what's the point? Factions was the first of the games that I tried playing and failed miserably because I leveled too fast without any previous knowledge of the game. After I played a Necro, a Ranger, and a Monk through Prophecies, I came back to Factions and did much better. I enjoyed leveling faster and having all of my attribute points when I left 'noob' island, and Factions quickly became the birthplace of most of my characters for this purpose. I also found that I enjoyed the Factions storyline more than Prophecies. To me, it simply made more sense and was less "thrown together as an afterthought." Keineng is very hard to navigate because of it's design, but I didn't find it any worse than the Crystal Desert in most cases. Beyond the city, both the Jade Sea and Echovald Forest offered lovely scenery to enjoy, which was a plus. I also enjoyed the timed missions, they offered a new type of challenge, even if they were frustrating at times.

Nightfall struck me as the attempt to balance the differences between Prophecies and Factions. You had the length and run-ability of Prophecies with the mission locking ability of Factions. Nightfall also offered a decent storyline and the new use of heroes. However, the requirement of heroes in missions was annoying. The beginner island introduced us to a leveling speed somewhere half way between Prophecies and Factions, with plenty of quests intended to have you almost to level 20, with your sunspear title decently built, before heading off the island. The beginner area wasn't all that bad except for the vast areas you had to cover to complete a lot of simple quests, that got boring real fast. Nightfall also had a cross between some timed missions like factions, and untimed M+B like in Prophecies.

Eye of the North offered another decent storyline, but like Factions, was relatively short. I find the alternation between long campaign and short to be a breath of fresh air as I don't really want to slog my way through long storyline after long storyline. EotN also gave us new heroes and introduced missions where we didn't have to worry about the NCP dying and jeopardizing the mission. We could let them die all we wanted; this was much appreciated. I think the only thing I considered a 'downside' to EotN was needed to build the titles for skills and armor; it was sort of a grind fest, but if you are building titles and enjoy exploring, then this actually wasn't much of an issue. New dungeons were an interesting change of pace as well as were the introduction of books for completion (hello free money!).

So, I can't say I like one game better or worse than the others. They all have their pros and cons for me.

Nightfall. I didn't like its storyline very much and it just never hooked me like proph & factions. Only thing from nf I like is the heroes & armor. Its sooo boring to play through :/

Nightfall. For the same reasons as Nessar specified.

The age of the game "kills" the game only for players that have p[layed through the game for the time it has been out.. What kills the games are other games of the same type....Why do you think Halo CE is out of commision..because Halo 3 is out......regardless

I agree that the 'Hopes of our opinions effecting GW2" is just silly...and shouldnt be taken seriously.On top of that people who give propositions dont even play the game anymore 0_0.. as a bove person posted..Why are you still here just move on..no ammaunt of love for the game can keep you here when your posts completely state the oposite

Being in GW universe for 3 years i find the game not dead..

Nightfall is my least favorite. I couldn't ever even finish making a Nightfall character because I disliked the start so much. The rest of the campaign doesn't ever really get any better. Prophecies is by far the best, even with the low leveling. I still remember being able to cap elites from bosses ALL OVER the campaign... I really wish they would have just put that back when they added tomes and things.

I don't see why someone would waste their time on a fan site if they don't play anymore, not even a little. Seems like a waste of effort if you 'don't care' about the game anymore. The likeliness that ones 'opinions' will influence GW2 when you don't care enough to continue to play GW1 is unlikely; so I'm going to agree with Ghost on that.

I also agree that having been playing for over 3 years now, I don't find the game dead at all. I look forward to playing it for quite some time yet.

Because I like GW, find it to be an enjoyable game, and can play it the way I want to play it?

Wow, what a concept...

Most of those who don't play but still post have a name, troll. As far as the OP it has to be Factions, still try and avoid it to this day.

Uh...you'd be surprised how many people post on these forums but don't actively play the game anymore. I can probably think of at least 10 people off the top of my head alone who don't play at all. When I say actively play the game, I mean playing regularly like every day. Hell, I'd even make a bet that active GW players are the minority on these boards nowadays. I only play GW once a week or so...I don't put myself in the active community.

I took a few months off from the game between the end of December and whenever Nicholas was introduced. I still spent some time on the forums, which is how I heard about Nicholas in the first place. I didn't have anything to do in the game, but I was still interested in potential updates.

Also, a good suggestion can come from lots of places -- even people who are new to the game. Or from people who played for a long time then gave it up. Do you think ArenaNet would ignore a good suggestion just because the player is new or not currently playing? Key words being "good suggestion," of course. If Guild Wars was a game I was designing, and someone said "hey, I used to play the game a lot. But I lost interest... if the game just had X and Y features, though, I'd still be playing," I'd be a fool to ignore that.

Obviously you don't take player input as "this must be done," but you do listen to feedback, particularly when it shows how you could have kept your customers around.

While I do not do any of the longish Prophecies missions for zoins, it is my clear favorite.

Worst campaign?

-> EOTN. Or Nightfall.

There is a lot to love about both of them, do not get me wrong. But as many people already said:

* Skill power creep (Try playing Prophecies in Hard Mode with only Prophecies skills, and then do it with all the extra skills and PvE skills)
* PvE skills (started out nicely, and EOTN overdid it to the extreme)
* Consumables (once they wanted to get away from potion quaffing on cooldown like in Diablo, but suddenly they add something even better and also somewhat expensive easy mode cheat items)
* Heroes (great idea, actually. But it has drawbacks. IMO grouping was already dead. But customizeable henchmen are just too good and they did not adjust difficulty for Heroes at all, even more power creep)
* Smaller Maps (Prophecies was unfinished and had barren areas, but it had at least a world feeling. Especially Cantha felt extremely tiny.)
* Grind (yeah, yeah, it is all optional ... the wonderful grind for PvE skill faction ranks.)


As GW2 is supposed to have a very high or no level cap at all, and more meaningful drops of equipment for PvE, that somehow get downgraded for PvP, sidekick system and so on... I think it is time they release some more information.

They really emphasized the back to the MMO roots tendencies already seen in EOTN/late Nightfall in that PC Gamer interview. But there are already games out there who do that. Better than GW. As a grinder GW is subpar to fully fleshed out MMOs.

They better go back to the basics of their first chapter and add the good things they learnt in the other chapters. And retain GW's concept of low level and item cap. There is really no need to create just another MMO and call it GW2.

Well, then go check that memory.

Elites in Prophecies are ALL packed towards the end. They appear only in The Crystal Desert missions, the Southern Shiverpeaks and The Fire Islands, and way to many of them appear only inside missions (and ONE elite that appears only inside a mission and has no counterpart outisde missions is one too many).

Unlike Factions or Nightfall, with 3..6 monsters and elites per area, starting from the Port city. You can make the Signet of capture quest to capture an lite, but in Prophecies, you don't find the first elite until Kepkhet Marrowfeast. Talk about 'all over the campaign'. Meh.

Prophecies had lots of them in one single area, while the other areas have bosses with 0..4 normal skills and no elites. And there are way too much level 20..26 bosses with no elite.
That's bad. Things are better when they are spread, so each area has some importance.

The next person to start something about whether players who no longer play are allowed to still contribute is going to not be posting.

And that's not even mentioning the "this boss can spawn in 1 of X locations... if it spawns at all" thing...

This.

I'm trying to get Legendary Skill Hunter - I've already finished Cantha and I'm likely to finish Elona next despite the fact that I started capping in Tyria first. It's extremely frustrating trying to find that ridiculous boss which never spawns, or having to run through Ring of Fire half a gazillion times to cap something...

EotN is by far the worst campaign, particularly in Hard Mode. By far. It simply isn't FUN. You can beat it, get your titles, etc, but at the end of the day it felt like work. In fact, it often feels like you can hear the developer snickering about how they screwed you over. NOT a good design strategy.

Obnoxious damage, obnoxious defense, double movement speed, snare spam, blind spam, KD spam, obnoxious and ubiquitous monster skills, and on and on....

Is it beatable? OF COURSE! Is it fun? Nope.

It invites poor play/players by encouraging gimmicky builds, dependency on Consumables and dependency on PvE skills. It's basically the OPPOSITE of what Guild Wars was at it's inception and a dreadful failure, IMO.

Prophecies takes longer to get to level 20 because it was about the journey more than the level cap. 5% of the people that play MMO's seem to get that, the others are speed racers and then make ignorant statements because they played it the way it wasn't supposed to be played.

My least favorite was Nightfall, besides not being that fun, it brought a lot of stupid things.

The problem is that when you match this up to the later two campaigns, it really does seem slow. Compare the other two port towns: Kaineng City, by which time you should be level 20 or approaching it. Kamadan is easily accessible by characters of all levels, but by the time you can actually legitimately take the quest to Lion's Arch or Kaineng, you should be Consulate Docks worthy - that is, level 20.

By which time you'll also already have done both your attribute quests.

Compare Prophecies. You'll hit LA at a significantly earlier level, you won't have your second attribute quest until some time later - and meanwhile, the people travelling from Factions and NF are already level 20, with max armour which you won't get until Droks unless you port over to Kaineng or the Consulate Docks. They have both attribute quests done, they're level 20, which puts them at an advantage over you.

You can say it's all about the journey, and this is true. My first character's a Prophecies girl, and I loved playing through the whole storyline slowly, bit by bit. All well and good. On the other hand, after I created a Canthan necromancer who got her attribute points fast (while I waited aeons to get them on my Prophecies monk) - that's when Prophecies starts making you feel a bit gimped for starting on it. Especially with respect to the attribute points. Level cap is much less of a big deal than the fact that a Prophecies character will take much, much longer to get those 15 points than a Factions or NF character.

I know that people can get burnt out on Prophecies. But if you got Factions first, then Nightfall, then went to play Prophecies and got mad because it was taking you longer, that's who my post was aimed at. I mean you can blame Anet for making it faster, instead of just sticking to the story telling for as long as they did in Proph (which was good, cause I know a lot of people like to rush, especially when they've done it more than once or twice), but it's not entirely their fault.

When you get spoiled, that's the kind of stuff that happens.

Also what kind of advantage will they have?? You can create PvP characters, so it's not there. They might be able to make money faster, but if you have all 3 campaigns, then you can create a fast leveling character too.

The only thing Proph has going against it, is people being burnt out on it after playing it once or twice or more than that. But that's not who my above post was aimed at.

Besides it doesn't matter with EoTN. You're level 10 at Lions, you go to EOTN and you're 20 in under an hour. The only reason you play Proph all the way through, is for the story and maybe titles and what not, but then it's kind of silly to go around saying it's your least favorite because it was made more for the story.

I did say attribute points - the late stage at which you get those attribute points is a pretty big disincentive for me to make another Prophecies character, tbh.

I think those of us who started with Prophecies will always tend towards a different view from those who started with the later campaigns. I started playing in '06, started contemplating a second character after getting halfway through Factions on my monk, and was really shocked when my friend told me that level 20 came much, much earlier in Factions, and that people expected me to be level 20 straight out of Kaineng. I think if I'd started with Factions and adapted to that system of levelling, I'd have found Prophecies too slow. (As it is, I personally think Factions throws you into the deep end way too fast.)

Ah well. Whole thing's subjective anyway.

I hate Factions cause I generally get lost in the Kaineng city area.

Unlike many other games, in GW, you train, then play.

So, by the time you finish your training and can get to the Battle Isles to do PvP stuff if you want, you should be ready.

Level 20, 200 attribute points, at least one elite, level 20 equipment...
You can do that in Factions and Nightfall.
You can't do that in Prophecies.
So, either the city from where you get to the Battle isles, and get the signet of capture quest should have Been Droknar's Forge, or the monsters should have been started getting elites and be level 20 from lion's arch (and the attribute point qust should be before or around lion's arch).

They tried to fix the mistake in Factions, and got carried away, the land is so small that the training area can be left under level 13 if you skip stuff, although by doing quests there you are be able to get to level 20 easily.

They did it finally right at Nightfall, though. Not too fast, not too slow.
Nightfall is lacking in the green landscape department, thought. It could use more tropical areas with green all over the place. You get tired of so many yellow, red and brown everywhere.

Factions

1) Duplicate skills
2) Arborstone mission's ceiling collapse
3) AoD and Recall
4) The entire 'city' portion of the game
5) The voice acting (Beware... the Harvest... Ceremony!)
6) Elder Rhea
7) Stick through man's chest (Minister Cho's Estate)

Factions had some pretty god awful PvE design. Having mobs composed entirely of elementalists that would spike the first target in their aggro range was pretty retarded. Getting hit with 15 x 56 damage mind freeze when trying to pull a mob is not good game design.

Nightfall.

1. Too many deserts, arid places, and underworld locations. Not enough jungles and no plains, grasslands, and icy areas.
2. Dervishes and Paragons aren't that great.
3. Too much powercreep.
4. No create a hero option and I don't like some of the heroes given.
5. Ridiculous storyline.
6. Demphasized guilds and PUGs
7. Was bad enough that Anet canceled GW:Utopia.

All of your points a valid, except maybe #1. If something is loosely based upon
an Egyptian theme how can you avoid the desert look.

That.
So freaking annoying.
I was able to complete capping all of factions in 1 night of hard playing.
Did it roughly the same time for Nightfall.
But i just refuse to go cap things in Tyria, tooooo much of a pain in the ass.

NF, missions, the way it looks, the starting area, only good thing are the heroes.

Factions was always my least favorite. For the longest time, I could only get as far as Kaineg City and I would lose all interest. I hated the narrow twisty passages and confusing multilevels, it just wasn't fun. Then, I finally pushed myself past the city missions, and once I was out of the city, I loved it. It's sad that the real game starts with the Kurzicks and Luxons rivalry.

NF is my second least favorite. The terrain is boring and unvaried, the story is pretty good though. What ruined the game for me was the awful chain of missions in the Tormented Lands. Actually, in general, I didn't like many of the NF missions, instead of being fun, I found them a chore for the most part. I do REALLY like chest runs though, those are fun.

Prophecies is my favorite. I love all the areas. You travel from meadow woodsy areas, to charr/nuked lands, to mountains, jungles, haunting deserts with bygone relics of dead civilizations, beaches, volcanic islands, just a gorgeous game that I never found a chore to play. The only downfall was the lack of heros, but that's easily solved with EotN or NF installed.

Nightfall....

Introduction of loot scaling.
Introduction of inscriptions ruined the thrill of item hunting.
Heroes requirement to enter missions.
Frustrating end game environment effects.
Badly designed elite area that goes overboard on forcing people to remember spawn points.

The only good things were the introduction of title effects and PvE skills to counter the PvP collateral nerfing damages. Well...and the music changes for battles.

EoTN is by far my favourite with consumables, dungeon chest rare items that are truly rare enough, more PvE skills, a relatively well designed end game area, integration of heroes into storyline without being forced to bring them. and God walking amongst mortal .

I had so much fun playing Prophecies, that I didn't even pay attention to my level because I didn't care. I was always curious what was waiting for me in the next area, the next mission... It was all about the journey and not the destination.

In the other games, you level up so fast you have unbelievable uber noobs who think they're great because they're level 20 but they haven't even really figured out how to play the game. You can have that in Prophs too, but not nearly as bad. You've gone through a lot by the time your level 20.

It's all opinions anyway, what type of gameplay appeals to one person may not appeal to another. I personally like to take my time and explore and understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, while other people just want to speed through and figure it all out later.

I swear that the scenery in the Echovald Forest and the Jade Sea makes up threefold for every ugly building in the Kaineng zone. I love the Echovald Forest. Especially the architecture, which is a wonderful change from the slums of Kaineng.

all of jade sea/echovald forest and kaineng were ugly.
the only beautiful areas in factions were shing jea island (minus the afflicted) and the imperial areas with water decorates.

Prophecies was probably the campaign that stayed truest to the intent of Guild Wars, and was the most balanced. I also liked the size of the game better. Many of the missions I could take or leave.

I think Factions had the best and most straightforward missions. It's beautiful looking (except the city ), I like the luxon vs. kurzick, and the elite areas are cool, too.

Nightfall is great for DoA & other Realm of Torment missions, and I thought areas of Vabbi were just stunning. I thought the rest of the campaign was ugly, though :\. Also, I hated, HATED starting characters in NF because of the ridiculous grind that ensued. I don't really believe in mandatory grind. Heroes were a great thing, too.

Eye of the North was probably the most beautiful of the games, but of course that's to be expected - if the game got worse visually, I don't think too many would be happy. I really liked the idea of dungeons, and PvE-only skills (albeit I think they're unbalanced). I did not like the grind required for the skills, and I'm a little saddened by the fact that all the dungeons are a mish-mash of other dungeons.

And since FoW/UW can be accessed from all campaigns, I think that makes my favourite to be Factions (followed by EoTN, Proph, NF).

The best: Prophecies, the worst: Nightfall

Least favorite hands down was factions. The storyline gives me a migraine with the awful pseudo-zombie plot. The city...well...need I say more. Even factions fans hates that place. The eastern areas weren't too bad. The scenery past the city (sadly) was monotonous and bland. Endgame battle was an epic fail.

Favorite: nightfall. The storyline, although kind of slow at first, is the kind of geeky clever I like. There was a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and the inscription system aided me in my struggle for items due to my busy schedule. Endgame was actually pretty fun. Prophecies is in a close second. Eye of the North is a beautiful game. But its just too easy in some places and too much of a headache in others. Title grinding is fail. I can find better things to do with my time.

Nightfall, easily.

1. Introduction of heroes completely ruined the community.
2. Incredibly imbalanced skills which STILL have yet to be fixed, and probably won't.
3. The storyline feels like "Koss's Excellent Adventure," and your character is just there along for the ride.
4. Required heroes for missions
5. Making title grind for more than just show. I remember when you'd get heckled for trying to do Sebelkeh at R1 lightbringer too. Thankfully, those days are behind us.
6. Paragons... a class that specializes in unstrippable, party-wide buffs. Really, who thought this was a good idea again?
7. Hero Battles... 'nuff said.

Factions, Prophesies, and Eye had their flaws too, but they weren't nearly as hard on the game as Nightfall's were.

Personally, Factions was my least favorite campaign.

Hell, if I could sum up why in three words, they would be Danika's Voice Acting.

The storyline was absolutely atrocious, and the Alliance Battles concept just didn't pan out to be quite as interesting as it could have been. Getting to level 20 was ridiculously fast, and I found I was basically just playing through it as fast as possible just to get to the end.