Order of completion

A bit of advice from you experienced players, if you will...

I've been playing Guild Wars off and on for only a couple of months. I have all three campaigns, plus EOTN. I've dabbled in the early stages of Nightfall, Factions and Presearing, rerolling characters over and over to try out a bit of everything, but never given any one campaign or any one class my full attention.

It strikes me that I'd better get my skates on if I'm going to beat this game before the sequel comes out...

So, I plan to try and conquer all the campaigns plus expansion with one character. I have chosen Warrior as profession - from now on, flirting with other classes will be confined to a harem of Perma Pres...

My question is - which order? Which continent should my new character come from and which campaign should I complete first?

I find the characters from Nightfall to be most aesthetically pleasing, and I'll be looking at this guy/gals backside for a long time, right?

I find the trip to Level 20 less of a grind with Factions, and [I believe] it's the shortest of the three, so quickest to get under my belt, so to speak.

Then, there's Prophecies. Nice, gentle learning curve, I'm thinking. Then I recall my first pass through Post Searing Ascalon with it's dull backgrounds and endless golems and elementals and I already want to give up and sit in Pre until 2011... Should I just bite the bullet and get it over with first?

Come on, fellow gamers. Plot my path for me, wouldya?

Cheers

Cyrona

If you think the most aesthetically pleasing characters are from Nightfall, then start in Elona, Nightfall.

The start in Elona is slower than Factions for sure, and you are stuck in the Istan island doing quests so you cannot be "rushed" like a Prophecies character can (from Ascalon to LA, to Droks, to ToA, etc). Anyway, it is not that bad.

It is better to make an effort (that will only last a few hours/days) to have a character you'll really love, than to have a quick start and regret your character looks later (it can be changed, but costs real life money, etc).

The leveling speed in Elona is moderate/good, and you will also get to build up heroes to play with you in Factions and Prophecies later. I'd do most of Nightfall / EoTN first then move to the others, but do whatever you find fun, really.

Enjoy!

Starting in Prophecies is a lot of fun for a first character because the story is interesting and it takes far longer to get to lvl 20 and max out your attributes. Also, once you've done the first few missions, you'll get multiple changes of scenery, so don't worry about that. Another good reason to start there is that once you've finished the game with your first char, you'll be a bit more impatient with the next, and Prophecies takes a lot of patience.
If you've already lost most of your patience messing about with tons of fresh chars, I'd say get Factions. Your char will level up and get strong really quick.
If you're planning on getting lots of PvE titles though, start in Nightfall and level up/equip all your heroes. Good heroes are great to have in the tougher parts of PvE.

I get the feeling that Nightfall rings your bell. Nothing wrong with starting there...no campaign suits PvE any better.

If you want to enjoy the story of Guild Wars, Prophecies - Factions - Nightfall - Eye of the North is the obvious way to go. Nightfall plays a bit after Prophecies and Factions, Eye of the North after Nightfall.

I would say Proph first as well. Free skills as rewards from quests, and as you said, slower learning curve (though it sounds like you should have a handle on the game by now). Plus, if you care about story cohesion, it's best to do the campaigns in order of release anyways.

Once you get to Lion's Arch in Proph, you can:

- skip over to Elona and EotN, and grab a few heroes to make Proph a bit easier
- skip over to Cantha (or, again, EotN) and grab some easily accessible Max armor
- access the PvP areas, where you can also...
- access the NPC to change your character's looks if you so choose (for example, if you like the look of Nightfall warriors, you can make your Proph warrior look like a NF one for pocket change).

Having started characters in every campaign and completed everything on each of them, my advice is as follows:

Start a character in Cantha (Factions) unless you really want to play Dervish or Paragon. Do all of Factins first to gain lvls, money and skill points. You should be able to quickly have enough cash for max armor and runes, probably even before you leave Shing Jei island just by doing quests. Also, the extra attribute quests in Factions are easy enough that you can do them pretty early on with a minimum of grind.

From there, go do Nightfall to get heroes, as well as beefier skills. The phrase "nightfall powercreep" exists for a reason. Doing NF second will make progressing in the Sunspear title track much less of a grind and you'll be able to progress through the story more quickly. Also, the end of game green in NF are, arguably, the best of the end of game greens.

After that I'd say do EotN just to get the extra heros and PvE only skills. Plus it'll allow you to start doing dungeons.

Prophecies offers the worst overall rewards these days, so I'd say save that for last. Good hunting.

Simply based on storyline I would say Proph-->EoTN-->Factions-->NF

Why EoTN in the middle? Cause every1 who has ever played pre wants to know what happened to Gwen.

I started an elementalist in NF recently and breezed through the starter island relatively easily. You do put in a longer amount of time, but after starting characters in Prophecies and Factions, I have to say that starting in Elona is the most rewarding in terms of getting skill points, hero skill points (don't pass up all the free skills from the Hero Skill Trainers), and getting your heroes geared up.

If you've played through various professions, you can equip your heroes with decent builds right off the bat with whatever skill you have unlocked. You can also get ferried to the Consulate Docks for max armor very early on, as well as the quest to get Olias.

Once you get off the island and have everything situated, you can finish EotN (Livia is a very valuable hero to have) and roll through the rest of your games with minimal effort.

Nightfall always feels the longest to me... but there's more benefit starting there because of heroes and some good PvE only skills (you'll probably be keeping Whirlwind Attack on your bar from the moment you get it).

If you start in Nightfall, you get: the character design you like, access to heroes, some great elite skills both for your profession and your heroes, and some sweet PvE only skills. This is my suggestion for you.

If you start in Factions, you get: extremely fast leveling, Kurzick/Luxon PvE skills, some excellent elite options (for sword you really want Canthan elites D-Slash and Quivering Blade), and a quickly completed storyline. My suggestion for doing last, because you'll breeze through it after finishing the other two.

If you start in Prophecies, you get: a lot of cheap (read: free) skills from skill quests, a more immersive but longer campaign, or a quick trip through the game getting runs and doing as few missions as possible.

My final word: Start in Nightfall and finish it, then Eye of the North (finish out your heroes and get some amazing PvE only skills), then Prophecies, then Factions.

Chronologically it goes Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, EoTN. But you can do whatever campaign pleases you in any order.

Thanks for the responses, ladies and gentlemen.

Between you, you've verified my own thoughts on the subject and also given me food for thought on some aspects of my choice that I had not previously considered.

The purist in me has won the day. I plan to start in Prophecies [right now, in fact] and defer the decision until I reach Lion's Arch. That way, I can still get a makeover as suggested above and also change campaigns if things are dragging a bit.

Thanks again...!!

If the storyline is of interest to you, I would do them in order, Prophecies -> Factions -> Nightfall -> EotN

I didn't do them in order (I started Prophecies, got stuck on Ascension Missions, finished EotN, finished Prophecies, finished Nightfall, now working on Factions,) and while it hasn't been a huge deal, it kind of stole the thunder of the story because things that had already been casually revealed by later games were supposed to be surprises in earlier games. Also, while each campaign is separate, there is to some degree an ongoing story in the three main campaigns, which makes more sense in chronological order.

If you don't care about that, here are my other thoughts:

I've started characters in all three campaigns, but only stayed with my first one, my Ranger from Prophecies. She's the one I've been doing all the campaigns with.

Prophecies was, for me, the easiest to get into. It was always fairly clear what to do next and what came next in the story. The main story started in from the beginning, rather than popping up later on. Challenges were scaled well for starting characters. There's little to no "reach the next level before you're allowed to do this," and very little of the doing tasks just to level thing. Leveling felt more natural to me in Prophecies than the other campaigns-- it just happened through normal play, rather than me going out of my way to make it happen.

Post-Searing Ascalon is only the starting point for Prophecies, not the setting for the whole game; there are actually six additional zones that are very diverse, including snowy mountains and jungle. So don't judge the whole thing by what you see right after the Searing, because Prophecies has probably the most varied landscapes. It also has the most complex story with the most twists.

You level up fast in Factions. Very, very fast. I enjoyed the starting areas well enough, but they don't really stick in my mind. I don't really have negative thoughts of them, but not excessively positive ones either. It just wasn't as memorable for me as the starting areas of Prophecies. Once I brought in my Prophecies character, I found Factions much more gripping, but it was fine either way. I wouldn't recommend strongly for it, but I have no real reason to recommend against it aside from plot chronology.

Nightfall had great looking characters and lovely setting. In terms of aesthetics and beauty alone, far and away my favourite campaign. Unfortunately, when I started a character there, I found it really really hard to get into the story, because the main plot is incredibly slow getting started. For lower level characters, there's an awful lot of just grinding to a higher level by killing monsters so something can actually happen.

I ended up getting totally bored with it and putting aside that character. When I brought over my Prophecies character at level 20, I actually really enjoyed Nightfall and found the pace good-- it just wasn't for me at lower levels. So based on my own experience, it wouldn't be my recommendation for starting a multi-campaign character.

Also, bear in mind that if you like the looks from a certain campaign, you can always create the character in one campaign and do the quests to move them to another. Good luck.