Joining Guild Wars?

Hello,

New to the forums. I'm looking for a game to play casually when I have some time to kill. This game seems interesting and I was checking to see if there are still a lot of people to play with in this game?

I enjoy a good PvE story even though I understand this is a PvP-centric game, I'm more than willing to learn how to PvP if I can find a good group of people that will take me in. How is the story line? Or is it just a plethora of quests that have me running around blindly just to level like I did in WoW?

I am looking for a melee-type class and the Dervish caught my eye, running around with a Scythe is a major attraction for me! I know nothing of the combat system or subclass pairings but I will do more research once I decide if I should get this game.

Am I better off getting all 3 games? Or do I just need Nightfall since that's where the Dervish is from? Is there any benefit to getting the other two? Also, will I need to purchase the expansion before I start or is that something that adds content at maximum level, and I should just get it once I've hit level 20?

Finally, is there a date out for GW2? I read another post similar to mine and they suggested waiting for GW2, is it going to be out soon enough that I should just hold off?

Look at Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 as separate games that will attract separate people.

Dervish are a solid profession if used right, but they're seen as weaker of the 3 primary melee professions. However, a good player with a dervish can greatly exceed any average player using something else.

People will expect you to have all of the Guild Wars expansions, so it's a must if you're going to play with human players.

Why do they expect me to have all three? And I don't know anyone that plays this game. Hopefully I can join a well populated server and meet some.

They will expect you to have all 3 campaigns (and the expansion) because each campaign has it's own skills for each class. And a lot of builds that people use, or would expect you to use, use skills from multiple campaigns.

This is especially true if you pvp at any point - the better pvp builds use skills from 2-3 campaigns and expansion, whereas if you only have 1-2 campaigns.. your choice for skills is limited.

This does have dramatic effect - as you can only bring 8 skills on your skill bar at any one time, and different skills do different things.. and some campaigns skills will do stuff (or do it better) that other skills from other campaigns can't do... so the more campaigns.. the more skills you'll have access to.. and thus the better your builds can be.

This does apply to PvE as well - PvE builds generally do tend to use skills from multiple campaigns as well.. and can get5 better synergy with other players and/or heros/henchies than if you have limited # of campaigns.

Each campaign has a storyline that has you doing main mission's to further the storyline. you can also do a lot of side-quest's (just like WoW).. these side-quest's do relate to the area your in and the part of the campaign your on (imo they tie into the main story better than WoW's does .. *shrugs*).

Basically you can't really get too lost - each campaign has what are called "primary" quest's, these are the quest's for the main storyline.. and as long as you follow the, you will follow through the story and the missions.. unlike WoW where the "main" storyline can and does get lost and confused as you flitter back and forth.. lolz

Eye of the North is designed for lvl 20 characters, although you can get there @ level 10.. but you won't miss anything by not getting it initially if you don't want. You will miss out on access to a few hero's.. but whenever you add it to your account you'll be able to get them and get on with it's storyline.

Have a try at reading the following.. it might help you out:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...t10102502.html

people expect you to have all three since the game has been out for almost 5 year. There still are quite a lot of people playing so you should be able to find people to play with. I pve only and there is plenty to do with quests and missions!

there is no date set yet for gw2 to be out.

Yes, having all three campaigns is a good thing. FORTUNATELY, you can find all three in the Trilogy pack - which usually runs $50. Having the Expansion (Eye of the North) is nice to have in PvE because of the many powerful PvE only skills that you can get there.

Why are they viewed as the weakest? What can they bring to the table that the other melee professions can't?

So if I purchase the trilogy and start a Dervish, will I need to complete all three chapters to get the proper skills?

It's good to know that I can invest in the trilogy and then see how I like that before I dump more into the expansion pack.

Downside i found to dervs which put me off slightly was sadly their uber slow attack speed with a scythe - hence i went crit scythe sin which lacks attack strength an ar of derv but has faster attack speed but dont let me put you off dervs as with practice dervs can be gd fighters.Ppl say all campaigns as with all 3 you have i think approx 100 skills in total that over time you can use to select from as well as having 8 chr slots opposed to 3.

Their primary attribute doesn't increase their damage and is fairly useless in most cases.

You can play a chapter/expansion without the others (people start new characters all the time), but the game pretty much starts after you beat the game.

The dervish wasn't designed as a pure melee profession, but a caster with PBAoE enchantments and some melee capabilities. His main attribute, Mysticism, supports him doing so by providing energy (the "mana" in GW) every time an enchantments ends. But his PBAoE enchentments turned out to be way to strong and were heavily nerfed after the Nightfall preview weekend; since then the enchantments haven't been changed much. Nowadays it's far more effective to simply use the dervish melee capabilities than to use his PBAoE enchantments. Because Mysticism was designed to help you casting enchantments it has nearly no positive effect if you play pure melee.
The primary attributes and skills of the pure melee professions assassin and warrior are designed to increase your melee capabilites, and because of that they are generally more powerful in close combat than dervishs.
However, the difference in effectiveness between dervishs and sins/warriors is so small that you'll hardly notice any difference when playing them, and because of this most players don't care if you come as a dervish, warrior or sin.

If I'm correct, all but one dervish skill you can find in Nightfall; however, you get new skills for your secondary profession when you play other chapters.

Everyone seems to be helping on other points, thought I'd pick up on this one.

Guild Wars isn't like traditional MMOs with its server architecture. There are servers for each region (such as Europe, America, Korea, International) but characters can move between each region and districts at will. Most people gather in American districts (a district is an instance of a town or outpost on a particular server), but there's still a sizable population in European districts. Best advice is play where your ping is lowest, and look for a Guild that suits your playing hours. There are recruitment rooms on this forum if you don't feel like just joining up one in game.

Oh and I really recommend buying the complete collection. Its the cheaper option from buying each campaign and the expansion separately.

I still found Derv more useful than Sin with scythe...
Zealous Vow + some attacks spam nicely. Asuran scan & other dmg buffs help.
Anyway in Mysticism is a great skill called "Heart Of Fury" that can increase attack speed nicely.
On my dervish I did like ~250 dmg to Lich in Nightfall... so i don't think dervishe's are useless or weaker than other melee's.

3/4 of that post probably made no sense to anyone who has not played this game.

If you feel like playing PvE Then rolling a dervish is pretty sweet. If you buy all three games, Then you should have 8 character slots, so don't just set your heart on Dervish, just see how things go, start other characters and see which ends up suiting your own play style.

Like people said, The game doesn't really start until after level 20. Between now and then you would have loads of time to see what profession suit you. Most people find 2-3 that they like, but for titles they usually pick one "main" and then go do the various in game "titles" (accomplishments/achievements) on that character because of the length of time it can take to do these.

As for playing with others, the two main questions you need to ask yourself and a guild who will be recruiting is is, What are you're play time hours? how often you will be on? Some guilds, want very active players. Others just want casual players that will play together. When you start playing you might "guild jump" a bit to find what you like. Everyone does it... usually.

Good luck if you decide to get the game.

Well that's true, better to try different professions, but why my post has no sense? I just said that Dervs are better than some ppl say.

I think we might be confusing him a bit with all our abbreviations and descriptions of things that he wont have a clue about.
If your not sure if the game is for you just buy Nightfall, or get a free trial. But if your pretty sure its for you i'd reccomend buying the trillogy since it will save you money in the long run. You can get it for about £20 if you shop around a bit.

Dervishes are a fun class to play, they often get some stick because other melee proffessions can out damage them with their own weapon in many situations, but really you should play whatever class you enjoy. If your playing PvE it doesnt matter what proff you are, you can beat any campaign easily. My main is a dervish and ive done pretty much everything in the game with him. The only time you may find problems grouping is doing some Elite areas, or PvP but thats probably a while off for you yet

if i were you i'd get all 3 games (not necessarily at once), guild wars is fully enjoyable game with each campaign, however your skills will be limited and in terms of endgame areas too. i have seperate accounts at the moment and i'd much rather have joined them together than use them seperatley characters in one campaign become useless if the main end game PuG outpost isn't in that campaign or the next big skill balance hurts most skills from that campaign. since the guild wars complete collection prices each game at £3.50 or something in the UK it'd be worth the money to buy that.
the story of guild wars is good and it can be whatever game you want, PvE or PvP. the gameplay is better than WoW imo too ^^.
better to get GW while you wait for GW2 ;D won't be out for a while, theres plenty to njoy in GW that could give you the upper hand in GW2 (HoM...)
if i were you i wouldn't worry about proffesions too much, i find dervishes fun to play, though my first choice of class wasn't as interesting as some other characters i created at random .

Thank you all for your responses while I was asleep. I greatly appreciate all the help and information you're all contributing.

I take it I should shop around to find the trilogy in a hard copy rather than buy the trilogy from NCstore? Would it be cheaper to do so that way?

My playtime hours are usually daily for 3+ hours depending on how attached I get to the game, and pacific time. I work and go to school so I play in between those times. I can play a bit in the daytime, and once I get home from school/work I usually can play into the late hours.

Are there tough boss fights that require a group to form up to take it down? Similar to a raid boss in WoW but maybe not so time consuming or hardcore?

I had a dream I was playing this game haha so that must be a sign that I at least give it a shot.

It depends, Can you leave your computer on all night to download the entire game, and then update itself? If so then just buy an acc key from NCsoft.

I can do that. I was just seeing if stores generally sell it cheaper than NCsoft does.

if you buy it at a store, make sure to buy a new copy. never buy used copies of GW, since the only valuable part of the box is the CD key, and you need that to create your account. if that's used, you can't play.

the main problem with dervishes is that they don't have a real niche. the warrior and assassin already fulfilled the two possible melee niches (dps+armor and spike+mobility, respectively), which leaves the dervishes without much going for them. as someone had already mentioned, they were designed to be a melee profession with PBAoE through enchantment shuffling. however, the enchantment part proved to be unwieldy, so they are more or less reduced to being scythe wielders.

ironically enough, the assassin ended up being better at wielding scythes. scythes have the highest maximum damage out of all weapons in GW (9-41). this means that scythe critical hits are the best in the game (GW's critical hits are always max weapon damage with weapon skill +2). the assassin has an attribute called critical strikes, which increases critical hit chance. combined that with some skills that also increase crit chance even more, and you'll have a character that crits with almost every hit. as you can imagine, this means that the assassin can outdamage dervishes while wielding a scythe, even though dervishes can achieve higher scythe mastery levels.

honestly, warriors, rangers and assassins make better use of the scythe than the dervish in highend pve. if you want JUST a scythe, I reccomend warrior, ranger or assassin with a dervish secondary to utilize a scythe. however, if you like the idea of dervish as a class, there's nothing wrong with that.

The scythe is a big draw for me that's for sure. I haven't read on the abilities so I can't say I want the dervish for their abilities. I just like the idea of every swing being a type of aoe swing.

I've played a lot of MMO's and Lineage II offered something I haven't seen and the Dervish seems somewhat similar. Lineage II I played as a Warlord, using a big polearm for aoe swings and PBaoe's. It was one of the most enjoyable classes I've played in any MMO and the Dervish seemed to have similar type of abilities. I guess that's kind of what I'm trying to go off of.

warriors and assassins do HUGE damage with a scythe - whether its by critical hits (sin) or a warrior's strong attacks. Dervishes use a lot of enchantments, so they get a kind of "battlemage" feel. Warlord sounds like a gladiator from Aion, so if you're looking for nice defense and huge pbaoe, warrior/dervish using a scythe is your best option
btw-even if you only want derv, I reccomend getting the trilogy + eotn. with each additional campaign the fun you get out of GW multiplies due to the mixing of content; it's hard to explain but you'll see ingame.

Warrior/Dervish sounds like a cool idea.

Are they good for PvP and PvE? A generally accepted class?

You can change your secondary freely later in the game, just your primary is fixed.
Warrior is THE melee class in the higher PvP formats Guild versus Guild and Heroes' Ascent, and they're also good in Random Arenas. However, warriors are very vulnerable to shutdown (for example blind, it makes you miss with 90% of your attacks) which makes them very bad for skirmish fights. Without a team that backs you up you're fishfood; this is more or less true for all the physical fighter classes expect the ranger.
In PvE the warrior is also a very strong profession; however, in the very high PvE areas most people are playing highly specialized team builds to farm these areas, and the warrior profession is often not a part of those builds. But don't let that affect your choice of profession, if you ever want to participate in those you can simply create a desired profession and play them to max level and equit them within a couple of hours.

edit: They are also PvP chars; PvP chars are instantly level 20 and have access to any weapon, armor, and upgrade that has been unlocked on your account, but can only enter PvP areas.

It's indeed a game based on pvp. But nowadays there are WAY more people playing pve! And they noticed this at the beginning. That's why every new game (nightfall!) had more things based on pve.

It's very late to join the pvp now. Every pvp format needs teamwork. You also need alot of knowledge about the game mechanics and skills. So it's quite hard. But there are arenas were you can just press enter, and join a random team. So if u wanna do some pvp from time to time, you can always do that.

It's a great game. And the stories ain't bad! I'm sure you will like it. I still do, after almost 5 years

Well I purchased the game at a local GameStop (had to call 3 different ones!) for $29.99, $10 less than the NCsoft store.

Anyways, while I'm updating now it's time to make the critical decision of what character to play first.

When I do decide on a character, do I get to choose which chapter to start in? And if so, would it be best to start in Prophecies? At first I was pretty certain I wanted a melee class, but now that I'm updating I literally am open to all types. I can't wait to get in there.

Well the core classes.. Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, Necromancer, elementalist and Monk can be picked in every campain.

Assassin and Ritualist only in Factions.

Dervish and Paragon only in Nightfall.

But you can play any campain with any charakter. It's just the place where u start basically.

My advice is to start in Prophecies. Prophecies has alot of quests that reward skills (so u save money). It's also the first game, So it's better if u want to understand the storyline better.

Okay. Well, I decided I wanna try out an assassin first and see how things go. How do I get my character to do the Prophecies story line? I read that the learning curve in Factions is the highest as it was created mainly with a PvP focus and for those already experienced in GW. Is there a way I can transport my character to the very beginning of the GW world?

Good luck! you need to get onto mainland cantha (factions world) before you can go to prophecies, where you join, like 2/5th through the campaign (but you can work back to the very start)

Factions allows you to level to 20 in just a few hours, it's true. On the bright side you can try lots of characters.

I personally reccomend starting in prophecies, then factions, nightfall, and finally eotn. it lets you go through the games in sequential order - my favorite.
I also reccomend that you make a different profession for each campaign, so that you can get a feel for the game, not just 1 profession.
if you want any help or need answers ingame, message me at Despero Of Thanatos (adding me to your friends list will let you see what character I'm on now)- I've been in a very helpful mood lately

You sound as though you are mainly interested in PvE, so my responses are based on that.

The people who told you that GW is PvP centric are probably PvP'ers. In reality, PvP and PvE in GW are basically two separate games. Unlike some other MMORPGs (like WoW) there is no PvP during the PvE. That is to say, you do not need to concern yourself about PvP if you are playing the PvE game.
About the only things that the PvP and PvE aspects have in common are that they use the same GW client to run both games. Even the skill sets used by the two are diverging as time (and balancing) goes on. There are even lots of PvE-only skills.
You can happily PvP or PvE without ever doing the other. I've played GW for 4+ years and have never PvP'd (except for Jade Quarry)

Dervish is a fun melee class. Don't be overly concerned with subclasses yet, it's best to start out just concentrating on your Primary (Dervish) and maybe taking Monk as a Secondary (for the rez). Later, when you have progressed further into the game, you will have a better idea of what you want and more skills available to you - and, you can change your secondary whenever you want.

The most cost effective way to buy GW is to buy the Triology (in N.A.) or the Complete collection (Europe). But you could just buy Nightfall if you want. Your Dervish will be able to travel to the other campaigns if you buy them.
Eye of the North (the expansion) is well worth getting if you PvE particularly. It has more heroes (in addition to those in Nightfall) and has powerful PvE-only skills. Plus, it's currently the most active part of GW.

GW2 is not expected until early 2011, so there's still lots of time to play GW1. And, GW1 will still be active after GW2 comes out.

At some point I think you mentioned "servers". Unlike WoW (and others), GW is not "server" or "realm" based. Particularly, there is no separation of PvP vs PvE vs RP servers.