Look for some insight!

Hello everyone, my first post. I am thinking abuot getting back into Guild Wars, but I haven't played since the release originally, I was curious if people are still playing prophecies, I am really interested in going through the missions all over again, and then buying the expansions as I go as I have come into a bit of dispoable cash. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello there and welcome.

To answer your question straightaway, compared to the first year the game is completely dead. In your case, starting out in Prophecies would probably mean doing the entire campaign with henchmen, as PUGs are pretty much dead. I can advise you to try and join a guild that is friendly and helpful to new players, with people that'll help you with the missions.

Another point, you are probably best off buying all the other parts and the expansion straightaway, since they come very cheap nowadays, and having only prophecies prevents you from accessing most of the useful content nowadays (like heroes and PvE skills). Playing through the game again by yourself, with only Prophecies added to your account, will be a big pain.

Good luck and have fun.

So when you say it's dead, are we talking about a tiny player base now-a-days or?

By dead I mostly mean in comparison to the early days. Right now, the activity is mostly concentrated around the largest towns in the game. You'll still find plenty of people there, especially in the American districts. However, the various Mission outposts are usually practially deserted in Prophecies. Don't expect to get a PUG there easily. For that reason, it's probably best to buy the other campaigns as well. Nightfall and EotN offer Heroes, which are pretty much the standard nowadays when it comes to making a party to do a random mission. Only the most elite areas still offer a dense enough population to find a PUG.

Also, with the other campaigns, you'll be able to access more skills, and as such it will be easier for you to do various things with guildmates. Joining an active guild is probably the best (only?) way to find other players to play with nowadays

Meridon

How is the game dead?
there's still tons going on. Everyone is mad because their bf/gf/bff stopped playing.
It's a great game tho, and most outposts/missions have at least one person looking to join up. There's not as many people playing as before but it's still a very popular game that many people still play the heck out of.
and the player base is pretty big, a lot of people are concentrating on the end content and once you get to that part(which kind of means completing all the campaigns and expansion) you'll have tons of people to team up with.
Look into buying the whole set at a discount price online I think you can get the whole thing for like $40 or something in that range.
Have fun and you can always ask for help advice here, just ignore the people that are depressed/mad for whatever rl reason they have.

Thanks a lot guys! I appreciate the help!

Sent to Q&A.

As I mentioned earlier, by saying it is 'dead', I mean that it is dead compared to the early days of the game. Remember, the OP only played during that time, and compared to then, there's hardly any people left in the mission outposts (especially Prophecies) to team up with, which is where the OP is going to be as he said in his post, and not the end content. So yeah, while it's not completely dead in the absolute sense, if you compare OP's experience from release with what he is getting into now, it is.

Also, I'm definitely not being depressed, my gf still plays

Another question then, Factions and Nightfall are added campaigns but Eye Of The North was an actual expansion, whats the difference and what does the "expansion" offer/change that the other two don't?

You prolly won't be able to pug like you could when the game originally came out. It woul prolly be better for you to start in NF so you can get some heroes. Or go to EoTN from prophecies as soon as you can to get some heroes.

I appreciate the input, but half of what you said made me have to get my dunce cap out of the closet. Lol.

I played with henchmen instead of players even when the game was more active so all I can advise is that the game is obviously still worth playing (to me) if you play with AI.

Factions + Nightfall are both in different continents. Eye of the North is an expansion in the sense that it's all in the same continent as prophecies. Also, it's expected that players are lvl 20 AND pretty good at the game already because the missions start out with lvl20+ mobs. There's a hero tutorial but that's pretty much all it'll teach you.

That said there's quite a lot of new content, new skills, new titles, new items and new heroes to unlock in EoTN plus the added "fight music" that starts playing whenever you're in a battle really does add to the fun.

So essentially, EoTN adds new content that you can progress right through to max level and so on, directly from Prophecies, and then Nightfall and Factions are optional?

EoTN also serves as the continuation of the prophecies storyline and tie in to GW2. You should also take into consideration that it's also more grind oriented with all the titles dungeons etc.

The traditional timeline is Prophecies->Factions->Nightfall->EoTN and this is generally how alot of experienced players would recommend you play the game if you are following the storyline.

Essentially, Factions and Nightfall have their own separate storylines and civilisations. EoTN has a new core storyline tied very closely with GW2 and also several smaller storylines including a continuation of the Ascalon story from Prophecies. It's basically built like a huge end-game.

There's several really useful PvE only skills in EoTN but you don't really need em to get through the other games.

I would recommend for your first play through going the traditional storyline but feel free to dabble if you must with heroes from NF and EoTN. and skills from all sections.

This all sounds fantastic, I appreciate the help that everyone has provided. I hope that I can get my Security Question issue solved ASAP. Sadly I don't recall a characters name so gotta wait for support to give me a hand. Definately gonna get addicted again!

Worse comes to pass, you can always buy the trilogy for less than what the original cost you back then. Just don't forget to "link" accounts when you get the other games.

What do you mean by "link" accounts?

When you install additional gw games you have a choice you either add the game code to your original game install or install them as seperate games.

If you add the code to another install you can move your character between the games as they are all on the same account.

If you install seperately they are on different accounts and you have different characters for each game with no sharing of cash weapons etc.

The only real reason to do this is for 2 players who use the same computer who then have their own games or to let you run 2 games at the same time.
Players do this to let them use 3 extra heroes from the second game allowing them to form a 7 person party, without involving another player.