Way out of the loop - can you fill me in?

Guild Wars and I go back a loooong ways - I was in the original beta. That being said - I have NOT played in ages.

My latest = Guild Wars Factions.

What do I need to get up-to-date so I can enjoy this game again?

I would really like YOUR thoughts on this and look forward to info in this thread.

THANKS in advance for any and all feedback!!!

I'd recommend buying both the Eye of The North expansion and Guildwars Nightfall. They shouldn't be too expensive. Both EoTN and Nightfall add heroes and new skills to the game. (Well technically EoTN adds only mostly overpowered pve skills + heores, which makes the game a lot easier, whereas Nightfall adds lots of heroes and normal skills + some sunspear pve skills + 2 new classes, dervish and paragon.)

Play the game for awhile than ask ….. You missed ~ All of Nightfall which means you are not tainted with heroes. You missed all of EOTN expansion. Which means you are not tainted with the HOM and all its grinding glory. You missed the Battle of LA pretty cool update but has since lost its luster little bit of grinding and a big battle at the end. The marriage thing …never grabbed my interest I guess Cyrsis maximum edition has taken my attention for the last month sorry someone else can update you.

well, a 4 year or so break....welcome back!
Yeah I think I would also hit the store up for nighfall and eye of the north, when you left heroes had not yet happened and they changed the game quite a bit----though you did miss the whole assassin shadow form stuff (which is good) and a whole lot of drama (which is also good to miss)....

so yeah before we go and tell you what to do---besides getting the last 2 parts, I would dust off a character and play a bit...and THEN get some heroes outfitted------

Thank you all for the info!

I was just reading up on what I do have and - am I right - Factions is a STAND-ALONE?
Do I need to load the original Guild Wars then Factions OR is the origanal GW Within Factions?
THANKS again!

prophecies, factions and nightfall are stand alone chapters which means you can play them without having another----eye of the north is not--it requires one of the others to play.
If you already have prophecies adding factions and nightfall to your original account is what you want to do (log in and select I have a key to add to my account or somesuch message otherwise you will be creating a new account that is not linked to the others!)...if you get eye of the north you will ONLY be able to add it to an existing account.

Yes, Factions is a stand alone game just like Prophercies and Nightfall. Yes it is. You only need to download the gw client from www.guildwars.com. (That is if you originally linked your Prophercies account with your Factions account.)

Factions is a standalone game but you would be well advised to simply add the code to your prophesies account.

If you add all the games to one account then all characters can move from game to game as if it was all one world "which it is"

Separate installs means you have no crossover or sharing of resources.

Thanks again for all of your help! I reallllly appreciate it.
I am loading the original + Faction now. After the original was loaded I could have played then (all 6 characters were still there) but decided to load Factions as well.

I will need to start a brand new character to "brush up" on this game LOL.

What is YOUR favorite character to play. My highest is a Ranger/Elementalist (that I have forgotten how to play lol) and the NEW character (as above for re-learning) should be The Easiest To Play....Suggestions?

Next highest is Assassin/Monk - only lvl 8 btw - with a Ritualist at only lvl 4 = geesh must have started this one over!
Thanks again!

You get 2 free character slots for each standalone you add. That is, you have 4 from Proph + 2 from Factions and will get 2 more when adding Nightfall. If you need more they can be purchased in the GW store. Do not delete your old characters, they will have birthday gifts, of which some are quite valuable.

DON'T delete your characters! You can purchase extra character slots from the store, which is accessible from the launcher.

The "Birthday Presents" that each character gets will accord you minipets, which are now selling for a lot of coin, due to their inclusion in the Hall of Monuments. Or, you can simply use them to place in your Hall of Monuments display yourself

It's not exactly like that. It's not 'stand alone' games.

It's more like one single game, and you pay for access to the its different parts. Its 'pieces of content'.
Meaning that if you fully download the game, you'll download everything, but if you don't unlock the areas by adding the keys for the different campaigns, expansions and other content to you account.

So, you don't load the 'original GW', you load Guild Wars, plain and simple.
Steam changed their entries in the Steam cliean to better reflect that.
Whatever part of GW you buy, you get just "Guild Wars".

But what you can do, what you can get and where you can be depends on the keys the account you login with has.

Never delete your characters. Guild Wars is best experienced hen you have at least one character of each profession.

OHHH THANKS for the heads-up! I was just about to delete my lowest character - SOO glad I came here and read the above first!

So = WHAT Profession should I choose for this new charater I will add = your fav so far??

If I understand,your restarting on factions? Well it really depends on your playstyle,but i enjoy the ritualist alot. very fun to take down enemies with,especially with the right build :P

Ele is also a good proffesion choice for factions IMO
and of course theres the sin...

I beleive a warrior is the best profession to choose, they are really balanced

First, let me say welcome back. I've been a player since the original Beta as well. As for a place to get caught up... to be honest? You're reading it. I've been reading Guild Wars Guru for sometime and this site has helped me through a lot.

One thing I will say is that, unless you've been living under a rock and haven't heard, Guild Wars 2 is in development and will hopefully be out this year. I bring this up because I would strongly advise getting the Eye of the North expansion as it will give you a series of quests that connect your Guild Wars account with your Guild Wars 2 account. If you research "the Hall of Monuments" you will get all the information you need. Happy Hunting and again, welcome back.

Thanks you all again and thanks for the info on Guild Wars 2 - I had not read that and will go ahead and get the 2 packs I have missed (each for a different reason lol).

And I do appreciate the welcome back! As I fiddled around today with (an old) character I realized how much I have missed this game.

I have A LOT of catching up to do and will defenetly look into the value of my existing inventory.

Question - mini pets - what value are they? I read that they have no fighting ability and are only for 'show' - so why keep them AND why do they have any value. AND where do you sell them - the merchant(s) I looked at offer $0 for them....

Glad to be back and I am sure I will have a BUNCH more questions - been away WAY too long!

Mini's are collectors items. I used to collect every birthday mini that I could get. I have almost all of them up to the 4th year minis.

The 5th year minis are so expensive because of so few people being around that long. I am sure that there are quite a few 5th year birthday presents sitting unopened in inventories of people just like you. Lots of people never came back to the game but their characters still accrue birthday gifts.

Being a beta player like you I might be able to give you some advice.

1. First and foremost read the official wiki if you are having trouble with a mission. Jut type /wiki mission name

2. Check out the Price Check guilds here on Guru. There is a special thread right at the top for mini pets http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/price-check-f39.html

3. Go look at gwpvx.com - There are lots of people that will tell you that those builds suck or using that site isn't 'doing it yourself' but here is what I think. The place is great to get a good grasp of synergies. It has some fantastic builds that WORK. It will go a long way in helping you to create your own builds.

4. Make sure to look at the wiki front page EVERYDAY (or at least each day that you play). Just type /wiki with nothing after it in game. The Zaishen Missions / Bounties / PvP will be in the upper right corner. They change daily at 9AM PST (Noon EST).

5. Get your 10 free Zaishen Keys! Go to Great Temple of Balthazar and visit High Priest Zhang. Not going to go into the whole story but there were some problems with a tournament prediction deal. They closed it down but gave everyone 50 points (5 points per key = 10 keys)

6. As people have said before, get Nightfall! The heroes will help you out quite a bit (use that site mentioned above to get some decent hero builds!) given the smaller player base. Eye is a must have also due to the rewards that are available for GW2 from the Hall of Monuments.

7. Don't be put off by the amount of things you think you have to do. I hadn't touched things like Obsidian armor and other high end items until the HoM calculator came out. It really only took a matter of weeks to get to 50/50 playing casually at best.

8. If you need some help, send me a PM. We can set up a time where I can help you get through a mission or two if you want. I am located in the Eastern USA time zone fyi.

9. Best money I EVER spent aside from buying the games in the first place was to buy the Skill Unlock Packs. While your PvE characters do not get all the skills unlocked for them your heroes do! You also get the benefit of being able to purchase any skill (aside from elites) that is in a campaign from ANY skill trainer. You don't have to wait for the skill trainer that is in a particular town.

10. Have fun.

If by the mini pets you are talking about the miniatures (like those that come in the birthday gifts) one use they have is as dedications in the Hall of Monuments in preparation of Guild Wars 2. They are associated with one of the Monuments as a "record of your achievement". Other than that, they're pretty much for show. I've seen some players offer to buy, trade or sell them.

WOW LordDragon! What an amazing amount of info! I am soo impressed and tickled to get it all. I can't thank you enough. I will contact you if I run into some problems. I DO have a couple of the 5th B-Day mini's - LOL
Sketch - thanks for the Monument info - appreciate it.

I will check out the site link and builds - in the morning - after coffee.......