GW worth checking out?

Hi, I've been looking to check out GW for a while now, though I know GW2 will be out maybe sometime within the next year or so.

I've been looking to break away from World of Warcraft, with community = crap, and the game just bores the hell out of me. All in all, I'm looking for a new experience in GW.

That being said, is GW worth the switch from WoW? and if so, what should I purchase to get started on GW, since I know there's 3 campaigns and an expansion, so I'd be a bit confused as to where to start. Would I enjoy GW if I'm a casual player or just log on when I feel like it, not when I'm required to?

Feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially from people who switched from WoW.

Sorry if the thread seems redundant btw, English isn't really my first/native language.

I think it's worth a switch. If it's cheap buy all three and Eye of the North. Follow the story and go from there. From there keep and eye out for a guild that you like. If you make friends online that helps to. But the best suggestion is finding a friend to run stuff with. If it wasn't for the people i met in game or my brother who plays from time to time i quit and rather play my wii or L4D

also the game is very casual. Don't rush it. There's so much art to be in the surrounding environment. After a while the community will end up like WoW's. Just avoid the trolls and have fun!

Oh plus the game is Free to play!

I mean if you can find all three games cheap plus the expansion, then definitely buy it. I don't see why not. It's vast, and you should enjoy it as long as you take your time.

If the style of the game appeals to you then yes its definitely worth switching.
Further information to help you decide.

You will have quite a few character slots so can try out various start areas and classes.

Note GW isn't a level based game max level is 20 and you can reach thay pretty fast the real game is collecting a large number of skills to make more powerful builds.

You need to install the first game and then add the game code of the rest of the games to that account this puts all the games on one GW account and lets your characters travel between them.
Note some versions of the game have just the one account number for all the games which is easier.

In order of production the games are

Prophesies western European in style has the six basic character classes Warrior - Monk - Elementalist - Ranger - Necromancer and Mesmer.

Factions Asian themed classes added Assassin and Ritualist.

Nightfall North African style Dervish and Paragon classes added also Heroes added to the game "heroes AI companions you can customise".

Eye of the North expansion to all of the above giving new none playable races and map areas as well as expanding the game with new skills and heroes.

I would buy the complete package from the start, and might be cheaper if you find the "Guild Wars: the Complete Edition" for a cheap price.

Avoid buying the campaigns online directly from Anet/NCSoft - you should find better prices elsewhere.

You can play Guild Wars solo if you wish, due to the presence of AI bots (henchmen/heroes) to fill your party.

Level cap is 20 and pretty quick to achieve (although it might require a bit more time if you start in Prophecies, the original campaign), max damage weapons/max armor is very easy to come by, so if you only play now and then you won't be behind anyone else.

The game doesn't require grind (although there is optional grind).

You have 3 places to start:

Prophecies (aka Tyria, Original campaign) - the game is slower here (although there have been some recent changes in the pre-searing/tutorial area that might have changed that) and it will probably give you a smoother understanding of the game mechanics, with its "skill quests".

Factions (aka Cantha) - the leveling is quite fast here.

Nightfall (aka Elona) - the leveling is somewhere between the prophecies pace and the factions pace. The main difference between Nightfall and the other campaigns is the presence of heroes. Opposed to henchmen, that come with default skill bars and equipment that you have no control over, heroes are fully customizable. While for veteran players heroes are the preferred choice, for newer players that don't have many skills available and are learning to play their own character, heroes might be overwhelming.

The last "campaign", Eye of the North (aka GWEN), is an expansion for veteran players, although you can go there as soon as you are level 10, the enemies are generally tougher than the early-mid enemies of other campaigns.

For me Guild wars has proven itself to be one of the most played game and certainly one of the best. If this is the same for you I dont know.
That said it is nothing like world of warcraft, you cannot compare the 2. If wow is more your kind of game I wouldnt even bother with GW.
You might wanna check out GW2 website to see if this apeals to you, then it might be a good idea to start with gw anyway.

fantasy rpgs........

if possible, try to get the complete collection, it is much cheaper than buying each seperately. besides, the more campaigns owned, the better the skill choices

as much as i like the story behind prophecies, i must admit that starting in the nightfalls campaign seems to be the best way to go for newer players. leveling is fairly fast paced and you are introduced to heroes (which you will be chasing after later anyway)


Note: most people are focusing on getting their Hall of Monuments filled up, so it will be a little hard to get help in game. Getting into a good guild usually is the best way to get help.

In North America you can buy a game package called Guild Wars Trilogy which contains all three campaigns, but not the Eye of the North expansion. You might also find Guild Wars Complete Collection which has all three campaigns & the expansion, but is only sold in Walmart.

In Europe, the Guild Wars Complete Collection is easier to find, but mostly online.

There is a sticky at the top of this Q&A forum, called New Player on a Budget which goes over the differences in each campaign http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...t10102502.html

If you are looking for a game like WoW but with a different story etc, then GW is not for you. This game is more like playing Magic: The Gathering, where you accumulate skills so you can form an effective 8-skill build that suits the PvE area you are exploring or the dungeon you are trying to beat.

There is no reason to make you keep paying a subscription, so the max level is 20 and there are no uber weapons or armor. Once you can obtain max armor or weaponry, the only differences are cosmetic. This game is great for casual gaming as there are no penalties for not playing. On the other hand, it can be very addictive.

If you do buy the game, you will find overall a good community. We do have the normal amount of idiots, but it's not that hard to ignore them.

I played WoW since two weeks after it went live. Played GW since the day Prophecies went live. Play GW exclusively these days. GW is very different from WoW.

GW is very good for casual play since if you start with Nightfall you will build up a good group of heroes to go out with if you just want to be solo. There are some very good guilds, though; good as I've seen in WoW.

While you can go out solo character later in the game as a "farming build," playing through the game will require a party, up to 7 heroes and henchmen to fill in until you get there.

In WoW I always enjoyed lone wolf, just me on my Druid invisible in cat form out questing. Or as Hunter with my excellent cat or bear. In GW you are eventually out with this small army. Like yourself plus 7 heroes, plus a couple pets, plus an army of undead minions. Darn near 20 units in all! You need them.

Unlike in WoW where it is attack bear, watch for adds, kill bear. Next bear please! In GW it is attack group that has melee units, archers, healers, and evil casters. You will not get bored!

But also check out GW 2 carefully. It will be totally different from this game and very different from WoW. GW is not a game that appeals to everyone. And you will not need GW experience to play GW 2.

I have known quite a few players who switched from WoW, for many of the same reasons the OP mentions. I'm not one of them personally, but most of them have really enjoyed Guild Wars. That being said, the content of GW really doesn't compare to the content of WoW. But if you want a more mature community (at least age wise hehe) and the ability to play just about any part of the game by yourself, if you want a game which requires skill to be successful rather than lucky drops, if you want a game where team synergy and defense trumps raw power just about always, and if you want a game that has no monthly fee, you'll probably love Guild Wars.

Guild Wars is great all over, but the one thing that might be of importance that it doesn't have and that WoW does have is account recovery. If you are ever unlucky enough to get hacked and the hacker cleans out your account you get nothing back, not even deleted characters.
If you change passwords regularly and stuff the chance is slim but it does happen in Guild Wars as well as in other games and Anet and NcSoft have no return policies so bad luck is really bad in that sense.

In game you will find lots of stuff to do and it is very different from WoW, so that alone might be a reason to play it

I think this is the best reply I've read so far, especially the fact that it requires skill to be victorious. In WoW, developers from what I've seen are always trying to "balance" the classes and as a result, x class goes overpowered while class y is underpowered. There's crying, and no one is ever satisfied.

I like all kinds of RPG, though to answer an earlier post, I've never played Magic: The Gathering before (It was very popular with the people I went to high school with, but I stuck with Yugioh :P ) so this would definitely be a new experience as far as talent choosing goes.

I went ahead and picked up a Platinum Edition from GameStop (came with Prophecies and Eye of the North), though I didn't know there was a Trilogy or complete edition, would've bought that instead ._.

I will definitely check it out, thanks and I figure the system reqs for GW2 will be off the chain, so I'm gonna buy a new desktop later, doubt my laptop atm would support it.

Is there a website where I can learn the basics of the game? Like a wiki, similar to a WoWWiki.

Actually the system requirements are very low... If you go to www.guildwars.com there is a tab on the top that guides you to the wiki...it's quite complete.

There is still lots of time to get some good use out of GW before GW2 launches.

For a first time player, if you like the story aspect and lore of the world, I suggest you do every quest and mission. Skip nothing!

However if your not into the story as much as the game play you do have the option of skipping most quests and many missions while doing only those needed to get you lvled up and equiped for the elite areas. Not to mention you can skip the story entirely and create a PvP only character if that is more your thing.

And yes there's http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/ which is probably required reading for a new player. If you want to know your way around, I mean.

If you get all 3 campaigns start a character in each and switch whenever you feel like it, it's the best way to keep yourself entertained. Somedays I feel a bit burned out on one chapter so it helps to go work on another.

That's the official wiki. The unofficial one can be found here. There isn't much difference between them, though sometimes one has better descriptions or talk pages. There is also PvXWiki which is for builds. Avoid any wiki that is hosted by wikia.

You'll find this happens in Guild Wars as well, though the live team "tries" to stay on top of it. Since there is a relatively small live team at the moment, and since they are spending alot of time still adding new content, balance is kind of slow to happen. The dervish update, for example took more than a year to go live as I recall... but part of that was extensive play-testing.

You may find the Role Playing aspects of Guild wars somewhat light. The focus is usually much more on your (and your team's) skill setup to deal with the foes in a given area, hence the comparison to Magic.

I hope you enjoy it. Since others have already been good enough to point you to the wikis, I won't bother repeating the info. However, feel free to contact me in game any time if you have questions or need a hand with something. Welcome to guild wars!

I just recently stopped playing WOW after 3 years of near constant play. Got GW a few years ago but never played it. It's been a rough transition for me at least. There's definitely a learning curve as with all games of this type.

It seems like GW is more of a solo game at least as a new player. I've found some of the quests to be confusing as to where I should go even with the quest marker on the map, I'll get to the location and not see whatever I was sent there for. At level 6, I'm still wearing the same gear and using the same weapons, not really sure how upgrades work but I don't seem to get any from drops or quest rewards.

I'm sure there's a great in-game community but so far I haven't really met anyone who was overly helpful to new players. I did a lot of that in WoW when I new someone was new so it's been an adjustment for me.

I'll keep playing just to see the rest of the game and I'm sure as I get more familiar with it I'll like it more.

I'm sure there are plenty of people on these forums that would gladly add you to their friendlist and help you out when you need it. The matter in game is a little bit different. For one, it's really hard for us to tell who is new and who isn't, since many people have alts, mules and so on and most are busy doing their own thing. The best way is to find a newbie-friendly and helpful guild. I'd again suggest looking around here instead of in-game, with all the random recruiting that is going on around there. (Or maybe it's just me, I've had no luck finding a nice guild in-game.) If you're a person who prefers to play together with others instead of solo, this may be the best way to go and your experience in the game may really depend on what guild you end up in. Once upon a time GW was a game exclusively played with pugs, but sadly it's not that way anymore.

About gear, it depends on which campaign you started in. If you started in NF or Factions there are armor merchants in Kamadan and Shing Jae Monastery. If you started out in Prophecies, and haven't left pre-searing, you can get a new armor from the collectors there for different collectible items. They are a bit hard to locate, since they are all over the map. Your best chance for weapons is either from drops from monsters or again collectors. Also if you haven't been doing it - it's a good idea to buy a salvage kit (if you've reached Ascalon in case you started in Prophecies, because you'll need your storage to put them in ) and salvage some of the items you get. It's from them that you get runes, materials and other upgrades.

Definately worth the money for the whole set.

I've been playing since it was released, with a couple of breaks.

And there's still places I have'nt been to or completed.

The only problem is the lack of pugs, but as you can have 7 hero parties now thats no big problem, although I do enjoy playing with real people more.

And I may have been playing for a long time, but the shortened T1/T2/T3/DWG and all the others do my head in.

Thank you for the reply Megera, I'll look on the forum for a newbie friendly guild.

Same, I did join one but it was in-game. Not really an active guild though :/ Level 5 elementalist/mesmer now. Really fun exploring the areas and killing random mobs

Check out our Guild Connections section. You can post a Looking For thread or read through the Guild Looking For pages (check through several pages). Explain your circumstances - level, campaigns, experience, time zone - and what you expect to find in a guild. This type of guild shopping is better than getting invites from the guild spammers in the game.

If you have specific problems for which guru can supply some answers, come back and post. As you can see, we like to help.

As for GW2 requirements, they won't be that high. ArenaNet believes in keeping the requirements low so that the customer base is as broad as possible. They realize that few people can afford high-end computers. As with GW, the graphics might be beautiful, but they won't strain the average system.