hi, new player here i hope

hi, im waiting for gw2, ive never played gw1. im looking for something to keep me busy untill gw2 is ready. im thinking it might be a good time to start gw1, is it reasonably up to date by todays standards? then theres the perks of the hall of monuments, character name and possibly a gw2 beta key? so for a new player will gw1 be decent to play, once again... by todays standards?

im also wondering if i should just buy all 4 editions of the game, any perks to that? i have the trial installed atm but havent played yet really, i dont wanna have to download each new zone as i go along.

thanks to any advice that can be given

Guild Wars is a different enough game to where it wouldn't matter if it weren't "todays standards." Todays standards of gaming is much lower than years ago, so I'm sure the answer is yes.

You get more playtime playing the storylines of the GW Campaigns than you would getting one of the current single player RPG's, so I would say it's definitely worth the investment.

And basically GW PvE plays pretty much like a single player RPG.

Don't depend on having a GW account automatically gaining you a beta key. ArenaNet sold about seven million boxes between the three campaigns and EotN.

But majoho is correct. For the relatively small investment, GW's Trilogy & EotN or the Complete Collection will give you hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of game play. And the game is much better than most of the RPGs on the market.

If you want to build up rewards in the HoM for GW2, you will need EotN and at least one of the three campaigns. The perk to having all three campaigns (aside from the fun of playing them) is that it makes it easier to achieve all the available HoM rewards. For example, completing a campaign is one of the easiest reward points you can earn, so finishing all three campaigns gives you three easy points. For another example, completing the same title, such as Vanquisher, in each of the three campaigns using one character gives you a fourth point for free as a Legendary holder of the title. So it is worth having the trilogy for reward reasons.

The only perk would be that you can buy the whole collection for a LOT less than it use to be. I remember buying Nightfall for thirty bucks on it's own. Your not going to be joining a dead game but it has lost quite a few people since it first started but there is a lot of people coming back (like myself) to do HoM and get prepared for Guild Wars 2. As for this game, I really do highly suggest it mainly because most games you farm the same monster for hours / days and then wonder why you had to do it in the first place. Guild Wars actually has a storyline that follows through and buying the whole collection would be like playing four different MMO's in my opinion. At least that's what keeps bringing me back.

thanks for all the info guys, much appreciated, think i'll buy the full set to save downloading the trial bit by bit

Also once you have the game installed, you can get rid of the waiting for every map to download problem by using the command line -image to just get it all in one go. Takes a little while though.

Heres a link:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/-image#-image

Once its done, it will close the client and you'll have to remove the command to play.