How Solo-able is it?

After keeping up with all the Guild Wars 2 news and reading both books, I've seriously been considering buying this trilogy off of Steam. However, I'm more interested in the RPG factor than the MMO factor for GW (not that I hate being social in MMOs, I'd just rather not spam LFGs when all I want is to experience the story).

Anyway, my question to you is how easy is it to solo in the campaigns? Is it still enjoyable? Are there important parts in the campaign that I can't do without fellow players, and are these moments frequent?



PS - I'm not really interested in the PvP aspect (at the moment, anyway). My main priority right now is diving into GW lore without spending all day on a wiki.

Very easy. Although, if you like the Lore you will probably want to start in Prophesies, but if you do, get to Nightfall as fast as you can and unlock heroes. They make doing it on your own a whole lot more enjoyable/easy.

When you got all four parts (the trilogy and the expansion) it's really easy if you don't mind opening different storylines early.

The easiest way imo is to do the following:
1: start in factions (2th part)
2: when you reach the mainland travel to Kaineng city and unlock all the other campaigns and get all the hero's you get at the start.
3: don't run 7 heroes yet, but continue playing till you can change 2th proffession and take a few of them to lvl up with you
4: start doing prophecy's for getting skills free and getting money while playing the game. It's relative easy. concentrate on your own skills first and then on your hero's skills
5: when they all are skilled up start saving money for armor upgrades
6: enjoy the game, you prolly can roll it now.

But... No matter in what campaign you start, having all campagins and eotn means you can unlock the most important things really soon.

If you're just starting out, henchmen will do you better than heroes. Yeah, heroes are customizable, but you'll have no skills for them, so it's really not worth it.

The game is designed to be playable on your own, that's what AI henchmen and heroes are for ^^

Heroes are not necessary to complete Prophecy.

Best advice i can give you is to do all quest you get in the differents areas you are in. it will give you gold and experience.
And if you start in Proph, you ll get lots of skills from quests.

I'm a pretty new player - started a few months back now. Completing the campaigns solo with heroes & henchmen is not a problem. I'm working on doing everything in hard mode now (I'm about 2/3 of the way to completing that). The difficulty level is actually great, I found, it ramps up nicely as your familiarity with the game ramps up. And building and controlling a team of heroes is great fun.

I've actually never grouped in GW so I have no idea what that's like, but for mine, it's one of the best single-player multiplayer games around. :-)

for the new player, prophecies (the first chapter), has a great learning curve--so you will learn and gain skills at about the same time. It is recommended to start with this chapter ...it has a beautiful tutorial (pre-searing) area and gives you time to learn the ropes.

GW is very solo-able using heroes & henchmen.

I'd say that starting your first character in Prophecies is the way to go. Not only does it have the gentlest learning curve (may be a little bit on the slow side), but you can unlock a lot of skills in the early portion of the chapter doing side quests while leveling up. The henchmen available there are good enough to see you through to Lion's Arch, where you can get quests to take your characters to the other chapters & Eye of the North.

The old lone wolf here. Yes, the game can be soloed in the sense that it is just you and the heroes and/or henchmen. IMHO, one of the best RPGs around.

I recommend start with Nightfall. The chapters and Eye of the North are so different from each other in terms of story that knowing the global secret does not detract from the individual stories but rather strengthens them. If you start Nightfall and finish it, you will have a full set of heroes that will make Prophecies and Factions a cakewalk. Alternatively, start with Prophecies for the vintage, classic experience of the game.

http://www.guildwiki.org/Main_Page will give you full info and walkthrus for missions. Also much other useful information.

Welcome to Guild Wars. A gigantic, vast, and complex game that you learn one bit at a time like everyone else did. Take your time and look around. There is lots to see and do.

Thanks for the help everyone, I've now purchased the game but I do still have a question or two. I'm new to this whole "campaigns, not expansion" thing. For those suggesting I start in Nightfall or Factions, would this in any way spoil the story for Prophecies? Or is each campaign stand alone? And am I able to be midway through one campaign and switch to another with the same character?

Each campaign is standalone, but they take place after one another. I recommend starting in Nightfall because of the heroes and because of the medium-sized length of the tutorial area (Prophecies = too long, Factions = too short). It would not spoil your experience with the other campaigns, since each story is distinct. A few things only become clear after you play the other campaigns as well, but this is not relevant to the main story line.

And yes, you are able to travel freely between the campaigns, once you reach a port outpost and did the corresponding quests to travel to other campaigns.

You can see the 3 campaigns as 3 big maps, and each big map has its own story line.

If you start in Nightfall, you get to the port outpost immediately but are able to do the travel quests after the tutorial when you are about level 18.
If you start in Factions, you get to the port outpost and are able to do the travel quests after the tutorial when you are about level 18.
If you start in Prophecies, you get to the port outpost and are able to do the travel quests after about 1/3 of the story line when you are about level 13-15.

Prohecies, Factions and Nightfall are stand-alone campaigns that can be played independant from each other. Eye of the North is an expension that requires you to own any of the campaigns.
You can take your characters to other campaigns (and eye of the north) and pick up the story there (not from the very start... but you will be introduced into the story in a natural manner as a foreign hero comming to aid a different continent in trouble).
I suggest you play prophecies first. It has a great learning curve. It is long and slow pased, but the story is kickass^^
Many people will disagree, but I like Factions alot as well. Its learning curve is much steeper, so I don't suggest starting there. The story is short and fast pased, but story is just right for the length of this campaign. The different sceneries are also very nice.
Nightfall I find the least appealing. It's personal preference, but the story is not well written enough for the length of the game, and the sceneries are all kinda monotonous for me (I don't really like desert settings, I guess ><).
Eye of the North is fun new content if you play through it once, but other than that I hope it's not a taste of what's to come in GW2. It's only an expension, so I'll cut anet some slack.
I value things like scenery/story/atmosphere in games, and Guild Wars hasn't dissapointed me. I have played through all campaigns multiple times and still enjoy them. So you are in for a good time, wherever you decide to start your adventure.
Have fun^^

Edit: And yeah, it's very solo-able with heroes or henchmen (It's what I usually do, though I do seek company from a guildie from time to time). As has been said, heroes are only good after you get some skills unlocked (prophesies has quite alot of skill quests that give you free skills ), so it's best to start with henchmen.

Step 1:
Create one of every character in Nightfall...continue on them until lvl 5 (complete the quest where talk to all the skill trainers) this unlocks some skills for you and your heroes

Step 2: Create a real character in Factions (u can to lvl 20 fast) play up until U get to the big (main island) get a run to Kaineng City (or just walk there its do north)

Step 3: Get a run to Nightfall (called a Ferry to NF). Complete the whole thing. This unlocks skills for your heroes, lvls your heroes. ( make sure to get masters in every mission you do, saves you allot of time later redoing them)Don't forget to pick up PVE skills from skill trainer

Step 4:After Nightfall map back to Kaineng City, continue the story until you reach Shiro ( have a alliance member run it for you) Don't forget PVE skills( make sure to get masters in every mission you do, saves you allot of time later redoing them)

Step 5: Go back to Kaineng City.. do the quest to go Prophecies... Once in LA get a run to TOA.....after that leave and back to Kaineng City.

Step 6: Go to EOTN ( tip: bring running skills). Once there, do main quest (ignore the dungeons) only stopping to do sub quest when they offer PVE skills as a reward. (you will want them all)

Step 7: complete EOTN, by this time you should have lots of money to upgrade your heroes, start working on titles, ect.., ect...

Step 8: Go to LA.. get a run to Droks..Continue Prophecies story line until you complete it...(make sure to finish Bonus objectives) Now you have Hard Mode unlocked on every continent.

Step 9: Go to TOA.. joing a pug for FoWsc .. start making money and mats..

Step 10: Bored of doing FOWSC? you will be shortly.. Go do every thing over in Hard Mode, work on titles, get more money. Once you have enough.. worry about better looking armor(stats are the same) better looking weapons,. ect..ect..

[ all this can be done solo with heroes and hench]

Just wanted to add: If you play Nightfall before the other 2 games, you will spoil their endings. The best way to play is in the campaigns chronological order; Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North.

In Nightfall, you can get "heroes" which are like the henchmen you pick up at outposts, only specifically yours, and you can give them weapons, armor, builds, etc. It's like having other people with you, only ones you can control - which is why people are saying start here, so you can get these powerful allies.

It IS possible to get through proph/factions with henchmen though, (generic npcs everyone can add to their parties before you go exploring/start missions,) and story-wise, it'd be best if you DID go down this road - and if you got stuck, you could always ask for some help with missions from guru - GW players really are the friendliest, more helpful community I've ever come across.

as already stated you could pretty much start off any campaign and not miss out on storylines, i recommend like cosyfiep said to at least start a character in prophecies to get the original guild wars experience, have fun with it and try not to take shortcuts the first time around

It is right that finishing nightfall first would spoil the other games. But the main spoiler is at the end, after you get most of the hero's (4 hero's you get after the spoiler, but 3 of them can also be obtained earlier, where you have to pick one over the other).

There is a smaller spoiler earlier on in Nightfall, but it's well hidden and if you didn't do the spoiled part, you wouldn't know it was a spoiler.

Yep, Prophecies is the best campaign to start with to learn the game and unlock skills using skill quests. Don't worry about heroes just yet, the game is playable without them. Besides they're worse than henchmen until you unlocked enough skills for them.

Pretty much this. Prophecies is vast and sometimes you'll be finding yourself confuzzled and wondering where the hell to go in which case I recommend checking the wiki which you can access ingame by pressing F10 and typing whatever you want to search in the search bar.

Guild Wars these days is basically a solo rpg with the option of playing with other people. Heroes don't make the mistakes humans do which is what a lot of people prefer, for me it ruins the mmo experience I can't play without at least 1 other social person in my party but it's up to whatever you like best. The lore is rich and imo Prophecies has BY FAR the best story to it.

Prepare yourself for some really terrible voice acting at times though lol.

People keep giving you the "fastest" or so-called "best" way to play the game. These are people who play GW as if it's a console shooter and the object is to beat the game as fast as possible.
If, on the other hand you are interested in the RPG/PvE aspect of the game and the story/lore, the best way to play the game is to start from Prophecies. It then doesn't really matter, lore-wise, whether you do Factions, Nightfall, or Eye of the North next. Factions & Nightfall have their own separate storylines, which eventually blend into the main storyline, and EotN builds on the central story.

In Normal Mode you can easily do the whole game with just Henchmen (and/or Heroes), which is not truly "solo", but for a practical purposes it's the same.

If you are mainly focused on the RPG elements, one nice thing are the Mercenary Heroes. You can make the mercenary heroes from your own alts and end up with a complete party of just you and your other characters.

If you're playing GW for the storyline, you should play it in this order:

Prophecies and Factions (Doesn't matter which one you do first)
Nightfall (because it continues the storyline of the two other storylines)
Eye of the North

Correct me if I'm wrong.