New to game

Hi! looking for some help before I purchase the game....if you are not required to pay monthly, how do you get onto a server to play with other people? Thank you for your time!

You buy the game. You play the game. Not sure how else it can be explained.

im new to gaming...ive been playing rift and you would be able to run around with your friends...is that possible here?

1. Buy the game from a physical/online store
2. Install game with the cd-key that came with purchase in step 1
3. Create account, log-in to the game (requires internet connection)
4. Play without any hidden charges or monthly subscriptions from that point on (requires internet connection)

The world is completely interconnected. If your friends buy GW then you can all adventure together, max party size for most missions/maps is 8 though some are smaller and 2 are larger.

Each town has a number of servers called "districts". To meet a friend just go to any town and note what district your in, number is on top left side of screen. Then have them come to same town/district.

You can team up with friends if they are in same district as you.
You can switch to any district in any town that you have unlocked, at any time

Thus, you can run around with your friends.

thank you for the help...one more question....so I can run around with mt friend but are there other players running around at the same time in the same district? MMORPG?

In outpost and towns there are a lot of people, which you can all talk/trade with etc.
But once you got to an explorable area (with monsters etc), you will get your own instance with only you and your party members.

Just pointing out that gw consists of a multitude of districts (servers), and you have to be in the same district in the same town/outpost in order to team up. The large majority of the players are in the american districts.

Don't be fussed over districts, only larger towns have more than one (100 people per district) and you can switch between them easily. You will find your buddies without any bother at all.

Outside as other have said, explorables are "instanced" only you and you party are on the map with foes.

This is actually rather neat, as it means there are no "player/killers" as in some games, and you will quickly come to appreciate the benfits it offers.

As for "servers", unlike some games which force you to choose a certain server, GW simply connects you to on of the IP on its normal server network, and you play with every other player in the GW world at once.

There are no hidden catches, you buy the game, and from that point on you pay zero for anything. There are a few optional extra you can purchase in-store, but all are 100% no needed or required (things like costumes or extra character slots etc).

There are also no weapons or armor you have to purchase for real world money unlike some games, no one, and I mean no one has any advantage over you in this game, it all comes down to what you do in the game itself.

Even though GW is much quieter than it was, I believe you will enjoy it, and it certainly will be a great way to prepare yourself for GW2 since you will learn a lot of the background story etc.

Get Free Trial and see it yourself. GW isn't complicated at all, it's just different.

Well Hello there.
I think you should totally buy GW.It's a very fun game and everyone should play it if they plan on buying GW2 in the future.
And as the recent posters explained,YOU CAN of course play with other players.
It might be a bit weird for you in the start but when you get used to it its EPIC!.

Another hint for a group of new people: Create a Guild together, that will immediately give you a ingame chat channel only for you. Once you got a bit of money, buy a Guildhall for your guild, that will be your private outpost where you can gather and form teams. Later when you get more game money you can buy extra services for your guild ghall, like merchant, rune trader etc.
Then you can look out for other similar small guilds to form an alliance with, it should be with active and friendly people who are willing to help out newbies with advice and such. You can get far without, but often some simple advice will make things much easier. And maybe someone from the alliance will also want to join doing this particular mission or whatever task you have trouble with.