Should I still buy Guild Wars?

I am considering buying Guild Wars, but I have one problem. I'm worried that I'm going to buy it, and then GW2 will come out and then people will leave to go play that. I dont think I can run GW2, so I really wanted to play the original. Do I have to worry about the population dropping greatly?

Short answer: No, you can play the entire game by yourself.

Long answer: Assuming you buy Guildwars trilogy and the expansion Eye of the North, you get access to heroes. Heroes are pretty much full customizable NPCs that serve as a replacement for players. Originally, you could only use three at a time, but this was changed to 7 (i.e. full party) as the GW2 release date came closer. You can do all of the content in Guildwars with hero teams. Many players prefer to play with other players for the companionship as this is an MMO after all, but you do not have to worry about there not being enough of a population to actually play through the content. The game is 7 years old and the playerbase isn't like it used to be even ignoring GW2, so it's going to be hard to find any other new players to play with through the campaigns and PvP content.

The population is low and is going to drop even further when gw2 is going to be released.

In anticipation of that however the dev's made sure that the game can now be played single handed without any outside help. So even if the player base will drop so far that you can't find anyone to play with (and it wil not), you won't be stopped in your progress.

So it is still wort it indeed.

u can still buy it and do'nt worry about the gw community, its shit one now anyway

While you can still play the game basically solo, here's an idea. Try get a friend to buy the game as well and you can play/level/explore the world together. It can be a bit more rewarding than just playing alone. Or if you find a guild that still have some active players, you can find some people to play with there. There is still new players in the game, and I'm sure many of them will still play though GW1 semi actively even after GW2 is out.

And like you, not *all* players will play GW2, some due to not having good enough specs for it yet.

There will still be quite a few players. Many aren't planning to play GW2 and others will return after playing GW2.

There are a few (very few) things you can't do solo(with heroes or henchmen, aka H/H). There's also a few other things that are difficult to do solo(H/H). That said, I believe there will still be people around in GW for a while. In fact, if history is to be relied upon, it's likely that some people will play GW2, find themselves disillusioned, and come back to GW. At a minimum, I expect there will be enough people around for a while to still do stuff.

And on the plus side, runeing and gearing your heros is at an all-time low for costs, as the costs on most runes have bottomed out.

My advice is that the game is worth buying and playing. The catch is that with so many people leaving, to get the full experience you want to find a guild that is remaining active. Join a guild that plans on sticking around in gw for a while, or do as other people suggested and get a friend to play through it with you. As long as you don't mind a mostly empty world to explore and play in, guild wars will be around and playable for years to come.

Thanks guys, I was worried that if I bought the game I would end up not being able to play it since there was going to be no one to play with. I did plan on buying Trilogy, so I can just form my own party with NPCs if I cant find players. Thanks for the help, I'm pretty sure that now I'm going to buy it since I did try out the trial and I liked it. I was disheartened at first that you get your own world where I cant just run into people, but now that I know I can add NPCs, that wont be as much as a problem.

You will probably also want EoTN in addition to the Trilogy. Half of your hero choices (excluding merc heroes) are from EoTN. The other half from Nightfall.

The one thing you have to keep in mind with heroes is, heroes are great when you can configure them. To do this, you will need to unlock skills. Any player on an account that learns a skill (or acquires a hero with a skill) will unlock that skill. After that point, any hero on that account can access that skill. So, when you start out, you will only have unlocked the skills your character started with (out of the 1000+ skills in the game)

Most of the awesome builds you'll find on PvX Wiki include skills from all of the campaigns (in the triology) as well as EoTN. When you're first starting, the skills you have unlocked for that account are pretty limited. Henchmen on the other hand don't require you to have unlocked anything. So, early on, you may find that henchmen are a lot better than some of your heroes.