Which game to start with? (returning player)

I picked up the game in it's entirety after venturing off into other games for the better part of 5 or 6 years. I was looking for opinions or suggestions as to which of the games is best to get started from scratch in. Skills and skill purchasing isn't a big issue, i have most unlocked through the store. I'm just wondering which would grant me easiest/quickest access to the attribute quests and broaden the horizons of the game itself in terms of being able to reach them all earliest.

Sorry if this seems a little scattered. I can clarify if anything needs it.

Thanks!

When you say entirety I assume that includes the three campaigns and the Eye of the North expansion pack. With Eye it isn't as much fun for me. The expansion is so worth it.

I'd start a character in each game myself. That way you can see which you like the best, which is fastest for you and, if bored, switch around. Also Kamadan in NF is both the beginning city and the one where most trade happens so is a good place to meet people in the game and find a guild to join too. So even if you choose to go through another campaign first, good to make a NF toon really quick, run it through the tutorial mission, then enter Kamadan just like that and hook up with people.

As to the quickest campaign to get through? I think Factions is the quickest to get through. Definitely the shortest of the three. The extra attribute points quests are on the beginner island. Just use the Wiki to see when they open up and where they are since they don't advertise them.

Nightfall has no attribute points quests. As soon as you do an early mainland quest regards rescuing Koss and get the reward for same you will see all the extra attribute points waiting for you to distribute. So that's pretty easy too but the story itself is longer than Faction's if your goal is to finish one quickly to open up Hard Mode say.

Proph is the hardest to get the extra attribute points. It's by the far the longest campaign too. Also hardest to get access to max armor early. You have to go or get run to Lion's Arch then hop a boat to KC in Factions and/or take the Eye of the North quest to reach a place to get max armor quickly.

You get to the North and extra heroes near KC in Factions and near beginning city Kamadan in Nightfall and outside Lion's Arch a little some in Proph. You have to get to level 10 before it opens up and get the quest from a AI guy that will only give you the quest after you reach level 10 in each city. Wiki will give you the names of those characters.

Transporting between campaigns? I recommend that highly especially since you can open up all you secondary professions much easier by taking the boat to KC from Lion's Arch for a Proph toon (yes I hate the Crystal Desert stuff). So a Proph toon can use the Closer to the Stars mission in Factions to unlock the secondaries.

NF secondaries is easier but open ONLY to NF characters. They are opened after the rescue Koss quest too. You have to buy them for 500 gold each at several places for a toon in any campaign. Temple of Balthasar is the easiest for me to just zip to.

Look in Wiki on how to travel between the various campaigns. It's a short, well written piece that you really need to see to know how to do it.

Nightfall has a shortcut called "getting a ferry" from someone in Kamadan offering to "ferry" you to the "consular docks" area where you can get the boats to the other campaigns. Also where you can get max armor right off the bat on the docks there!! Get a "ferry" in Kamadan and you can have max armor as soon as you can afford to buy it. They often will even take you to LA if they are friendly and have that quest kept open and help you get your necro (Olias) in the quest there that ALL campaigns have to use to get him. (The quest for the necro is in Kamadan and you have to have it open before you go however, it's a cross-campaign quest).

I recommend campaign hopping because hopping over to NF when you can (from LA or KC) will net you 4 heroes off the bat and the 5th in a short, easy quest right off. Going to the North will get you 2 right away and one by running quickly up to the Eye (next place up) to collect a third. That's 7 without breaking a sweat pretty much. Just be careful with the 5th hero in NF. You have to choose between an Ele and a Ranger and can't get the other until the end of the game. (Pssst. Take the Ele. Far more important hero when going through the game in normal mode and you can get a ranger later in the North. There's a second ranger choice in NF too but take the necro instead, you only need one ranger hero and you can't have enough necros in the game for hero slots).

Don't know if you bought the hero slot pack since you mentioned you had the skill packs. The hero slots allow you to make your own heroes. You can make a pvp hero never attended to go outside in pve and quest. You go to an AI guy in Temple of Balthazar and add him into one of the 7 slots max you can play with. Yes you can use all heroes, not just the limited three as before. Anyway a pvp created toon is already at level 20 pre-made so you can use him and his freebee armor as a hero. You just have to give him a weapon and, if you decide to keep him, you can even rune him out when you get the chance. You can use him (them plural for that matter) with each of your toons immediately. Each of your characters has to "register" him via the guy at ToB or other places - I always go to ToB myself. Then distribute his attribute points and give him a weapon separately but each character has access to him.

If your goal is speed and you don't mind unbalancing the game this helps a lot. If you want to enjoy the journey and be more challenged, then I wouldn't do this. I like hopping around like crazy myself but even I didn't use this means. I just used my own toons after they got to level 20. But everyone is different and has different styles of play and goals.

Okay too much caffeine. And I'm sure others will come on and tell you something totally different like don't campaign hop and stuff like that. Some people think it is a purer way to play one campaign at a time. Me? I'd go nuts if I couldn't hop around the whole world and do what I like. You? Well that is your choice. Enjoy, have fun and welcome back.

And ... Wiki is your friend. You can save hours of grief by consulting it always and often. Kudos to the old time players who put together such a beautiful resource.

At the start, there was only Prophecies.

Then Fations.

Then Nightfall.

Then Eye of the North.

If you want the authentic experience, play through Prophecies first, using only Prophecies skills. Then take those prophecies skills with you into Factions, and then both of those sets of skills into Nightfall. Etc.

Do it right, do it in order, with no heroes until Nightfall. Like we had to

Max

I would start in prophecies because that has a 'vanilla feel'.
Factions and Nightfall all feel more like expansions, which is how its meant to be.
So I would definitely start with vanilla!

Chronologically speaking, Prophecies and Factions happen in parallel. Nightfall a few years alter, and EotN even later than that.
And since NF has some references to the prior games, that would be the order I'd suggest.

I think that Factions has the steeper learning curve compared to Prophecies, so I'd go Prophecies first.

What you could do (when getting to Lion's Arch in Prophecies or Kaineng Center in Factions) is to access NF in order to get some heroes there and also access EotN for the 3 starting heroes there. Since you got skills unlocked already, that would make sense.

For your fist play-thrus I also suggest to start with a native char for all 3 campaigns - with foreign chars you'd skip the starting areas and miss the beginnings of the storyline.

As Gadd Fan suggested,
why not start with one character in each campaign.
Possibly two in Prophecies of where one stay in Pre-Searing, as it's a sub-culture in itself with it's own economy.

Glad someone else thinks that way too. Since I got GW after all campaigns and EotN were out, there waas no "authentic" way for me. No disrespect to those that think that way. But, sorry, I don't believe you get any more out of the game by starting in Proph alone. It was just what people were stuck with when they bought the game early on and their choices were limited to just that campaign.

Later on the other campaigns tweaked a lot that was wrong with Proph in my opinion so I have no loyalty to that campaign as something special or that should be done first.

Proph was just the programmers' first attempt and a good one but the tweaks made with heroes and getting the extra attribute points easier and not having to wait forever (crystal desert) to get more secondaries are all making the game the way it should have been from the beginning to me. Not that I blame the programmers for not being perfect from the get go. On the contrary, I'm grateful they fixed what was wrong or lacking in the Proph and allowed heroes and growing closer to the stars for Proph toons too so you could enjoy them too and have more fun that way.

It then made Proph fun for me because my first toons were made there because of the feedback I got from old timers when I first started. But I soon got run to Lion's Arch and hopped about to the other campaigns and the North and played the whole darn world and loved doing that much MUCH more than being stuck in the straight jacket of one lone campaign. Then I immediately made a toon in Factions and soon added one in NF. Should have started in all three at the very beginning as I look back on it.

It's ok that you want the easier route. Of course having heroes and three times the number of skills makes it easier. Just like bringing your IronMan suit to a knife fight.
But like you said, when it was just prophecies, you only had prophecies skills. The way it was intended to be.

Take the easy route if you want. There are super-uber team builds on wiki, using skills and heroes from all three campaigns that will make it so easy you won't have to think, so you can play after several reefers, while comatozed watching daytime TV if you can't bring your brain's function to more than a pre-schooler.

But to do it properly, and actually engaging with the game as it was intended, do the campaigns in order, using only the skill available as you progress.

Max

the way the game was created was to show you how to play your characters. That was the reason for the slow learning curve (and no heroes) in prophecies. Granted, it could have been a bit less spread out, but it was fun to learn all of it at a good pace.
Factions and nightfall adapted and added/subtracted things, some was good, some wasnt so good.
What Max is trying to say is that if you want the authentic feel for the game to start where it all began and play the way it was meant to be played when it was created.

Personally, if you have not played before I would also suggest that since it gives you time to actually learn the professions instead of just tagging along for the ride. If you have played before, then I see no reason to ---start where you wish and go where you wish.

In the end, it doesnt really matter what you do, but to brush up on your skills the veterans suggest starting at the beginning, if you feel confident of your skills then take your pick.

Yep. Keep in mind that Hard Mode won't be accessible to him yet until he has finished each campaign, so heroes really aren't necessary yet.

Max

But maybe it is more fun to play with heroes instead of rent-a-men (err, henchmen). It is for me because heroes feel part of my questing family. I can make out their skill bars, get them weapons, update their armor and rune them out. It makes going through the game so much more like a party of closely knit adventurers for me.

And easy or hard way? What does that mean? It's just a game. Not philosophy or ethics or some saintly path chosen over all of us sinful types that prefer the complete game and not just the rough draft version. The programmers changed their mind and vision on how the game should be played. They didn't freeze themselves in time.

What was "intended" was for people to have fun and not feel like they are somehow inferior to other players because they are smart enough not to fight a war with one hand tied behind their backs. (See how that analogy "stings" the way it was phrased. I did that on purpose just to demonstrate how silly it is to say these things to each other. That's all).

And analogies are slippery slopes. I can have fun with them too. Like old timers are saying everyone should still walk to work as nature "intended" and anyone who takes a car to work is one sorry, "lazy" bastard because the first quarter or so of history had no cars. Therefore we should keep living like our ancestors and all go back to the stone age. All analogies would get an F in Logic 101.

You see it is up to everyone to decide. And calling names at people who don't follow your path of reasoning isn't cool. So please leave the rest of us to follow our own game playing path in peace. Because in the end seeking to externally validate your superiority over others through how you choose to play a game is kind of silly. As is expecting everyone to share your vision and anyone who doesn't being called names for not marching in lock-step with you. Maybe that wasn't what you guys are trying to say but that is how it came out sounding. "We are the good, superior players and you others are the bad, inferior ones." Wonder why you got a little push back with that?

So play any which way you want I say. There is NO "correct" way to play. Period. It's a game. You are the player. You decide. I only replied to all these posts because I got tired of the patronizing attitude towards those of us that prefer a more logical, holistic approach to playing a now completed game as opposed to putting myself in what I view as an artificial time machine straight jacket and following the development of a game over several years from rough draft version to completed version. I bought the complete version. Not an individual campaign back in the day. That is my "authentic" gaming experience and it is as valid as any one of yours. So maybe if we just respect other people's opinions some we can have a little peace on earth both in GW as well as on a real earth.

I appreciate all the responses and have enjoyed reading them. I did poke around with a few classes in each game, got them to varying levels. Rit, Para, Mes were the main 3 i tried first, 1 in each game. pretty ho-hum, not very good at mesmering, tbh.
I started, and have really fallen in love with a Dervish. reminds me of the fresh feel of when i first played a warrior back when the game launched initially.
should be fun!

That's the point. Prophecies teaches the mechanics, letting you get a deeper understanding of how skills and spells and armour all compliment (or undermine) each other. This is most certainly not a shoot-em up where none of that matters. Guildwars, and specifically Prophecies actually trains the player. Factions, Nightfall and Eye all assume a level of knowledge which Prophecies teaches.

But the most important thing is that you have fun. It's s game after all. And you say you're having fun, so it's all good. It's your journey, no one else's.

@Gadd-Fan: get over yourself old chap. The OP asked for opinions. We both gave different opinions. You seem to think I insulted you. I'd be interested to know which part you took offence at, seeing that none of my posts were directed at you. But perhaps that's just a social skills thing. I haven't begun to insult you yet, so perhaps a little less passive-aggression might be in order?

Factions was my first, i remember doing Vizunah Square with a level 14 assassin with henchman..It was hell
Prophs will give you space to learn the basics before you run into difficult missions, i say start with prophs.

I managed to get my original account back, after losing it a few years back. It's nice to get it back, downside being I don't have all the skills unlocked across the various classes. Elementalist and Mesmer are really shortchanged. Never did get very far with either one back then.
going with W/E through prophecies. hopefully get skills unlocked through the quests.

good to hear you got it back....should be quite a few birthday gifts on it too!

ANY way you play--just enjoy yourself and you are doing it right!

welcome back

Ah, memories. My first was a w/e through prophecies in about 2006. If only I'd have kept all the r7 drops I'm bound to have merched....

Max

(Stop snivelling(sp) Max, you are rich enough)

OT - It was much easier in the early years of the game to start from scratch in Prophecies as you could find other people to play through with you at difficult points. Now you could play the whole game without ever speaking to another live player. So bring your heroes along and enjoy the game.

P.S. If you find any r7 drops, contact Max.

welcome back!

Personally when i returned to the game first thing i did was check my chars for bday presents. Next thing was pretty much goofing around doing nothing productive,progressive or interesting. Things such as vaettir farming with my ele, Dervish Nightfall treasure hunting.

After a while i realized i have no idea where i stopped with my characters, and had no clue what to do..

Then i decided to make a small series of challenges with a brand new character.
(this might sound like GW Chronology challenge from redit, but i started doing this over a year ago. The redit challenge is arond 4 months old now)

The idea was to make a new prophecies character and to finish Prophecies missions+bonus and all quests that i encounter. Then move on to Factions and do the same. Then Nightfall and then eotn. Lastly doing the series of quests with War in Kryta and such.

The extra challenge of doing so is that i couldnt move on to the next chapter before finishing the previous one.

This means no running, no hopping to eotn or NF for heroes.

I could use only henchmen before i get to NF.

Another challenge was that i could only use skills from the chapter i was in.
Being in proph i could use proph +core skills
Being in Cantha i could use factions +core skills
Being in eotn i could use all skills.

1 more thing i should add is that i couldn't use any gold, items, or materials from other characters or my bank.

It was really interesting salvaging different items for mats,and use it for a new armor. Salvaging runes and insignias, heck it was amazing when i got a purple weapon and found a better mod for it specially in proph and factions where there are old school weapons.

After i finished all 3 chapters +eotn id go elite skill hunting as well as doing all the things all over again but on HM.