Could I Get A Quick Rundown?

Ok, so basically I'm very interested in guildwars. What is the point of the game? Is the pvp good? What is the level cap? Is there a %loss or karma system? Anything else people would like to inform me on would be Greatly appreciated.

To have fun.

Yes.

20.

No.

There's an official website with a lot more information about the game.

Is it open pvp? can I attempt to kill whoever i want whenever i want? And honestly, what is the "point" of the game? what is the single goal that everyone is working towards?

PvP is consentual only, and limited to certain areas of the world that are set up for PvP. In addition, the game is currently based around teams of 4-8 characters in one group, and PvP combat is your team versus the other team in a couple of different map types- Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Team Annihilation, etc.

The "point of the game" really depends on your personal goals. If you enjoy playing against monsters and gathering loot, you can go through all of the story missions, and attempt to find and complete all the side missions scattered throughout the world. You can spend your time finding the best loot, or collecting all the skills in the game. If you're wanting to PvP, the goals are to hold the Hall of Heroes, a PvP map which will have one instance in the world- and the only way to get there is to fight your way through many other maps. Once you reach the Hall of Heroes, you can remain in the map and fight the top teams for however long your team can keep winning. Likewise, there's Guild versus Guild combat, where your guild can duel another guild for standing on the ladder(http://ladder.guildwars.com).

Guild Wars is a persistant online game, meaning that you're sharing the same world as every other person who's playing- you can meet up with anybody who's online at the same time as you are by both travelling to the same place, and meeting up there- and travel times are instantaneous to towns and outposts, as you can open up the world map and travel by clicking on where you want to go. There's no real "goal", other than to have fun- you can complete the storyline and do all the missions, but if you don't want to, you don't have to- once you reach level 20 and get a good assortment of skills and good armor and weaponry, you can spend the rest of your time competing in PvP. As for the "goal" at the end of the storyline missions, I don't know, and I don't think ArenaNet is going to tell anybody until they get there after the game is released.

This game has tons of things other games don't have.

1.) The best PvP in a MMORPG ever. They've eliminated griefing, they're almost at a point where every class is perfectly balanced for PvP, and the PvP is fun and requires a lot of skill. Yes some items and levels will make you more successful at it, but it comes down ultimately to who has the best strategy and skill selection.

2.) The PvE has eliminated many of the annoying aspects of PvE as well, no camping days for an item, no annoyingly long travel times, no 3 minute fights with 10 minute rest times. No kill stealing, no trains, etc... It's incredibly well done.

3.) The point of the game is fun and there's tons of ways to do that. Some will find their fun in the competitive PvP nature of the game, others will enjoy the storyline and the missions, some will enjoy farming and searching for the perfect skills/runes/armor/etc.... I personally enjoy it mainly for the social aspect and great gameplay.

If the game was that one-dimensional, I wouldn't even consider buying it. I find games that are that simple-minded to be incredibly tiresome...

The level cap is 20. It will be 20 for all eternity (or at least as of yet there are no plans of raising it. Why? Because it sucks when you have to play for 500 hours to stay competitive - and it's usually just to hold your attention long enough to charge you a monthly fee. Guild Wars has NO monthly fees which means it makes you buy the next expansion (approximatly every 6-8 months) instead and they hold your attention with cool missions and vast worlds rather than "grinding" for levels and items.

|-(1-10)-(11-20)-------------------("End Game")------------------------> (Expansions)


Is the PvP good? PvP is just about the most important thing in Guild Wars. PvP in Guild Wars is extremely competitive and fun. You can fight with people all over the world for the same prize - the Hall of Heroes in the Tombs (an 8v8 arena) or you can go fight a battle with your guild (also 8v8) or you can go play a random 4v4 battle at the Gladiators Arena or the Ascalon Arena (ascalon is for levels <10). The game requires quite a bit of team and personal strategy to be victorious and battles, though only including 8 players per team, can take hours at a time if a stalemate occurs. It's at least worth your money to get the preorder and try it out. It's also got the best graphics in any MMORGP i've ever seen. Much much much much much better than WoW, and probably better than EQ (but I haven't played EQ).

There is no Karma system. It wouldn't really fit with the theme at this point. You are the "good guy" in all the missions and get to slaughter armies of undead and fight the Charr and Tengu on several occasions.

Or an overly instanced MMORPG
Seriously though it's more like diablo2 meets graphic channels in design.

but in look and feel the distinction blurs..

I wrote a write-up at the end of the beta event
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/g...tlist&fpart =

A thread on what it is/is not
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/g...ch=&PHPSESSID=

hopefully you dont mind me posting those 2 links there, thanks
CKaz

Interesting, but don't know why you weren't able to kill Striders(birds) and other Melandru Stalkers. True the targeting key didn't seem to work, so I clicked on them and blasted away. Found it annoying to have travel interrupted and to tell the truth those dang birds would attack my pet cat as well.

I don't know about the Academy area as I chose not to make that trip, but I found the content on the "training" side changed as soon as the quest I was working on was over, for instance the worms stopped popping up in the road once the Skale Tad quest was done.

**Although I have no idea why they were there in the 1st place or why killing Tads would make them go away**

I like this game because it will sort out the griefers and their compatriots and leave the rest of us to have the other kind of fun.

Ciarre

GW is an RPG. Diablo was not. In fact, neither Everquest and it's likes is an RPG. I still cannot believe how people would pay for a game which is all about leveling.
At least people in GW roleplayed. You can't believe how glad I was to see that. There was no l33t chat, no whining, no cursing... The perfect online game for me.

Uh ... what does "l33t" mean? I've seen it used a lot, but cant figure out by context its meaning.

leet

is is cute kiddiespeak

Why is there a lvl 20 cap? Is the lvling very slow? I have friends who have been playing WoW for a month and have several 20+ chars. Once you hit 20, there's only a few char slots to make new chars. Besides PvP, what else is there to do?

you can reach level 20 in a few weekends or in less than a week after it is released and you can play as you want

i dont PVP so i will be doing the missions and exploring

It's leetspeek and short for elite. Just plug leetspeek into a search engine and you'll get a fairly decent amount of hits.

What else it is? Annoying, deliberately annoying and in it's purest form nearly impossible to understand which explains why some of us dislike it.

Ciarre

What else is there to do? Explore the world. Enjoy the incredible graphics. Meet in town and join the mosh pit. Dance naked. Okay. Not exactly naked, but in your underwear. I'm not kidding. Characters can take all their clothes off. They can dance. Female Elementalists do a go-go dance. Female Rangers a lap dance. The Necromanders hump each other. Yeah, there are few things to do in Guild Wars that have nothing to do with killing things.

Trade. Trade is going to be very, very big in Guild Wars because there are no equipment drops as in Diablo. You will not be able to make yourself godly by having by chance snatched up Tyrael's Might. There is no such thing. If you want better equipment, you are going to have to acquire the crafting materials to make it. To get these materials, you'll have to trade. Moreover, you'll acquire a lot of crafting materials that are worthless to you. So, again, you'll want to trade for something you can use. And you will want better equipment. The monsters are no pussies, and the missions are difficult and rarely accomplished the first time without an experienced group. Which leads to

Team Play. Team play is the best in Guild Wars. Finding a good bunch of co-operative players and going into mission after mission is terrific fun.

But don't take our word for it. Get a pre-order and join the next Beta Event. You'll be able to tell in a few hours whether this game is for you.

Galatea Orea
First there was Woman.
Then came man.
The rest is history.

Yeah like any other game, lots of fun stuff to do. But well designed, and they got rid of almost all of the crap.

Whereas games like Everquest put "MMO" before "RPG", I consider Guild Wars the closest online game to my favorites such as Baldur's Gate. In fact, I still remember the phrase one of my fellow teammates said when we were fighting Ice Golems and dwarves. He said "Hah, It's just like D&D". I should mention that we were 6 (seven with my Moa Bird) and had archers, casters and fighters. What I saw really reminded me of that corny D&D TV show with that barbarian kid and his unicorn. Anyone remembers that? I basically grew up on this.

lol that D&D show was BAD.... hahah oh man, that was way back...

Anyways, if you are still looking for reasons to play... It's an extremely well done game. The fit and finish is excellent, with two more months before release (sigh).

It's serious fun. Getting TO level 20 is lots of fun, even more fun with a great group, can be frustrating with a really bad group . The level cap is there so you can compete and have fun in the PvP very early in your Guild Wars career and continue to compete. Some one with 1000 hours game time won't be higher level than you.

I've played lots and lots of online games and this is one of the best I have seen.

Ok I'm a fan of GW - although I may not get it for my original plans (content, play with the wife) I like a lot of what I saw. But Diablo not a RPG while GW is? Ummm...

As far as relying on server folk to RP, and if you actually get that, that's great. But really from what I've seen it's more about fun PvP/GuildWar clashes, as far as typical role playing, wont it be odd when you're beating on guild2 56-28.. what's the rpg significance there?

EQ for me was fun class design (enchanter - hey I didnt say balance - very crunchy and abysmal pvp :b lol) on a team server (pvp) - meshing content and intense fights for the long haul. But yeah it was a bit strewn together.. but considering I played it what, end of 90s now, maybe 00..

I had a great guild that kept me in it and no leet speak, so it's possible elsewhere too. I wouldnt use that to judge if it's a RPG tho.

Well back to trying to figure out where I might pre-order it from (which item interested me the most.. hmm.. heh)

Actually I remember that corny show.. and even liked it -back then- scary eh
My only concern is the pve ride is just a short stint/sideshow to the meat of the game. And I understand others like that fact (lets get our pvp levels and duds and go). I really enjoyed the quests and pve I did. Keep in mind tho I really tried to stay pre-academy as long as possible and just had one beta weekend, so maybe I just didnt get enough of a taste - I'm sure I missed plenty. If there is a lot of content to work with groups throughout the world of guild wars I'll be very happy and reconsider it as a possibility for the wife and I. Otherwise it's more of a pvp outlet for me. I'm not sure if it'll be right for both, but I could be surprised as well

They showed as green to me and I'd click with mouse and nuttin, meanwhile my cat was picking a fight with everything (bad kitty!) hmm maybe I missed something, but that was a surprise. I hope they add a little more control.

I didnt know what academy did and went for quite a ride - and really enjoyed it - I got a taste of the hook that is there. I think the options for 2 classes is great, if not downright engrossing. And I applaud attributes just adding to skills rather than 'get same skill with new name' every iteration.

Originally posted by DEATH AT THE DOOR

Don't want to start an agrument or anything but... the RPG genre in games is like the Drama genre in movies... All movies are meant to be Dramatic in some way. Comedy is just being over dramatic about things in a humourous way etc. etc.

Every SINGLE game is an RPG (if you take the Genre literally, like we do all the others). You Play a Role. For argument's same, Sports games are some of the most TRUE RPG's. You play a role... that role might be a wide receiver or a quarterback or all of them. We call a game a "Shooter" or an FPS or a Third Person Shooter if you shoot things and engage in similar activities, right? Why change things for a Role Playing Game. I'm sure it has something to do with Table Top games, and it's used now, simply for that reason (kind of Nostalgic) but it becomes the center of debate too often now. Action/Adventure is a much more suitable name... I actually like how ArenaNet but it... something like Competitive Online Game? (well, I think they said Competitive Online Role Playing Game, but whatever, it goes against my argument, lol).

Anyway, just wanted to voive my opinion on the "RPG" situation...

an example of the above in leet

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and for the seriously bored there is ultra

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I am an older woman, a real MMORPG newbie. I am not really into PvP. When I first start out in a new game I don't like to form a party. I like to take my time getting comfortable with the controls. In fact I am a bit Obsessive about exploring every inch of every map. I like honing my skills and selling and trading. Most members of teams I have joined like to dash from quest to quest. This is way too fast for me. I know the title is Guild Wars, but am I going to be able to play by myself for a reasonable amount of time without finding it an exercise in futility?

Going solo and using henchmen, rather than players is a viable option for a portion of the game. There are some times where missions are tough with just the henchmen, as they only level up in spurts. One mission they are level 6 and a few later they are level 10, and a few later they are level 15... so the missions right before the henchmen are available at their higher levels can be hard to do with no other human players.

I think that by the time you feel comfortable with everything, you'll find yourself looking for a party and using henchmen only when needed. The entire beginning of the game is doable by yourself, definitly. I've heard that you can get to level 7 before you leave the main Tutorial.

But yeah, the game is geared towards partying... so if the thought of talking to other people or dealing with people disgusts you, you might want to stick with Single Player games. :P

I also enjoy exploring the map endlessly, always searching for something... even if there's nothing. I think Guild Wars has gotten a lot more difficult in that respect, mostly because people were complaining that it was too easy, so it's harder to solo. Not that it can't be done... you just have to be creative and run by groups of enemies that you know you can't beat.

Overall, for the price of the admission (No Monthly Fees, Optional Expansions), you'll definitly get more than you paid for. And who knows, maybe with time you'll want to beat down some people in a little Random PvP just for fun, don't count it out.

I believe the Leetspeak was originated by one of the first AOL /hakor type programs out there called Havok. I remember back when I was an aol user-(version 1.4 I think?). The program Havok did things like kicked people out of chat rooms and completely off of AOL altogether (basically a program used to exploit bugs within AOL.) As well as being one of the first well known trojan type virus programs. The LEETspeak was used when more than one person in a chat room owned Havok .. or some other program like Havok. They could basically dis eachother within the AOL chat room and pretty much the only people that could understand it would be the people that also had a copy of Havok since it ' decrypted' the text for you. The main thing it was used for (at least as far as I know) was so other Warez seekers could find the chat rooms containing the warez they wanted. Anyway .. I am pretty sure that no one really cares but I just thought I'd add my 2 cents about the origination of eLITE speak ... lol.

i also stickto exploring and the missions and after 2 BWE have no qualms about going solo with henchmen

if a mission later on becomes a matter of futility i will ask maybe one other willing to help someone to go along and use one less henchman

i have found the profession you use and are most comfortable with can make a big difference

when i was a W/R (which a magazine said you would have the best chance of surviving) i was handed my head on a platter so often it was funny in a way

i thought simply what would i like to play and came up with a FIRE ELEMENTALIST/MESMER and have gotten farther faster than i possibly could before

there is still time to grab a preorder for less than 10 dollars and spend the next 2 beta weekends trying it out to see if it is your cup of tea or not

i have simply spent my time poking around seeing how things work and admiring the scenery and killing (being killed by) everything in sight all at my own pace

What henchmen?

Hi, I'm new to the forum and not a pre-order holder, so I'm coming into this cold. My question is, what's the social aspect like? I'm more a socializer than a PvP'er, I'd rather chat with people and go hunting in a party than beat up other players. (Or get beaten up by them, come to that.)

Does the game have a good mechanism for chatting, friending, party filters, et cetera?

Dave III

:S lv 20... so theyre not going to raise it to atleast 50? damn u can reach that in a few weeks or so~ thats not supposed to be good right? so u cant be l33tR than everyone else... so howre you gunna be stronger than others in a duel besides from relying on ur teammates. i understand that its a teamgame but i still think that lv 20 is a bit too small.

so whats a good character to start off with? im thinking about warrior or archer

Greetings and welcome, Dave III (love your avatar ).
The social aspect of GW is as great as an online game can be. PVP is but a part of the game and you can only PVP in certain areas, which means you won't be Player-Killed unless you are ready for it.
A humongous part of the game is Player-Versus-Everything. You go arround with a party and kill monsters. The loot is automatically assigned to players so you do not fight over who's getting what.
I actually have a Friend's Pass. Since you have not preordered, I have nobody to give it to and I like your avatar, I could give it to you .

Oh! Hey, that's really swell of you. Thanks. ^_^ (Love the sig line!)

I'm glad to hear about the social thing. It's that kind of thing that has attracted me to other games, although the end result was sometimes better than with others. ^_^ But things are looking really good for this game, though.

Dave III

(As for my Avatar, the model's sitting on my desk right now. I'll probably be updating the image though, with some text or something. Let folks know it's a jackalope, not a bunny with mutant ears...)

the level20 is to prevent a miserable 12 year old who spends 12 hours a day from grinding out levels and then crushing someone who has a life who just wants to have some fun

you can get level 20 in less than a week of playing and most people who have been at it for a long time say you only begin playing at level 20

SKILL SKILL DID I SAY SKILL is what counts

not the hours grinding levels

practice and tweaking your build on the other hand gives amazing benefits by actually knowing what you are doing

you are leet by being good not how long you simply have been there killing 10 million rats

i tried warrior but sucked big time

did well as elementalist/mesmer
am going to try ranger/monk this beta

When starting the game, there is a training area where you're mostly on your own in adventuring, although you can chat and trade in the city areas. Once you join the Academy and the razing of Ascalon occurs, you end up in the larger part of the game, where henchmen and PvE (player vs. environs) and PvP (which is optional) are possible.

At the exits from the cities and other congregating areas, you'll often see Warrior, Monk, Ranger and Elementalist henchmen waiting nearby to be hired. I found that it's not necessary to have many henchmen at first, but the game difficulty increases as you increase your level and go further into the campaigns. Eventually, henchmen aren't even enough, but there is plenty of time and opportunity to get acquainted with the game before this stage.

Thanks a Lot SisterMercy. I only got to play for a couple of hours the last week-end the game was available, and since then have purchased my pre-order package. So I didn't get far at all...spent lots of time trying to find the gate, then just exploring and killing things around the city, chasing pigs and helping some guy get eggs. The little girl outside the city is a bit of a pain. Is it required that you buy her the flute, cape and find her the flowers? I would have sooner bought something else rather than the cape. Also does she have to tag along and get in the way or can you click and request that she stay where she is?

Hah, you got stalked by Gwen! She's a pest, isn't she?
You don't have to buy her anything, and you can get her to stop following you by talking to her (tell her to -- off).

there is an initial scene where she asks to go along and if you only give her the broken flute you get a reward but she doesnt follow

if she follows with the new flute she will heal you at times if you need it and she does not get in the way as monsters dont attack her

use her for a shield by hiding behind her

try it you will lke it

Thanks...waht a good idea!

Nash, from your Avatar I summise you are a cat lover? I have 5 cats, 2 dogs.
http://www.geocities.com/lousfurkids2003/

Thanks for helping out a Newbie.
Isn't Gwen's skipping annoying? Silly twit skips around the monsters! I just assumed I had to buy the cape and wand for her seeing as the Outfitter really doesn't have much. Is there anywhere in the game to get decent armor and weapons other than the stuff we pick up?