currently playin WoW.. might wnna start Guild wars

Well... I heard of this game when it came out.. that was it... then saw a link on the WoW forums to guild wars today.... just wanna know how the servers are... in WoW... servers go down so much.. and so many issues to deal with... right now a grip of ppl cant even login to WoW....

Probably gonna wait til Factions come out... I havent heard much from this game.. is there good content.. do they update regularly.. the reason I didnt play this is because I thought if we didnt pay a monthly fee.. there would be little support and few updates.. Just wanna get a good idea of what to expect before I buy this game...

Well if server uptime is your only concern I've only seen them do like 4 hours of maintenance since I bought the game. I've never had a problem connecting. Honestly this game lacks some of the fullness and depth of WoW but it's still a good game. support is good considering the size of the player base and updates are handled swimmingly. It streams live to your comp and then you'll get a message asking you to restart and that's it. No downloading the latest patch or anything.

Guild Wars has a total of 12 hours down since its release almost a year ago, and 10 of those 12 were due to a 1 hour roll back not long ago after a trader pricing glitch. Oh, I think they had a planned down time and gave us fair warning about it a few days ago to fix a server issue, but it was only a few hours.

In other words, Guild Wars is solid as a rock.

No monthly fees basically has nothing to do with updates. The official website's supprot team is the best you will ever encounter. They actually read, and type replies to you. Seldom will you recieve an automated response.

Guild Wars a spiffy streaming system so download new updates as soon as you log in, if they are available. There are various bug fixes usually every week or two, and major updates every month or two.

To summarize, ArenaNet owns Blizzard to the max when it comes to keeping the customer satisfied.

GW has had ~18 hours downtime since its release. 2 hours 1 day, 10 hours like 9 months later, and a few hours a couple days ago. ~18 hours in over a year of playing

that's less than one percent downtime. I think it's so much less it might even meet 5/9 standards which is phenominal.

cool... probably gonna start playin when the new one comes out... is the gamplay easy to learn??... since i been playin WoW... is it easy to adjust too... and is there like a 10 trial pass.. kinda like what Blizz did with WoW... wanna try it out...

Why buy a 10-Day trial pass (they don't make them by the way) when you can just spend £25 and buy Factions and have it forever with live streaming update for free constantly?

O.. when u bought WoW.. they gave u a 10day trial pass to give to a friend to try out...

think I should wait for FActions.. or buy it now and see if i like it??...

If you buy the factions pre order you can get a 14 day 10 hour trial. The factions pre order is a down payment for factions. If you do get serious into Guild Wars pvp you will probably want the orginal Guild wars to have all the skills. The orginal Guild Wars probably will go down in price when factions comes out. Most people here will proably recommend buying orginal since this is a Guild Wars fansite. I got more play time out of Guild Wars then I did with five months of WoW. Also still enjoying Guild Wars and bored of WoW.

Cool.. I'll probably get it today... then if I get into it.. get Factions when it comes out.. thanks for the info and stuff...

http://www.arena.net/about/team.html

look at the team who did GW

Generally I would suggest getting the Prophecies campaign if for nothing more than the skills. Though it may actually get cheaper after factions is released so you need to balance getting it now with the gamble it will reduce in price (after all they are better off with you having both - thier cost is trivially larger for you to own both and they stand to make much more if you buy factions for full price and prophecies for 20 dollars - you only add storage for two slots, using bandwith/processor load is the same no matter of you are in Cantha or Ascalon, Kryta, etc so that's 20 extra dollars for the minimal storage of two more character).

The following is speculation. Even with the preview we don't really know. I suspect that while factions is standalone in one sense it will also be an expansion in another. You will most likely miss the skills for the main professions. For one thing Prophecies has the classic cookie cutter classes pretty well specced out, factions is adding two specialised classes. Since things like "warrior" "healer" and "nuker" are pretty useful I suspect that prophecies will really be the core game in terms of skill sets.

For example, did you play games during Baldurs Gate one and two? Two was standalone, I played it first. You really didn't need to play the first but the gaming experience was much better once I finally got it, part two was MUCH better playing with that old savegame. So far Factions is having VERY similar wording with it's descritpion and fuzzyness if it is an expansion, standalone, or sequel.

I also rather suspect that as more guild wars games come out this will be less and less true. If it makes it a few years down the line and has five or six parts (or longer and more parts) I would bet that missing one will not be a big deal. But right now missing one of two will feel really bad while playing. Missing one of two is a big deal, three of ten not so much.

I have friends who have been playing WoW for a year now and still are grinding to max up to level 60. What a waste of time!

Well if they have been playing for a year and havn't gotten to level 60, chances are they aren't they don't play that much, so it's not like they are wasting their life away.
I got level 60 in a few months, and I was not even a hardcore player myself...

Well, I know that they do play it a good bit, maybe they just suck. ;D

Well, I suppose the release of battlegrounds has a lot to do with it. My entire journey to level 60 took place before battlegrounds were ever released, so I didn't have PVP distracting me. If your friends play a lot of battlegrounds, their slow levelling is excusable ^.^

I recommend getting the first campaign first, because it will give you access to more skills as other have said, and you won't be confused when people are talking about chapter 1

Yeah, man no doubt.

They actually update quite frequently with new material and whatnot. A while back they added an entire new section with a whole new array of hard and challenging quests which I only recently completed, more recently they've added all the PVP to an island and changed the format of creating PVP characters, among many things. Changes are always coming along to mend glitches that occasionaly crop up, but nothing major. The game is fun to play and takes skill, and can be very fun.

That's true that they add new content, but nothing as significant as new skills or new profession (or new game types) is going to come as a free expansion

/salutes Discohang

We're all a bunch of exceedingly biased people here, this being a Guild Wars forum, but it's an awesome game nonetheless.

It would take a little getting used to after WoW, but if you can get your head around the fact that there is NO FEE and you can play as much or as little as you want, and that the MAX LEVEL IS TWENTY but levels are fairly meaningless anyways... You're in for a good time.

Yea I know too many WoW players you can't stand that Guild Wars max level is 20. They are disgusted by the idea of instant level 20. I recommended progress quest to them.

being good in guildwars is much harder then being level 60 in wow

Guild Wars isn't about the numbers. It's about skill. ~ Gaile Gray

Well, she said *something* like that in one of her interviews about level capping. No monthly fee is great. No level aspiration like in RS or WoW, it's more about getting items, rank/fame, and/or being in a good guild.

I'd say episode 6 of purepwnage (downloadable here:Episode List) pretty much sums up everything you wanna know about why you should quit WoW as soon as possible. It also includes a hilarious song called "World of Warcraft is a feeling." which is still stuck in my head ever since I watched it. Of course, if you actually believe that WoW is a feeling then you should quit WoW even faster than immediately.

Why do you keep on typign like this...
Its quite annoying you know....
Ok....
Thanks....

Quoted for truth.

Grammar: it's not just for breakfast anymore.

Sorry, double posted by accident =\

GW is a wonderful game, especially when you first start... after you play through a few characters, the game gets stale... There just isn't alot to do after you do all the missions and quests and junk...

Sure theres FoW armor and junk, but thats just a huge grind...
If you are expecting updates like every week with whole new content, GW is not the game to play. If you want an enjoyable RPG that you do not have to worry about getting the best items to be effective (Collectors), GW is the game for you.

You will tire fast if you play the game everyday for 3 months, you will just get burned out, not enough new content.

Making new characters is also dull after the 5th time...

its a great game, iv really enjoyed and NO monthly payments.

I agree with 100%, I would like to say weak rpg. You don't even really feel like your apart of your world in the game. The story is very linar. If you like to pvp, there is alot of stuff for pvp.

Lore, Mythology & History in Guild Wars inside the game is not very deep. Some npc's talk about gods and there is little things here and there. I might be looking these kinds of things from a wrong game now but strong lore is the main dessert for me in a RPG.

Exploration in the lands of Tyria doesn't give very much 'oooh what's over that hill' experiences for me because of that.

Otherwise Guild Wars is wonderful game and I find always new goals to achieve.

The gameplay is extremely easy to learn, if you where good at pvp in wow you will probably be good at it in this game. Kiting is essencial and very effective since all classes run at the same speed unless they have a speed buff skill. At first you might be overwhelmed by the pure number of skills but after you play for a while you will realize that the vast majority of them are subpar or downright useless and not worth using. This leaves you with a very managable number of good skills and builds to work with.

Mared has it pretty much wrong. I never bothered with WoW, but I hear it is pretty much Silk Road with fees. Gameplay is incredibly easy to learn, but near impossible to master. By all accounts guild wars is a bit faster and a bit more involved. Most every skill has some use somewhere, but there are a set of PvP preferred skills and a totally different set of PvE preferred skills. Some skills require a higher level of awareness to play well, while some are stupid-proof. Generally the PvP environment has a lot of depth if you wish to develop it. Kiting just scratches the surface of movement management. Guild v Guild battles are largely dictated my movement and location awareness.

If you aren't overwhelmed by the number of options, you aren't thinking hard enough. The design forces difficult decisions and if you aren't making them, you probably are overlooking something.

I'd say wait for Factions.

Its has some elements to it which maybe more familiar to WoW players, like two different alliances fighting it out.

If you decide you like it, get an old copy of GW and merge the accounts for extra content.

The servers have gone down once seriously in the 7 months i have been playing, and that was for a roll-back after a problem occured with rare items in game. Other than that occasional lag issues which affect me, and me and my entire team were once kicked from a competitive match as the local server went down. Lasted about 5 mins.

A major update happens every 6 months from Factions, and small tweaks are happening constantly as you play the game. Typically balance changes and bug fixes occur on a daily basis, with large changed ocuring once every week or 2 weeks. On the whole, support is very good.

There is a problem with farming bots in some areas, but most dont ever realise it tbh, and it is certainly very much a tiny issue compared to that of WoW.

The deciding factor for you to get GW is wheter you like PvP enough to marry it, basically. Everything in GW is cooperative or competitive, which can be annoying when u just want to make some progress on ur own. If ur looking for a free, more reliable version of WoW, look elsewhere. If your looking for a alternative, then GW is the right place.