Future GW:Factions player

Hi guys, just wanted to say that I have read alot of the faqs and stickys and just wanted to hear some opinions from you guys.

I'm an old school mmorpg player, I used to play Ultima Online from 96-98 (around the golden age of that game hah) I used to play the Siege Perilous shard and loved the PvP. Anyways, I soon quit after that and said I wouldn't pay to play online games anymore.

Recently, I just purchased a really nice laptop and Guild Wars Factions has caught my eye.

I'm probably going to buy it when it comes out but I just wanted to know what the PvP is like? Are you able to loot your foes you kill?

I'm mostly interested in PvP but will farm and do quests if that helps my character in the long run.

Does it take a long time to build your character to a status so that you can PvP? One thing I hated about Ultima is the slow character development they had...

Any other feedback is welcome. I just wanted to get a feel for this game I will be playing soon

Welcome.

First question: someone else should answer this one.
Second question: no, you do not gain loot for killing your foes; loot is gained through the PvE content*. You can only gain experience points and "Faction points" from killing your opponents. You can use "Faction points" to unlock items (such as weapon modifications to make your character stronger) for your PvP characters.

There are players that don't bother to touch the PvE content at all.

PvP characters in Guild Wars start at level 20, so you would be on fairly equal footing with other players when you start with the exception of weapon modifications and "runes" that help boost your damage output. This is where playing a little of the PvE content would help - as you progress, you will unlock more and more things for your PvP characters.

*with the exception of chest drops in Halls, but those don'tcount

yeah I suppose its hard to explain how the PvP is, sometimes you just need to experience for yourself.

The one thing I loved about the PvP in UO was the risk of losing anything you equiped or had in your bag and the reward to looting any items on your victims corpse. So the weapons modifications are the only reward to PvP? I suppose the next installment of Factions will add some things to the twist.

Would you recommend choosing a character to start at level 20 and build from there or choosing a PvE character and start from level 1 and build it up from that.

I honestly know nothing of any templates except for the fact that you have a primary and a secondary class

Yeah, Guild Wars may disappoint you, then...

Regarding the other stuff: in Guild Wars, you can make either an "RP" character, who starts at level 1 with no skills and minimal equipment and works her way through the storyline, getting loot and gold from killing monsters and learning new skills and gaining levels and generally behaving like a character in any other RPG game. She can hang out in the PVE areas, or she can go to the PVP arenas to fight other players. Alternatively, you can make a PVP-only character, who starts at the max level with max-stats equipment.* However, a PVP-only character can only use skills and equipment mods which you have "unlocked" on your account - either by acquiring them in PVE play with a RP character, or by spending the faction points which you earn in PVP to unlock things directly.

PVP occurs only in dedicated PVP arenas, and you don't get to take anything from your victims - you just earn faction for beating them.


* The equipment a PVP character gets has the maximum stats for an item of its type. However, there are also runes which can be placed on armor to provide bonuses to attributes or to hitpoints, and modifications such as sword hilts or bowstrings which can be applied to weapons to give them various bonus properties, like elemental damage or a defense bonus. Runes and weapon mods have to be unlocked in the same way as skills.

It's hard to do well in PVP without doing some PVE first to unlock things. Not impossible, but I think it's most efficient to do some PVE for a while first, then intersperse PVE with PVP until you're sick of the PVE.

Templates, also called premades, are a selection of PVP character builds that the game lets you play without having to unlock anything. None of them are very well-designed, though, which is why I recommend PVEing first so you can unlock things to play with. Luckily you can modify premades with the skills you've unlocked, and some of them can be made a lot better with a little unlocking and tinkering.

The most obvious rewards for PvP would be faction-merely a vehicle for unlocking stuff and sigils and items upon holding or taking the Hall of Heroes. There's of course real life prize money if you're dead serious about PvPing, although I'd imagine that would take a fair while to work up to.

I just play PvP because I think it's fun, tactical and competitive, and I playing to win :P. I think you'll find that's the reason most people do it.
The PvP community is pretty small too, so if you get any good at it you'll get a fair bit of recognition too, if you care about that.

I went through PvE in around 40 hours, if you knew exactly what you were wanting to play in PvP (Monk would probably be easiest to guess) you could go through those 40 and be ready to PvP straight away. Like NatalieD said, the premades are of almost no use unless you tinker with them a fair bit. You may as well just play through PvE and grab a recommended template of somewhere like Guru, it's not too bad the first time

However, actually getting to the point where you can PvP competitively with a team (i.e. not Random Arena) can be a fair bit of work. You need to make a lot of friends and go through a lot of hard lessons; it's a pretty steep learning curve. However, if you're patient and can tolerate a bit of rudeness you should make it. It took me around two to three months until a PvP oriented guild picked me up; in that time I was waiting around tombs LFG'ing for at least an hour each night. Of course, If I'd known about certain GvG training guilds or PvP community hubs, that time would have been cut down a fair bit.

Think of GW:Faction as the cross-between of FPS and MMORPG.

Using element of a RPG to do battle that you can randomly join like a FPS. If you die in the battle, you either join another battle or get ressurect; depending on the mode you are playing. That's the main key goal of GW:F basically.

I can only answer that based upon Prophecies. Unlike some MMORPGs, you don't do PvP out in the wild with the rest of the PvE people. PvP is more of a separate entity where you fight in PvP or team arenas, separate from the general world.

There may, however, be some PvP explorable areas in Factions.

Log in.
Make PVP character.
Begin to PVP.


(no looting)

thanks for your feedback guys. I'll buy factions and see if I enjoy it or not. Its something new and havn't played a game like this since UO so who knows

This game is difficult to compare to UO. Pretty much the only similarity is that it's an online game.
In UO, everyone was in the same world all the time, you could run into a random stranger anywhere you want and interact with the stranger in any way you choosed. There was a lot of freedom.
In Guild Wars, most things are instanced, so you only meet up with people in town and then you basically get your own copy of the world. It's a little less social, but the combat is far more strategic than UO's "practice your skill until it gets good, then just hit things with your weapon until it dies." There is also more variety between players. It's not as simple as "Oh, he's a mage, or a swordsman, etc." and you know exactly what they are capable of doing...