Possible Player with a few questions

Ok, I am an avid City of Heroes player, and when I heard NCsoft had created guild wars, I was very intrigued. I would like to play, but I noticed there wasn't a monthly fee. I am certainly not complaining, but I was wondering what made this different from traditional MMORPG's that meant it didn't have a monthly fee.

So, some questions....

Is this game an MMORPG?

How is this game compare to Everquest, City of Heroes, and Diablo II?

What doesn't this have that a traditional pay for month MMORPG does? Please be honest, I will probably get the game regardless, just want to know what I am getting into from the get go.

You could compare it more to diablo than Everquest or whatnot...
But that comes down to how you play I guess... from most I have read on the forums here atleast 80% of the players are hardcore power gamers that just want to PvP or get tonns of xp and better gear :p (not that there is any harm in that, but too bad you dont see the joy in a little bit of roleplaying... whatever pulls your chain..)

Reason for no fee is probably because of how the game is built. It probably does not require a massive network/bandwidt to maintain, as you cannot walk from one part of the world to the other.. you have to "teleport" to towns, and from the town you can go to areas around the town.

The areas you enter outside of town are YOURS alone. No others can enter it unless you go with them.
So no unexpected encounters with other players.

And they plan on makeing expansions that you can buy, if you want later on for about half the price of the full game.

So I guess you could consider the expansions a kinda fee, but its totally optional, and you will still be able to play the original game with everyone else, if i understood that bit right. You just wont have as many "battle options" as the ones that buy the expansions.


Another thing this game is "lacking" is diffrent races, we are all humans.
It only has 6 classes right now. or was it 8...
Its suposedly low on items compared to other mmorpgs, as your skills are more important they say :p
what else is there.... lala.. i dunno, havent played many mmorpgs.. Oh yes.. There is 100 player limit on each town I think. So you will never meet more than 100 people when you are in a town... I think.. :)