12 basic questions from a total newb

Well a Guild mate in WOW has been singing the praises of this game, and DDO and MEO. Being a fan of a good RPG, or MMORPG, I naturaly have taken interest in GW.

I won't ask for comparisons between WOW and GW, nor really direct comparisons between other games.

First and Foremost, the "Free" (no monthly fee), Means I will of course be at least trying this game come april/may. These means even if my questions lack answers I want to hear, I will still be trying it I'm sure. But being someone who doesn't like being the last to know, I have a slew of questions about this game overal.

So far I have only briefly skimmed the main site for GW, and like the look of the graphics, and how the game is PVP based (usualy means better chance of overal class balance in the end product, though I have had some very SAD experiences with that logic in onther games like EVE online...), but is also Coop and solo oriented as well. So I get the most basic jist of the game. But the meatier querries still require answers that sadly I lack the time today to go rummaging around for, or go based upon assumptions.

Clearly I will get a biased opinion here about GW's overal quality, so Instead of asking lame questions like whats cool about it etc. I will try and ask more or less specific questions. If something I ask hasn't been in the BWE's thats fine.

1: I love Role play, not to the exclusion of the game itself, but RP is definately something I enjoy. I have been a DM for years, made and run NWN modules for friends to much success, and liuke my games of this nature to have a good mix of RP and "game" (Ie action stuff to do etc.).

Thus the first question is, how friendly is the game for RP? does it encourage RP even indirectly? (Booze to drink in the bar, or other things in the game which don't "improve" your character but are more for the fun of just doing them?). Or is the game going to be basically a level based non twitch Fantasy oriented Counterstrike (which I did enjoy for a while WAY back in beta). In the end how much does Story play a role in solving quests and generally playing PVP or otherwise.

2: Level Cap: I'm 100% ok with a low level cap, either because it's reached quick and thats when the fun starts, or because of slow progression (D&D being the latter style). I have read the first 19 levels are over fairly quickly and are more like a tutorial almost, but what is left to do at 20? Are quests still important? What rewards take the place of XP? Loot? Fame? RP? Or does the game basically turn into just a big PVP simulator at 20?

I'm already at level 52 almost as a Night Elf warrior in WOW, and starting to wonder what is left to do... Even with battlegrounds coming soon, the current state of game balance isn't making me very hopeful...

Essentialy I'm asking because I enjoy all kinds of gaming, and PVP certainly extends the playability of a game beyond level caps etc. But I also often like to just RP and do missions and quests and things for story and "veg out time."
So what say you about the level cap aspect, and about how long does it take to reach it?

3: Game balance: For any game which even thinks of having a PVP element, game balance has become a key concern of mine... I have yet to play one single MMORPG that could come close enough to a sense of balance in PVP. I know balance is hard to achieve, but I'm not asking for perfection, rather that balance be visible...

Take Eve online for the first example: Nearly two years after release and Flavor of the month playstyles are still the only way to compete, and all involve imbalances, or exploits that could have easily been avoided. For a LONG time I have had a very decent ship, and pilot, of a particular race, and for nearly a year now, it's been one of the weakest races to play as... While two others are still top dog, making mine and the other of the four literally cannon fodder... All because of sloppy Game mechanics and imbalances...

Problem is EVE is VERY PVP oriented, almost everything about it is effected by, or involves PVP on one level or another... PVP in the marketplace, or in space battles...

Next up is WOW: In Beta Warriors was easily considered the most overpowered of the classes... Now... In retail after last minute nerfs, Warriors are useless in any meaningful PVP situations. Meaning when Blizz releases Battlegrounds, warriors like me will be doing the related quests rather than fighting, or we'll just end up dying lots and lots... Blizz stance is still "Working as intended, some bug fixes will help though!" Meanwhile people of other classes often agree we need lots of work...

I know this is still beta time, but what are your impressions of GW balance? How do you forsee the future after retail? will one class/combo be the uberest to the chagrin of all others? Or will by and large most classes be equally deadly and useful in PVP?

4: Animation: The graphics themselves look great, but how complex are the melee animations? Is it just one animation? or at couple including special move combos?

5: Melee action: Will playing a warrior revolve around clicking the attack button and making a sandwhich? Are Warriors nothing more than Meat shields? Can they hit hard? One good thing about WOW is the warrior has lots of buttons to press and tactics to use, even if it IS the weakest class it's also one of the more active and fun... Unlike games like EQ... And to a degree you can choose between being a meat shield or being an "Ok" though not "Good" damage dealer.

So will GW's use a similar aproach? are warrior players actively punching ability buttons? Or just watching and doing what they can to get agro? As for class uses, does GW use the standard MMORPG idea of core classes: Warrior is walking hit points with small damage potential, Healer is well mostly just healing, rogue is the high melee damage dealer, Mage is the nuker... OR is each class more equal in dealing damage and protecting themselves?

Personaly I hope it's more the latter, because to me a guy walking around with a great big axe or claymore should be cutting things down like theres no tomorrow, not tapping things to get it's attention and barely hurting it...

(Yes I usualy play warrior classes.).

6: I like the idea of having two professions but are there any hidden rules for this? If I wanted to make a Warrior Mage, Warrior NEcro combo what would I gain? Would I get some spells? And still be good at melee? What about trying to be a "Pure" class? Ie just warrior, or just Mage?

7: Which is more important? Class or skills? In EVE online one of the things I liked was the LACK of classes, allowing for a much broader range of abilities and thus greater ability to specialize selectively or generalize (the latter was most common for the older players). Obviously with a class aspect I couldn't be A warrior Necro with Mesmer abilities right? But what if at some point after choosing warrior as the main and necro second I decide I wanna go all Necro? Do I need to reroll?

8: Customization: I like the look of a number of characters I have seen in SC's, I also seem to notice the Chicks look insanely good, but the guys havn't grabbed me much... But I have noticed a number of options. How would you rate the character customization options? And what about armor and equipment? Does it change how you look drastically? Are certain looks very Common like: Every level 20 warrior worth his armor has XXX sword, and YYY armor set? And thus looks much the same as the next? I realize we can dye things, but how available is this? Say I wanted to be all black would it cost a small fortune to get enough black dye as it did in DAOC? And again there is more to being unique than color alone...

One BIG complaint I have about wow, is how you can't see how something will look on you before you equip it... Ie you have no idea of color, shape or texture at all, and very often my warrior has gone around not only clashing, but literally looking as colorful and haphazard as a clown! Often to look good players have to gimp themselves on thier equipment!

9: Now for something the name implies: How are the guild controls? what is the incentive toward which a guild can work? In EVE for example, I experienced one of the BEST guild systems I have ever played with, and the purpose of a guild was manyfold, and the guild itself had it's own bank account for buying guild owned property (Ie stuff that could be sold, as EVE was a combination Space combat mining simulation/ecconomic/political simulation.). But what does a guild do? Is it just there for making finding groups easier? Is it there for form official PVP teams? Or can we lay claim to territory and fight over it etc as in EVE and some other games? Ie can I set myself up as a feudal lord and have my own castle with surrounding lands?

10: Ecconomics: Usualy when level is not an issue, farming and grinding still exists for money making. How important is cash? how does one get it? ARE there random things to hunt? or is it all in instances? More so, the rare goodies everyone wants, will they be sellable? Will the're be an auction house (one of the best features of WOW is the auction system). Or do you need to get em for yourself?

Well thats ten questions that immediately sprang to mind, and for my last 2 and probably one difficult to answer likely due to the limited showing of BWE's

11: How big does the world feel? I'm skeptical of the whole: Teleport to quest/town stuff. And sometimes for me a day of gaming is all about exploring and running between long places. Does the Teleport system mean there won't be much exploring outside of instances? will thier be vast open countrysides to wander in? Or just a town with links to quests?

12: Immersion and interaction: one thing that sounded nifty was how being able to effect the environment plays a big part in various quests, torching forests, and so on. But how often does this stuff occur? And what about unimportant interaction? For example In Deus Ex, one feature I loved was how there where little nifty doodads to mess with all over, in bars you could sorta play pool, use vending machines etc... Will the towns and taverns be very interactive with chairs to sit in and games to play? Or will everything down to the last pebble on the street, it just exist and be "static" as it was in EQ, and as it mostly is in WOW with the excpetion of chairs etc?

That should about do it for now... I could go on with more questions, but they would likely be repeats of the above from different angles... If i come up with more interesting ones I'll post em.

Thanks.

no bars,housing, or anything of the sort so far

i am enjoying it and do not PVP at all

you need a team of varied talents to survive in pvp i have read and strategy will win in reasonably matched teams

no super class has poked its head up so far

you have to get there on foot before it gets on your map to teleport

i like to sightsee and run around everywhere and be able to get back and sell or buy in a blink

the world seems big and they said the additional chapters will each have about as much NEW content as the original game

about twice a year is the best guess

number 12

NO towns buildings inns only a few vendors under a awning if that

if he wants an interactive alternate life this is not it

it is the playground you go to with a few friends
have fun
go home

i dont have all your answers but i have some.

2) after lvl 20 you should work on a build and on your strategy because this game is about that, thats why the lvl cap is low. you can pvp in the tombs to be the best, or go with your guild and try to be #1

4) the animation depends on what your doing, on some things you swimg the hammer over your head and knock them down, or cast a spell on them, there are many diffrent animations.

5) im a warrior and its very fun, and the cool thing is you have a primary profession and a secondary profesion so you dont have to only be one thing. im a w/mes for example, i can cast spells on them to gain energy and hex them, i can also back fire a monk or caster

6) there are no dissadvanteges to having 2 professions, no hidden rules exept that if you do not have warrior as primary then you might not beable to access all the warrior skills.

7) if you decide in the middle of your playing time you want to switch professions than yes, you must creat another char. and if you are a w/nec then you cant have mes skills, you can only have warrion and nerco skills

8) black dye is the hardest to get, it sells for around 120. i know this cause i have someone thats buying it for that much next BWE. and armour does change your char alot. i dont really know that much but i think it changes his apperance along with his armour, lol. but the customization at the beginning of the game is not great but good

10) you can get rare goodys and sell them. and there is no action house yet, but i belive they are working on something like it

11) you can teleport and wander, if you want to wonder around you can, but if you just want to go there you can tele there. but you have to of been there befor you can tele there.

well thats all i know/have time for. hope they help and no one posted while i was typing!

edit- dang some one did

A lot of this information can be gotten by just looking through the Guides, Professions, and Skills Listing tabs from the homepage of this site:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/professions-id24.php


So far classes as a whole are fairly balanced. Also, there is no definite "role" set for characters beyond the very basic. It is quite possible to have one warrior on your team that does more DPS than an elementalist primary and another warrior that is practically immortal but does almost no damage at all. Each character literally has about 150 skills to choose from (of which they must choose 8) which greatly effects how their character plays.

If the BWEs are any indication, you could hit the level cap in 2 days if you really wanted to.

Guilds will have ladder ratings with which they will be compared to other guilds. There is also the normal guild chat, guild storage, guild hall and such. Guild size is currently limited to 100 players per guild.

The role-playing/storyline of the game is similar to that of Diablo or single-player RPGs in that you complete the quests and then get little cut scenes that show the storyline.

You can explore the entire world, and it is quite possible to walk anywhere you want to go. It is just much faster to instant travel, so most people prefer that method. You can only instant travel to places you have already been though.

Again, a lot of your questions are already answered if you just browse around the guildwars guru website a bit.


Edit:

You can access every skill of both of your professions. You will not, however, have access to the primary attribute of your chosen secondary profession. N/W, Me/W, and other warrior secondaries that are built to melee are not unheard of.

I'll take a shot at what i can relate to (having played all the BWE since WPE in october).

1: IMHO, not much roleplay-inciting elements in here.

2/11: You should get to lvl 20 in some days of play (less than a week). There are MANY quests that are designed for lvl 20 characters : the rewards are to be able to continue the story, to get better items on higher monsters and getting new skills.
There is still MUCH exploration to be made, giving access to new outposts, with rare skills you can't get anywhere else (except gambling or trading)

3: Game balance: Easy answer to this one : I would say that GW is the game where designers think about balance more than any others (bar Starcraft ).
It's not perfect, as skills efficiency still vary much, but that's the point of beta-testing, and hopefully it should be better for next BWE, which will focus on PvP enhancements.
But there is no überest char as of now, and there shouldn't be one ever... chars serve a purpose, as you're playing in teams, and everyone has advantages and weaknesses...
Most characters can interrupt any skill being used, several can destroy enchantments, debuff, slow, prevent casting, ... so it will just bow down to being effective against some chars, and much less against others... for EVERY über char you can think of, there are sereval chars that will be able to counter him quite easily.

5: Warriors ARE useful in GW : they can deal very decent damage, and for a LOT of time, if they are kept un-hexed.
Playing warrior isn't boring either, as your typical warrior will have like 2 skills(spells) from his secondary profession, 1-2 stances, and 4-5 attack skills. So about one every two or three attacks will be a special one. And you have to time interrupting attacks and such, so you'll have some work to do

6: Your primary class determines which armor you get, one attribute available from your primary class line and by extension of the armor, your energy and energy regen. Warriors and rangers have energy too, but less than casters. Apart from that, you have every skills from your secondary profession available.

7: You can only have ONE skill from another class, so if you want to change to other skills, you have to reroll. Which isn't very problematic, as lvling is so fast.

8: Customization is armor/dyes/guild cape. Not much there. Magic weapons are random, so you'll have many different ones in play.

9: Guild is there to have a group of ppl who know each other, and use that to improve strategy and winning odds in Guild VS Guild contests. There is a ladder, with all it implies.

10: Cash isn't too important as of now, and shouldn't be. The goal of ANET is that grinding shouldn't be NEEDED to compete. There are still problems hindering that vow, mainly about rare weapons that are too unbalancing, and so ppl grind to get them. Hopefully, they will be made less powerful/more available for retail.

11: How big does the world feel? World is BIG. Explorable areas are BIG. You'll not feel like all there is are some towns and mission areas.

Well, I'll answer some of these, anything I don't is something I don't feel like commenting on.
So, straight to #2, Level Cap - Actually, quite a few of the PvE missions are balanced for level 20, so yes, quests will still be just as important. You continue to gain experience after reaching level 20, and instead of leveling normally when you fill your experience bar, you'll simply gain a skill point instead of both attribute points and a skill point. On to the loot bit, given that many of the missions are balanced for a party of 6 or more level 20 characters, you'll probably spend a while in the later missions & explorable areas if you're looking to outfit yourself with some of the best gear, although having the best gear is strictly unnecessary for PvE. In short, I think there will be plenty to do after reaching the level cap, and I'm quite happy that it's relatively easy to reach. Realistically, you could probably hit level 20 in 30+ hours of gameplay.

3. I believe balance is one of GW's stronger points, even considering some of the practically useless skills. Despite the fact that some individual skills or items could hardly be considered balanced, the game as a whole has a sense of balance that I haven't really gotten out of any other RPG styled game. Every character has its pros and cons, and you'll want a mix of them in any party, never really preferring any single character type. As to warriors in particular, both monsters and players tend to target the casters first, usually the monks. Therefor, you should rarely see yourself in a tanking situation as a warrior, but rather in the role of a pure damage dealer. While Warrior/Monks are popular as tanks, I feel their most important role is dealing out damage, and if anything, they should be taking the Smiting skills over Healing skills in order to deal out more damage. Honestly, the only reason I use a Monk secondary is for a ressurrect-type spell, because it's far more logical to have a Warrior take 8 seconds to ressurrect somebody than to have a Monk do the same. As to predictions for release, I believe that for the most part, classes will be well balanced as a whole, and I would be shocked if any single class came up as being the dominant one.

4. I honestly have no idea. During the events, I spend almost all of my time in the PvP maps, and while I'm PvPing, I'm paying absolutely no attention to the graphics (unfortunately). Instead, I'm watching numbers fly by, targets being called, and skills (re)charge.

5. Err, damn. I guess I kind of addressed this above. I'll rehash it a little - Warriors should be trying to optimize their damage output and skill usage, and should rarely, if ever, concentrate on trying to tank. For the most part, monsters and players will go straight for the casters and as a Warrior you'll rarely find yourself taking significant damage until the rest of your party is already down. On another note, there's numerous ways to play a Warrior, given the secondary profession choices. I myself prefer a sort of interrupt warrior, not really concentrating on sheer damage output. A few examples are a Warrior/Elementalist using a Conjure spell with their Warrior attacks for sheer damage, a Warrior/Monk with a couple healing spells to make themselves more self-sufficient, or a Warrior/Necro with a curse or two to aid their melee attacks, helping them take down a target more quickly.

6. There aren't any hidden rules that come to mind, you won't be able to use the primary attribute of your secondary class, but that's about it. You can still learn any and all skills from your secondary, and it's fairly common to pick a primary profession solely for the primary attribute (Energy Storage, for example), while using mostly skills from the secondary profession. For a while, Elementalist/Monks were popular for the Energy Storage primary, even though the character itself would use pure healing skills (or occasionally split healing with damage spells). Pure classes were, until recently, not possible. However, after the new Presearing Ascalon map, it was possible to leave with a single profession and focus entirely on that. Practically speaking however, I see absolutely no reason to choose to be single classed, you simply gain more options and adaptability. Warrior/Elementalists and Warrior/Necros are both entirely viable builds, you might take a look around the various forums for ideas on what each can do, although I think I hinted at some basic types above. Monk/Warriors and Mesmer/Warriors have also become mildly popular recently, and both are viable as melee characters, even with a caster primary.

7. Hmm, this is a difficult one. I'd say neither really, since both are, for the most part, dependant on the other. It basically comes down to what you want available as your primary attribute, and which skills you want access to. It's not really possible to pick your primary and secondary and then move to a third without rerolling, although it is possible to put a single skill from another class on a skill charm and use it, it takes the place of your elite slot. The Warrior/Necro is possibly a bad example, as the Warrior has a smaller potential energy pool than the Necro, making it difficult to switch roles entirely. However, taking a different example such as the Elementalist/Monk addressed above, it would be relatively easy to switch from a pure healing role to a pure damage roll, depending on your attributes. If you had decided beforehand for adaptability, you might well have points in an Elementalist attribute line for damaging spells and points in the Healing Prayers line, specifically so you could just switch skill sets in and out as necessary. However, with attribute refund points, it's also possible to respec entire attribute lines with relative ease, allowing yourself to move from say, an air Elementalist line to an earth Elementalist.

8. Not much to say here, there's not a ton of customisation available physically for characters, although there's a fair amount to do with armour, weapons and dye. Currently during the BWE, you see a moderate amount of 'clones,' although much of this has to do with the short amount of time available, and the presence of premade PvP characters. Projecting to release, I think this will be much less common, given the wide range of preferences and options available. Even though items in general lack balance right now, player preference plays a huge roll in what armour and weapon they decide to use, and it's possible to choose a weapon or armour set based on preference without necessarily compromising power level.

9: I don't have a lot of input here, suffice it to say that I think there could be more available in terms of guilds, and I'm glad that they're working on them as demonstrated by the recent announcement of the guild cap increase, and Jeff Strain's statement that there will be a number of options for the guild hall itself. Guild storage has also been brought up as a possibility, although I can't remember what the last official statement regarding it was.

10: As above, I don't have a lot to say here, beyond the fact that I think it could use a little work. An auction house has been brought up numerous times as a suggestion, and I know ArenaNet has stated recently that they're working on implementing some changes to the system. As for the value of gold, it's been relatively stable throughout the BWEs, but that is likely due in part to the short amount of time given, meaning that little inflation due to items occurs over the duration of the event.

11: Honestly, the overall map we've seen so far feels pretty nice to me. There are numerous explorable areas, and it's possible to walk from one end of the map to another simply exploring. The ability to hop from one point to another is a huge bonus for me, as movement avoids the form of the obvious artificial time sink that it takes on in WoW. I'm quite happy with the way the map is working now, and there's reasons to travel through the explorable areas on foot beyond simple curiousity to explore.

12: Don't really have much to say on this, yes, you can affect the map in some ways during missions, but it doesn't really come up often. I doubt there's much here besides speculation until release, a lot of what you mentioned has come up more than once before in the form of suggestions, but much of that (say, the minigames) would likely be ignored until the core game was finished and balanced, and added in just before release.

Hope this helps, ask if something isn't clear. I'm sure others will have input on these as well, heh.

The RP side of Guild Wars has only recently been coming into play. There are quests that will document exactly what you do (killing so and so or completing X side mission) and it will affect the next mission you go on. it will even consider your team mates past actions.

As I said above, the quest system is pretty deep. As for bars for booze? Not yet. There is a ton of stuff to explore PvE wise (you can spend hours wondering around in action-packed explorable areas). But it's in beta, we haven't seen all the lore and whatnot yet.


Pretty much the whole game is the "endgame", or the part after the cap. In guild wars once you are level 20, you will go on through the endgame mission progressions aquiring new skills, weapons, armour, weapon uprgrades and so on. "Fame" in guild wars is a PvP thing. Every time you win a battle in the Tombs (one of the biggest and more important PvP instances), you get some fame. every 25 fame you get a "rank". For every rank you get a cool new "rank stick" which is a short little staff that everyone gets to look at and know that you kick ass . Much of the game is strategy so after reaching the level cap, you'll probably want to mess around with your build and make your guild mess around with theirs so that you are the most affective fighter. There is tons of stuff to do in Guild Wars. - and it's just in Beta. As for how long it takes to reach it? well... I myself could probably reach it in 3 days if I didn't sleep (haha... nope ... i'm too lazy) and if I only played about an our a day it would take a month or maybe a little less. the point is, leveling is not a big thing in Guild Wars. It essentially affects nothing except for how many attribute points you have (which cap at 200) and how much health you have.

The balance in Guild Wars is nearly perfect - and being perfected. Balance is extremely important to the creators, A.Net, and they are investing a lot of time tweaking things and nerfing classes and boosting skills and changing skill lines to make sure everyone can compete equally.

GW are easily the most balanced game i've seen so far. Every class has an equal chance to compete if you know how to play them well. I assure you, GW > WoW as far as PvP goes. There may be a "flavor of the month" kind of thing going on in guild wars... but that's simply because people try out new things and then quickly realize how easily a counter build can be made to it. there is no super class in guild wars and there is a way to counter almost everything.

There aren't a whole lot of moves... But there are a decent number. It kind of depends on the class. Warriors have a couple default slashes things for every weapon where as Rangers and Elementalists only have 1 (not really much you can do with pulling a bowstring back and letting it fly). but each skill is very unique - none of the elementalist skills look the same nor do the warrior or ranger or any other class. It's definatly nothing boring and i assure you: the screenshots and movie clips don't do the game justice. it really looks a hell of a lot better than any RPG i've ever seen - and that includes consol RPGs (although I don't play a lot of them).

Although warriors are not the *best* damage dealers, they can dish out a lot of damage. As you probably know, you pick 8 skills out of all the ones you have access to. So essentially, you attack a person, and then start using your skills in whatever order you find most affective. admittedly, it doesn't require a lot of skill to do this - but it requires tactical thinking to design your skill set in the best possible way and to coincide with that or your teammates.

I assure you, you'll be slaughtering things like crazy. but you also won't be able to do enormous damage like an elementalist. elementalists out damage all the classes but they suck at defence ("glass cannon"). warriors in a sense are "tanks" and could be considered "meat shields" but they are so much more than that in this game. they are damage dealers and they can inflict conditions and lots of other stuff as well as last longer than anyone except the ranger (rangers, if used properly can easily outlive a warrior even though they appearantly have less armour points.)

There are 6 classes: Warrior, Ranger, Monk, Mesmer, Necromancer, and Elementalist. Each of these classes have about 75-80 skills. Each of them have a number of attribute lines that increase the effectiveness of skills with you invest attribute points in them (marksmanship = bow attacks, sword mastery = sword skills, etc.). Each profession also has a "primary" attribute that you only get if that is your primary class. So a primary ranger gets "expertise" while a primary warrior gets "strength" while a primary Elementalist (essentially a mage/nuker) gets "energy storage". So what have you to gain by selecting a secondary class well? Well... about 75 skills that could contribute greatly to your build. I should also point out that you cannot wear the armour of your secondary class - only your primary. Along with that I should add that a lot of energy comes from some armours. So a warrior has very little energy while a mesmer or monk has tons - this comes soley from armour.

This becomes especially important as a Ranger/ Elementalist could use the spell "conjure lightning" to add +13 lightning damage to each arrow. And then they could use that with "Power Shot" to add about 45 damage to a shot. Using your secondary class is extremely important because you can use any skill that is in either your primary or secondary class - however, if it is linked to the primary attribute of your secondary class which you cannot pump points into, it may or may not suck.

They are equally important. There are 30 class combinations so you get roughly 150 skills for every combo. Using them wisely is key.

And nope, you can't just change it all of a sudden from Warrior Primary to Necro Primary or whatever ... But you can rearrange your points using "refund points" (i refund point takes back 1 level achieves by spending X attribute points which gives you X attribute points back... refund points are extremely common so reworking your build is easy as long as it's not changing something as drastic as the class itself).

All the armours are fairly balanced in guild wars so you're definatly not going to see everyone running around with the same rune plate mail and dragon axe and rune kite shield (runescape? yes... worst game ever). There are advantages to every armour. Take the Ranger's "Druid's" armour vs the Ranger's "Hunter's" armour. I think both look good. but do you want the extra energy from the Druid's set or the extra armour against piercing attacks from the Hunter's set? well.. there is no obvious best armour.

as for dyes, there are all the basic colors like any good game should have. the great thing, though, is that you can combine up to 4 colors to make truley unique (and sometimes nausiating) colors from them. for instance, blue + silver = light blue. blue + black = dark blue, blue + green = some weird turquoise color. the possibilities are nearly endless.

You see your stuff in your inventory or in the crafting box before you make it or equip it. Some armours definatly look funny when mixed and matched, but they are all pretty cool and you won't be gimped just because you want to look cooler - especially since armours are balanced.

Mostly for official PvP teams, but there are many little bonuses in being a part of a guild. You can do things like customize your guild hall and there will probably be a guild-wide bank fairly soon. but ... well... it's Beta. Check for the next Beta weekend in which PvP will be the main view. (march 18-20 ... get a pre-order package for 5 bucks from your nearest retailer so you can try it .. full game, of course, costs 50 bucks).

They are still dealing out all of the auctioning and selling points in GW but the economy is fairly stable with money sinks in the form of dyes and so on. There are an assload of missions and things to find your way through (trip to black curtain and stuff through Explorable Areas). But the whole game is instanced - except for outposts where massive trading and bartering happens. You can trade your rare finds in these places, however, you *cannot* trade armour because when you craft armour, it is customized for you and you alone. you don't need a crafting level to do so either. you just grab the materials and make the town crafter do it (crafters vary in levels, currently the best one is at Ventari's Dell... earlier crafters make crappier armours).

Explorable Areas... One of the best two words in the game. You can wonder for hours and hours running from one explorable area to the next, fighting monsters, and looking for side quests. And if you didn't know, the teleport only works for places you've already been.

... Still in beta... so far we haven't seen a whole lot of torching forests... though there is a bit of building bridges and tearing down walls to gain access to side quests. I really hope to see more of this also. As for bars and fun mini-games, it has been said that it is an after thought and may be put in when all is said and done. it's probably safe to expect a bit of this after full release from their streaming updates.

[/quote]That should about do it for now... I could go on with more questions, but they would likely be repeats of the above from different angles... If i come up with more interesting ones I'll post em.

Thanks.[/QUOTE]

Your welcome. I hope you enjoy the game... Because it owns WoW

I know others have weighed in already but, well, screw you guys, I'm a tester and admin at this site, I think my opinion carries a little weight.

Guild Wars is not all that RP friendly. For starters, it just doesn't seemed designed to draw the RP crowd so there won't be many people around to RP with, should you want to. It's a game centered around action and in getting you to the action as fast as possible. There's not a lot of standing around and chatting, you're always only a few minutes away from the next mission or the next battle or whatever else. And there's not much in-game that's serving anything *but* putting you on the rails towards your next goal. There's a storyline, there's a plot, there's lore, but there's not much opportunity for players to make their own storylines because everything in the game is focused on the overall plot of the game itself and, for me, that's not really about establishing my own world and my own plotlines, which would be why I RP.

You are immersed in the plot, of course, and all the missions and PvP and the rest are tied into that central plot. But the average player can gleefully ignore all of that, too.

The game doesn't stop at lv20. In fact, that's probably where it really begins. After you hit the level cap, your character doesn't stop growing. All they stop gaining is more hit points and stat points. There's still more skills to learn, more equipment to get, better armors to find, and plenty of missions to go through even if you don't want to PvP. XP is still valuable after you're done "leveling" because it's going to get you the skill points you have more options for your character and the refund points you'll need to rebuild your character to take advantage of them.

The idea is to create a situation where in, say, 20~40 hours of time you'll have a character as strong as anyone else's. But if you continue to play and develop that character they won't get stronger. But they'll get more diverse and you'll have more options and things to try out.

Balance is always a tricky thing. And those of us who are very close to the balancing process tend to see the flaws and not the successes of the process. But, overall, Guild Wars is a very balanced game. Each profession is diverse and well-rounded, able to take up a lot of different tasks and roles in a party, and at the same time, no one profession is absolutely critical or overshadows the rest. Each profession has not just one but several things they're good at without relegating other professions to the point of uselessness. A Monk's going to make a great healer but they won't be able to get rid of what's hurting them, you'll need a Warrior for that, and so on.

It's also important to remember that balance in GW isn't just a matter of the six professions as they can all be mixed and matched with each other. There aren't six classes, there are thirty. And, yes, some of them are a little...off. Elementalist/Warrior doesn't make as much sense as playing a Warrior/Elementalist, at least from a competitive and strategic stand-point. Necromancer/Mesmer is a pale version of Mesmer/Necromancer and the way those two professions work together is probably not all that well in the first place. But the thing is that while those sorts of characters might be sub-par they're not awful. It takes a bit of work to find out just what they can do better than anyone else and to do it best but it is possible to do so. It's a lot more effort than rolling up a character that's well-known and popular and maybe it's not for everyone.

Either way, a character isn't set in stone in Guild Wars. As the professions represent not much more than your choice of armor, of a primary only attribute, and a skill list, and they're fairly well balanced against one another in terms of what they're capable of, where the real balancing point lies is in those skills. Most of the effort of balancing things goes into making sure individual skills aren't over or underpowered. And as long as the skills remain in balance then overall gameplay balance should be alright. Especially as any character can drop all the skills they've been using for different skills at practically any time.

They're not the most complex you'll see - there's not a lot of variety or flashiness in the way character's will swing their weapons or walk and things like that - but all the skills have special casting animations or effects. What it does do, though, is look very smooth and seemless when you put it all together.

No, there's no "sandwich" combat in Guild Wars. Combat revolves around making the best use out of the eight skills - skills you pick out yourself from a list of a hundred or so - and is extremely fast and furious compared to standard MMO fare. Fights can drag on an hour or more (Usually a lot less, though) but you'll be actively doing something the whole time and one of the surest ways to lose is to just set your character to attacking something and then walk away.

As for Warriors, well, they're probably the class with the potential for the highest sustainable DPS at the moment. Rangers can attack from range. Elementalists can pack a bit more damage into smaller timeframes. But the Warrior is your melee marathon runner in terms of damage. That means, yes, they're exceptionally good at dishing out damage - when done right - one of, if not the, best in the game.

But to do so, like in WoW, you'll have to give up some of their defensive power, which is pretty formidable in its own right. Each profession has some way of dealing some damage, some way of doing some healing, some way of any core function you'd like to name. It's just that some have a lot easier time at it because they're much more geared towards or efficient at certain roles. When you take into effect the mixing and matching of professions, there are a lot of roles each character can play. And by altering their stats and their skills that very same character can pick up another role entirely. Your Warrior might be an offensive juggernaut in one battle. Then decide to go about disrupting wihtout focusing so much on dealing damage the next. Or to swap out their skills and become a tank for the rest of their team. There are certain archtypes, sure. Warriors are big, heavily armored brutes great for tanking, Rangers are fast, ranged bowmen good at dishing out punishment, Elementalists are the ones who'll toss around the nukes, Monks are healers, Necromancers are going to sap and debuff you, and Mesmers are going to be annoying and counter whatever you want to do. But those are just the roles people gravitate, too. There's nothing stopping that Monk from becoming a damage dealer by, say, going with Monk/Warrior or Elementalist/Monk or something of the sort, or for concentrating on counter moves as a Monk/Mesmer with a focus on removal.

There's certainly a pecking order. When you want to heal you turn to a Monk. When you're looking to deal damage you turn to a Warrior or a Ranger or an Elementalist. But it's a bit more complex than Warrior=tank, Monk=healer, Elementalist=nuker.

Playing as a "pure" example of any profession is to leave the power and synergy you gain from your second profession on the table. It's certainly possible but it's probably a mistake as there's *something* from that other profession that you might need or like to have. In a word: don't.

As for hidden rules, no, not really. You can use any skill from your two professions. You can use any common attribute from those two professions. But you can only use the primary attribute and armor from your first profession. What you gain from going Warrior/Elementalist as opposed to Warrior/Necromancer is a different set of skills to pick from and the attributes which will make those skills better. Each profession has about 75 skills to chose so those characters will have quite a bit of difference in their 150 choices. Also, Armor influences the amount of energy - think mana - you have to cast your skills. So, what's more important, especially in this case, is whether you're Warrior/Elementalist or Elementalist/Warrior. The first will have a lot more protection at the cost of not being able to use a lot of skills due to lack of energy while the latter will have a lot of energy to use on skills at the cost of more protection. But each can have the exact same eight skills and the exact same attributes loaded out and play extremely similarly.

Profession determines what skills you can use in the first place, so it's probably more important. But skills determine what role you're going to play so they're certainly very important, too.

You won't have to reroll if you don't like your skills, though. You can slot any eight skills your character knows into your skill bar and use them whenever you're not actually fighting in a mission or a battle. So your Warrior/Necromancer can go all Warrior for one map and then all Necromancer the next or somewhere in between. Your attributes, your statistics, are likewise able to be shifted around almost at will - you can't do it forever to avoid some abuses and to make your choices actually mean something - so rathre than rerolling what you'll be is respec your character, time after time after time. Trying out new plans and new skills and new strategies all the while. You only need to reroll if you decide you don't like Warrior/Necromancer and want to go Necromancer/Warrior. Or Necromancer/Ranger. But, then, you'll have more than one character slot for that, too.

Black dye will cost you, yeah, but it's not going to be as much as just crafting your armor, if the BWEs are any guide.

Still, there's not a wealth of customization options in Guild Wars. At least, not cosmetic customization. There are a few faces and hair styles and colors for each profession, male and female, of course, and each profession gets to choose from four or five different sets of armor with different looks, as well, along with all the various sorts of equipment. And that gear can be dyed, too. So characters are going to look similar but every character can be distinct. It seems to be a conscious decision on the part of the designers as they'd rather have a more homogenous look to things so that players can more easily picked out at a glance when forming a party or in PvP. Warriors have a distinctive look, you won't mistake a primary Mesmer for a primary Warrior, even though each Warrior's going to be a variation on that theme.

No, where the real customization comes in is in picking out your skills. It's what you do that really matters, not what you look like.

At the moment, a guild gets a special chat channel, a page that lets guild members see who else in their guild is online, a tabbard that all its members will wear, and access to a special Guild Hall map where guilds can arrange to battle with other guilds in order to jockey for position on the guild ladder. There's only one GvG map known at present although a few more are said to be added for the next BWE. There are said to be other features planned, such as practice areas in the Guild Hall where you can train or guild vaults as well as high-ticket items you can buy or maintain for the hall among others but they haven't been seen yet.

There's no auction house at present.

Money is easy to come by - almost every monster you kill will drop something, sometimes gold, sometimes something you can sell for gold, sometimes something you'll salvage for raw materials which can be as good as gold - but there are enough gold sinks around that it'll take you awhile to amass huge piles of it. By yourself, anyway, a guild pooling its resources, obviously, has an advantage gaining more of those resources.

Items are present in Guild Wars and there certainly are items that are more powerful than others and which can be harder to find. But the level of disparity between a mediocre item and the best item isn't as large as it is in other games. You'll be glad you have one, sure, but it's not an automatic ticket to the lobby if you don't. The best items can take some farming or trading to get, though, because they are more rare than common.

The world is big. Although not as big as WoW or other persistant MMOs. There's a lot of territory to explore even though you can, indeed, just hop from town to mission to town to mission if you wanted. There's a ot of optional places to explore and there are some nice reasons to do so, like discovering a new merchant or bosses with rare skills to collect, side quests, and so on, and you can spend a lot of time just wandering around looking for things. In fact, one of my favorite thigs to do in the test was to just pick up a group of henchmen with my tanking Warrior/Monk and head out into the wilds just to see what was out there.

The immersive effects of a fully instanced world are one of the areas where Guild Wars has really fallen down, at least as far as I'm concerned. There just aren't as many examples of being able to burn down a bridge to stop an army or to raze a village in order to punish the people hiding the traitor there and so on as I'd like. Most places are pretty static and unchanging. It's starting to change and be more interractive and hopefully it'll continue but it's not as good as it really could be.

Towns, for example, are pretty stable and unmoving places. All the NPCs there are there for a purpose. There's no wandering guards or little children playing in the background. At least, not to the degree that was so nice to see when you went to one of the big towns in WoW. They don't feel like real places, beautiful as they are, they feel like pretty graphics over a shopping/chat interface. Again, it's starting to get better as NPCs get more detailed and lievely - witness Gwen in the tutorial - but it's a long way away from being a really complete and immersive world rather than a placid tableau.