Considering to buy Guild Wars

I am interested in buying Guild Wars and am wondering how smoothly the game would run on my computer,


AMD Athlon 64 Processor
3400+
2.41 GHz 1.00 GB of RAM
RADEON X600 series graphics card
160 GB HDD (95% currently free)
Dial-up (56k).
Windows XP

Would it run smoothly on my computer? How good would the graphics be with my card and how much worse is it to have dial-up or is there little difference in the game-play compared to DSL?

Thanks.
bob-the-builder

the dial-up is the only thing i see that might give you problems. the rest of the gear is solid. i have dsl so i can't comment on how the game is with dial-up, but most people i play with that are dial-up don't seem to complain other than slow load times. once in the instance they generally do quite well.

I've had several people in a random party that were on dial up. The biggest thing was load time. Other then the short wait for them to load in to the zone, once there were in didn't notice anything.

Graphics wise I have a lesser system and I'm running on 4x AA with the graphic slider 75% maxed out and it does look great / run smooth.

I would buy the cd version, that way you have less initial download times of new material. Once there downloaded, you won't have to worry about it.

May want to wait for people who have dial up and play for there feedback on the dial playablity.

i am playing using a dial-up and have no problem at all.

buy it.

Thanks for the feedback guys,

I will be buying the game, it's rated 9.2/10 over at gamespot.com and I really like the way the game sounds from guildwars.com's FAQs and `game info' section. I'll be sure to buy it retail so that I have most of the stuff on CD. See you in the game!

I'd recommend strongly against buying guild wars. The #1 problem they have is network connectivity. This wouldn't be so bad if you could rejoin a group that you got disconnected from -- but you can't. Instead, your group ends up one short; and you have to start from the beginning. It's horrible program design; the inability to reconnect is a serious serious design error and it has been over a year since I've been asking for a "reconnect" buf fix. Just about every text-oriented MUD is more robust than guild wars... if you disconnect, you can always reconnect and resume where you left off. It's 3rd rate software that won't let you resume and instead throws all your work out the window.

Once again, till they fix the reconnect issue (and make connections more stable), I'd put a strong DON'T BUY on this particular game.

I see your point but how often does that really happen? Are you saying it's so bad that you get disconnected every time and the game becomes unplayable? If it were that bad then I doubt the thousands of users would continue playing. How often do you get disconnected and have to start "from scratch?"

What do others think of the network connectivity issue. How bad is it?

Thanks
bob-the-builder

Its a slight pain that you cant reconnect to groups, but you rarely get disconnected; and when you do, its usually a problem on your end, not the GW servers end.
Its really not the big a deal in my opinion, certainly not enough for me to understand why someone would tell you not to by this game for that reason alone.

well, i got 56k connection and i really don't encounter any problems yet. i have play GW for a while now and never disconnected due to lag. Guild Wars are also made for those with 56k connections, it is one of the advantage of the game comparing to other MMORPG. I played the game from Malaysia and so far i don't encounter any problem with lagging and of course, disconnection. Don't worry bro.

Nice system, graphics card is bottlenecking it :P

Yeah GW is fun

hey i got x300 graphic card and it works fine

It's not. At least I've never had a problem, and that was even as far back as E3 for Everyone. Not one disconnect, ever. I fail to see how you, cce, having a crappy connection is an "issue" or "bug" that Anet should address.

The only times I've ever been disconnected from Guild Wars were due to problems with my ISP. And in those instances I was cut off for so long that rejoining a group was an irrelevant ideal anyway.

As for your system it should be fine, you may even be able to crank it up to maximum graphics with a decent frame-rate if you've got it tuned and up-to-date. I should think that the only times that 56k will give you real trouble will be in towns and outposts, when you have a lot of other players present.

Surprisingly, GW does not need a lot of horsepower to run smoothly. Despite the deep graphics it will perform well on an average machine.

the person yelling about it is one of a very loud but small minority who is hysterical about reconnect must be at the top of Anet projects even though the closed instance design of the game is to keep griefers out of an instance.

as to how often a disconnect happens i have had 5 of them with only 2 happening so i had to redo the mission in over 800 hours of play

EDIT

did you notice how much cce seems to hate the game but instead of leaving the forum and finding a game he likes he stays here yelling dont buy it

GW was designed to run from the top dollar to lower-end machines, which is what all games need to try to do. Granted it doesn't take advantage of shaders, which can put a heavy burden on your PC, but it isn't like you can't get the full effect either. Turn up AA/AF if needed.

I agree with the idea that not being able to reconnect is a pain not only for yourself, but also for each of your party members. Finally starting a mission only to have someone disappear half-way through is quite irritating and to those who've only had it 5 times - you're either lucky, haven't been playing the game for long, or you and all of your fellow players live in iternet utopia.

Having said that, I don't think the problem is quite as bad as cce makes it sound. Definitely not enough to stop a person from buying the game.

Also, I thought I should clarify that Anets servers are just fine and that the disconnects are caused by the player's pc. Disconnects are a fact of life and seem like they will be for the foreseeable future though, so it would be nice if Anet added the ability to rejoin a group you were parted from prematurely.

Well I say in a few years pretty much every single person who has internet in America will have broadband. Why? Because:

1. Bush has discussed about getting broadband internet to every home
2. Broadband is getting VERY affordable
3. Gamers are going to beg their parents until they do it. Worked for me

So after the US is all broadbanded up, you've just got the rest of the world to worry about.

(and you do know that bush is full of shit right? He's just a politician)