[Geek] Guild Wars mini review

[azekeil]

I didn't get to bed until 1:30am - whoops!

Left my glasses on top of the boot of my car this morning (but have them now) - whoops!

Definitely lots of fun, very pretty, really nice look and feel. Nothing I can see that will annoy me, although I've only been playing it for a few hours. Everything intuitive. Despite the depth of the content, quests are logged in an easily digestable form. Lots of nice touches to make things easier. Skill system seems good.

Ack, I could go on about it all, but really, just try it! My first (of four) characters is on there as "Azekeil The Slight" :) Oh, and the other great thing is that unlike other MMORPGs, you don't have ensure you're "on the same server" as someone else; you can jump between instances of the town, and questing is done in per-party spawned instances anyway :)

Comments

[aeia.livejournal.com]

Just surfed over to your journal and see you're talking about Guild Wars.. Simon and I are thinking of getting it. I did start playing Everquest 2 but you need to be on way too much to get anywhere and I also got very bored of what just seemed a long slog for nothing as there's no PvP stuff. From the web site Guild Wars looks great and the best bit is no subs!

Is it worth getting the collectors edition? What extra does it give you in the game?

[rillaith.livejournal.com]

I played EQ1 for ~4 years, and have liked EQ2 a lot... unlike EQ1, you *can* play it for 30 minutes or 6 hours... However, I'm level 28ish, and haven't played in a couple of months. I did personally prefer it to WoW though.

Everyone [else] I know who has tried WoW has really liked it; I got a level 18 rogue and a level 14 warlock before I got too bored to run it; the first 15 levels of what felt like a tutorial bored me stupid. Too linear. Despite that, I'm still paying for my sub...

I'd heard a little about Guild Wars but haven't looked into it since. I'd like to see it (if I get a chance) before I decide to buy it; I play so little at all these days that it doesn't seem worth adding something else to my growing MMORPG collection right now. I'd also be sceptical of their future without subs, in form or either stability, reliability, latency, updates, support, or a combination thereof. So many MMORPGs over the years have died out because they didn't have the player base to support their running costs...

Might be time for me to see what Woody at GU Comics has to say about it...

[jikatal.livejournal.com]

Hey dude - I'm scuttling around in Guild Wars too as Jika Tal.

My gut reaction from a few hours play is that it's a bit ghetto in places. The fact it's built for PVP from the ground up is all too apparent.

It's got a lot of things right: nub friendly, pretty looking, really minimises typical mmorpg annoyances etc. I also like combining a secondary class to create your character. I guess this compensates for no faction/racial choices.

That said it has a certain souless quality. The fact that everything outside of city hubs is instanced makes for lonely questing lest you prearrange teaming up.

I'm most suprised by the lack of armour kicking about. One of the joys of mmorpg for a lot of ppl (inc me) is trying to kit your character out with great/rare and/or great looking kit. There's nothing interesting there.

Limiting your equipped skills to 8 at a time introduces interesting tactical dilema's at higher levels. And it's this sort of choice that gives it any value. The PVP is fun, the rest is tacked on.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

In the game it makes your hands sparkle with the color of your class when you do an emote.

It is definitely very much fun :)

I've only played it for about 8 hours and I've just got to the 'main' part of the game, and am now lvl 8 (of 20).

You can start with a lvl 20 PvP char only if you like!

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I can agree with all that.

I definitely missed 'bumping' into people while questing.

Still, there are addon packs to be announced which may change some of that :)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

You buy additional 'chapters' which are not supposed to upset the game balance, like extra magic cards for a magic deck.