Guild Wars

[luigi1]

Would you believe pvp with no griefing, corpse camping, training or ganking? I picked up Guild Wars on my way home from work friday and after a weekend playing I gotta say I'm impressed. There are parallels to Diablo 2 but its not Diablo 3. Some thoughts follow.

You can make a level 20 (max lvl) at character creation and get right into the pvp with the big guys.

The pve game is challanging, there are many quests and they are fun.

Dont grind in this game, questing is much more productive.

I expected rush the monk (healer) in pvp, but the AI seems to do that in PVE as well.

Customizing your character (dual proffession) and adding points to skills as well as which spells/skills you quest for adds a lot of diversity.

The game is desighned to be skill based, loot and gold flow freely.

Armor can be dyed and customized, charactors dont all look the same.

I'm sure other gamers in this forum have played as well. Please share your thoughts and impressions.

 

[torpid]

I'm still not sure.

The graphics are really gorgeous, and some of the gameplay elements are fun. However, the game is far from self-explanatory, and the manual is 75 pages of story and 5 pages of how to play the game. It seems to be totally geared towards pvp with pve as an afterthought. The big problem there is that unless you create a pvp character, you have to spend time playing pve, which in theory is well fleshed out but very unintuitive in places.

For example, me and my friend start a mission. There's a two minute timer. Suddenly we are with two random people and fighting in a pvp battle where the opponent has two henchmen. We didn't even know how to get henchmen. Our team was significantly lower level. Then we go into the actual mission, which we clear quickly. Suddenly we are in a totally different city, and we still to this moment have no idea what to do about older quests. Are they automatically abandoned or what?

Also lots of bugs. I got a quest to light some candles in the catacombs in the starting storyline. My friend got the quest too. I was able to light 3 / 4 but never got credit for the fourth as my friend did. When we finally left the dungeon it said 0/4 and I just had to abandon the quest.

Nonetheless, the PvE is fun despite everything being confusing, unknown, and poorly explained. Combat is quick, but beside that it feels a bit distant. I can cast spells and kind of see their effect but it just feels like I'm not quite in full control ever. But the reason PvE is fun is because it is so immersive (kind of ironic considering how unimmersive combat feels). The world feels more real. The story has progress.

So mixed review. If I'm still playing it at the end of the week, then it must be damn good, because I've played WoW and nothing but it. Right now it's more like 70% wow, 30% GW.

 

[Malak]

I think I'll wait for a bit before getting it. I see some good points, reason enough to get it, and some bad points, reason enough to wait to get it.

 

[arredondo]

Those aren't bugs. Quests aren't ever broken as far as I can tell from experience and forum lurking. Because the game is made up of instances, whenever you leave a region you may reset certain game elements if you leave prematurely. Simply go back and finish the job.

For instance, I did the exact same thing as you with the candle mission in the catecombs. I lit two and left the area. The quest log showed it as incomplete - it never didappears until you abandon it or complete it. When I came back a few hours later, I went to the NPC to get four more candles and simply finished it that time (it's a 7 minute mission at most).

Talk to '!' NPCs to get more quests, and press 'L' often to see what acquired quests you need to finish. It couldn't be simpler.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: arredondo
Those aren't bugs. Quests aren't ever broken as far as I can tell from experience and forum lurking. Because the game is made up of instances, whenever you leave a region you may reset certain game elements if you leave prematurely. Simply go back and finish the job.

For instance, I did the exact same thing as you with the candle mission in the catecombs. I lit two and left the area. The quest log showed it as incomplete - it never didappears until you abandon it or complete it. When I came back a few hours later, I went to the NPC to get four more candles and simply finished it that time (it's a 7 minute mission at most).

Talk to '!' NPCs to get more quests, and press 'L' often to see what acquired quests you need to finish. It couldn't be simpler.

I think you misunderstand the issue. I clicked on all 4 candles but it would only give me credit for 3. The minimap kept pointing to a candle I had already clicked on a billion times. I never got credit. But my friend clicked on the same 4 candles, we were in a party together mind you, and he completed the quest successfully.

 

[arredondo]

I see. It was a bug - screw that game.

Heh, in all honestly, you can always abandon a quest from the quest menu and then do it again next time. Quests seem to take no time to complete.