If guild wars is not an MMO neither is dungeons and dragons online. They have very similar personality traits.
The major things I do not like about guild wars is...
1. there is no player search function... where you can type a players name and see where they are.. what job they are..
2. because of the lack of search function there is no way to "Put your flag up" and let people know you are looking to join a group.
You basically have to always shout... "20ele/rit lfg for mission" or something of the sort.
3. There is no auction or bazaar system. Basically you have no idea how much items are selling for, and the only way to sell your items is to shout anyway..which can take awhile depending on what you have.
4. I find the community lacking. So many of them are "Im uber 1337 every1 e7se is /\/00b" or then there are the people who would rip off anyone for no reason and dont care about anyone but themselves...and the folks who always...rush into battle and kill your group hehe....
You find these folk in every mmo game. But because no credit card is needed to play guild wars... alot of younger people play... so the ratio of normalcy to insanity is reduced.
5. You can only join a single guild. This guild transfers to all the characters you create. I find this really annoying because... if you have a bad guild this game is not even remotly as fun as it is when you have a cool active guild. But you make friends with these "inactive" guild players and you feel guilty just ditching them. This whole scenario is really obnoxious and it makes it alot harder to find a good guild.
These are my major complaints.
Now don't think I do not enjoy this game. Because I'm going to go back to playing it right after I write this.
There are several things I do like about this game.
1. The story is decent, and leveling up does not give you that "grind grind grind" sensation. You perform missions or quests and gain experience by completing them. Mostly people try to avoid conflict if they can..but usually it is not possible so you end up plowing through tons of monsters.
2. Henchmen. You don't have to party with real people... and you could theoretically go through the entire game solo. The henchmen are good players most of the time...but not excellent players. They are good enough to get missions done with...but not good enough to make them more desirable then a decent party. This really comes in handy when, you have 5 real people and you need 3 more to do something and you cannot find the right jobs/classes to group with. So there is no "everyone beg the white mage/cleric" scenario when forming a group.. and no "waiting for a tank" or "not enough dmg to be effective" because you can always get some type of player you need.
3. It's free. Now I understand this has drawbacks. It is essentially why you cannot search or use an auction ect... because these types of things double the bandwidth demand of the game so they would need another 33/100 servers. But I played FFXI for 3 years. I wonder how much money I blew on that game.
4. I enjoy the fact that the zone is assigned only to your party. Some folks claim this makes it a non mmo... however this game is massive... its multiplayer... it's online... and its an RPG. So if you want to scwabble about nothing go ahead but I will ignore you. The thing is... I enjoy the zone being assigned to my specific group. This prevents bots and notorious monster campers... or scenarios where... you get a great group togeather...and there is nowhere for you to fight... or some other group prevents you for doing exactly what you want to.
5. I like that when you die... there is no penalty to your experience points. FFXI was absurd in the way it penalized you, if you didn't get someone with a very very powerful raise spell to come bring you back to life. In Guild Wars, if your party dies.. you are resurrected at whatever waypoint/shrine that is closest to you. The penalty is that your HP and Magic are penalized. So the first time you die you lose 15% health and magic.. you still have a good chance to win.... but after 3 or 4 times... your at like 50% life and magic.. and if you didnt win at 100% and died several times.. your not going to win now hehe...so you must go back to town..where it clears the penalty and retry the mission. This is good because it allows you to reconfigure your group or find a new one to avoid the one guy that usually does something retarded to cause your group to die 4 times in a row.
6. Low system requirements, yet pretty cool graphics. I really like this because just about everyone I know can play it. or can spend 30$ on a video card and play it. It is a rough balance to pull off... and naturally my crazy overclocked "ghetto gtx" 7900gt could render graphics alot nicer hehe but it doesn't make me angry at the game LoL or anything. Im still playing it alot =P and it looks pretty good.
So there you have it.
In my opinion it is worth playing. Though I own factions only and havnt played the original I plan to buy it to.
There are alot of haters that loom around forums... and you dont read alot of player written positive reviews...
This is because the people who like the game are all playing it and having fun, without spending 200$ a year or whatever.
And this argument about it not being MMO is absurd. No one argues about DDO not being an MMORPG.. MMORPG.com doesnt argue with either of these being MMORPG's. Stressing over differences in games and saying it is not an MMORPG is like saying.. Death Metal is not Metal, because it is not Thrash Metal.
Anyway back to guild wars for me...
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