Guild Wars is not your average role-playing game. NCsoft worked to meet the major complaints of gamers with regard to online massively multiplayer titles, and in doing so they've created a brand new, mixed breed. Combining some of the best features of both single and multiplayer role-playing, Guild Wars is the one online RPG you won?t mind paying for; especially because there are no monthly fees! Once you kick out the original purchasing price, the game is yours and ready to be played online.
Guild Wars is set in the world of Tyria, a vast landscape ranging from desert to ice covered mountains, split into three human-ruled kingdoms. Players will begin their journey in a sort of pre-game training ground, but this is unlike the training area in any other game because it is really a prelude to the real game. Containing its own story, characters and miniature world, which is really not too small at all, the pre-sear, as it is called, is a time in history prior to the real game?s storyline, when the world was still in one piece.
The sear is the name given to the magical scorching of much of Tyria by the Charr, a dog-like race that has made enemies of the humans. Already in constant feud, the three human kingdoms refused to gather together to take a joint stand against the Charr; due to this, much of the beautiful world has been destroyed. The pre-sear is a beautiful area with trickling brooks and endless meadows, giving way to towering mountains watching over the cities that take refuge in its vast arms. This area is where players will explore for the first several hours, learning about this new world, training with their chosen class and completing quests to earn experience. It?s not essential that a player spend much time here, as they may leave at any time, however, it is recommended that you complete some quests to bring your character up-to-speed and ready to compete in battle. This is also the only area where one can take on a secondary class to complement your chosen career path.
Players will join in on the battle against the Charr, but first some customization and training is necessary. You can only play a human character; however, there are six professions of which to play, each with its own unique looking character models and armor and each character may also have a secondary profession to complement their main job. Unlike many RPGs, in Guild Wars, each profession is useful and there is no ?best route? to go when choosing a character class for play. You will obviously want to choose a profession that suites your personal taste and style of play; however, each of the six jobs will take you through the game. There are three different types of mages in Guild Wars. The mesmer specializes in illusionary magic and use the enemy?s own energy against it. The necromancer is a master of the dark arts and has mastered the art of cursing a foe. Elementalists use the four base elements (fire, air, earth, and water) to deal out massive amounts of damage. In addition to the mages, there is also a warrior, ranger and monk job class. Warriors enjoy fighting using hand-to-hand melee weapons, while rangers prefer to stand back and shoot arrows. Monks, on the other hand, are master healers.
There is no advantage to playing as either a male or female character. You receive skill points to spend based on your character?s experience and level, allowing you to customize your character to fit your unique fighting style. Points are limited and the more you level an individual skill, the more it costs, but you can change your mind about how you spend these points at any time. You can even reallocate skill points you have already spent if you find they would be useful in another place. This unique feature to Guild Wars allows for constantly changing characters and a different battle style during each play.
Customization is a big part of Guild Wars. You can change the size, skin color, hair style and color, face style, and armor. Armor can also be dyed different colors, including a mixture of different dyes, and if you decide you don?t like the color you?ve made your character?s armor, just use dye remover and start from scratch. There are a limited number of armor styles allocated for each profession and a character may only wear armor special fitted for them and made for their profession. This is limiting and makes for several look-alikes running around, but the different character styles make up for this. Characters may also join a guild, which allows them to wear a cape with the guild?s insignia and colors.
Guild Wars combines team-based play with a massive online experience all into in one. Each time you play Guild Wars, the world is specifically designed for your party. You don?t have to worry about other parties running about the world hunting the same target as you or hordes of enemies at high levels you can?t dream of defeating. In fact, the enemy difficulty changes to fit your party and its character levels, to some extent, and it?s even possible to play this game alone! Solo play is no cup of tea, but the game does provide for some assistance in this matter. Players can recruit several different types of henchmen, in various towns, to join them in combat. Amazingly, there is no up-front cost to having henchmen join you, but they act like another player in that they take a portion of the gold the party earns during combat. These henchmen are no where near as good as their player counterparts, usually attacking only when you attack an enemy, no matter if an enemy is attacking your character or not, and they can get stuck on objects around the world or even disappear completely! Their level also often holds them back from being of real use, but they are nice to have around as backup when you can?t find a group or would just like to play solo.
You would think finding a party in Guild Wars would be fairly easy given that everyone who is online is connected to a global chat system and can even traverse servers to join you in any town, but the community as a whole lacks the same luster that is found in other paid online games. Maybe this is because the best players stick with their guilds or play exclusively with friends. To be fair, though, you can usually find a group to complete missions with and to help you on quests if you know how to ask. On the upside, most of the action happens within guilds. Finding a guild is easy as there are always new guilds springing up, and once a guild has around 8 members, you can begin to really start playing in the PvP areas.
There are many points at which players may join together to enjoy Guild Wars. The first is obviously creating a party to complete quests. Up to four players may team up and play through the entire game?s storyline. Prior to the sear, players may have a group of 2 members, but this part of the game is really only good through level 7 or 8, then it?s on to post sear activities, which is where the bulk of players call home, and with good reason, this second part of Guild Wars is where player vs. player combat takes place.
There are several ways to compete against other players in Guild Wars. Guilds make up much of the competitive side of the game, as players group together in teams (guilds) and compete against other guilds for prestige and rank. Guilds are ranked according to how many battles they have competed in and won. A ladder, found on the Guild Wars web site and elsewhere on the internet, keeps track of the top 1,000 guilds.
Tournaments make up another tier of the PvP side of Guild Wars. Tournaments range from a single party taking on the computer in a massive onslaught in a Survival tournament, the elimination of all foes that dare to oppose your party in the Annihilation tournament, play against the enemy and the clock while trying to collect relics in Capture the Relic, to showing everyone who the dominant party is by playing King of the Hill. Each tournament has a unique rule system or objective criteria that will take advantage of certain types of characters skills; however, no character is undesirable in a tournament.
For players who don?t wish to join a guild or are short on time, there are several arenas and PvP areas that allow players to create a party of their own to compete against other players and have a good time. Tournaments and the PvP areas talked about so far all require the creation of a special PvP character ? a character that is created solely for PvP battle and starts at the max level of 20. For PvP combat at any level, there is an arena found near the main town where players join together with other players and compete using their storyline mode characters. The downside to creating a PvP-only character prior to playing through the storyline mode is that you won?t have all spells unlocked for use. This also can give some characters an advantage during PvP tournaments if they have more than the basic spells unlocked. Another area where teams can be slightly unbalanced is in the way of not having enough party members. A full PvP group is made up of 8 players and it is not always easy to round up that many players, but Guild Wars has this issue covered. Teams which do not contain enough players automatically have computer-played henchmen added to the party. These are no where near as good as their player counter-parts, but they do fix at least some of the balancing issue.
Another important element to both PvP and storyline mode are missions. Some missions require players to group together and complete a long, hard quest. These quests have large experience rewards, given to characters that complete the mission, and also reveal key plot twists in the story. On the other hand, there are also missions in which players compete against one another in tournament-style play. Some missions also have secondary objectives that have their own set of rewards.
Travel is made easy in Guild Wars. We really believe NCsoft did almost everything right with this RPG. If you have ever had a complaint about a feature in an online game, Guild Wars pretty much has fixed it. There is very little travel time necessary due to the game?s clever map interface. Once you have visited a town, it is added to your map and you can just double click on its icon to transport there immediately. This rather convenient feature does make the world feel smaller due to short travel time, but this is also extremely useful for joining up with friends, buying items from shops found in different towns and quickly completing quests.
Guild Wars has even taken the pain out of dying. Many games subtract experience when a character dies, but in Guild Wars you may continue fighting with no permanent loss. When a character dies, he transports to the nearest spawn point (sometimes even closer to an objective than when he died) and receives a penalty that essentially drops his level slightly, making him less powerful. Players can work off their penalties by continually winning battles; however, the more a character dies, the larger his penalty becomes. You can immediately clear all penalties a character receives by visiting a town, but this also resets the game world, repopulating the area?s you?ve already visited with more enemies. Penalties are justified due to sickness from death; however, characters can also receive boosts to their power due to high morale, which comes from defeating a large number of enemies. Groups often receive morale bonuses making it more desirable to play in groups rather than alone.
In addition to being feature-packed, Guild Wars is also a truly beautiful looking game. From the realistic character models to the highly detailed mystical environments, your eyes won?t be strained from staring at these graphics for hours on end. Magical effects are also well-done and fit seamlessly into the massive environments. Guild Wars also has some great musical themes specifically found in towns, but the sound effects during battle, as swords meet edge upon edge or as a fire bolt hits its target, are also excellent. Cut scenes viewed during missions are also made more realistic as the player?s character is given and voice and dialogues with other characters in the game.
There is really not much one can complain about. Guild Wars does an excellent job at putting a player?s skills rather than character level at the forefront. Even the toughest battles may be won if a player uses his character?s skills correctly, but sometimes even skills are not enough, which is why it is ideal to play in a party.
Guild Wars is pretty much as clean as an RPG gets. There is no blood or gore and no offensive language used in the title. Violence is of course part of the game, but given that there is no blood, it is toned down quite a bit, but is still realistic enough that it keeps above being compared to cartoon violence. There is some nudity found in the title as characters may be stripped of all but there undergarments and several nude statues can be found about the realm. The statures would compare to those works found in any museum or history book.
Many parents are concerned with the use of magic in role-playing titles and as no exception, Guild Wars contains quite a bit of magical spells. On the up-side, there is no memorization of spells or uttering of magic words. Players simply equip up to 8 spells they would like to use during play and click an icon to use. Spells are either bought or obtained as a reward for a quest and for the most part are used to heal or deflect damage or as is found with arcane magic, used to deal physical damage to an enemy or group of enemies.
There is a necromancer class found in Guild Wars, used as the ?dark? magic class; however, Guild Wars also deals with this class the most tastefully out of any game we have previously reviewed; in fact, even reanimating dead corpses into ?bone horrors? sounds worse than it actually is in game. Bone horrors look like a cross between the muscles of a large animal and a wolverine with massive claws with which to deal out damage. Hex spells put curses on enemies, but again, when it comes down to it, these are all devices used in the game to deteriorate the health of the enemy. Guild Wars is no exception when it comes to magic, but compared to many other RPGs on the market, it is one of the most tasteful adopters and the game also manages to stay clear of gruesome fight scenes and perverse language that is found in many other titles.
On the whole, Guild Wars is for the masses. Appealing to both multiplayer and single-player audiences, Guild Wars manages to combine the best of both worlds into one game, at a price that would satisfy anyone. Packed with features and excellent graphics, Guild Wars takes online role-playing to all new levels, which will make it harder for future titles to stand out and hold up to the rest of the pack without providing the same type of value.
» By Stephan Mack, Plain Games. Published 6/30/2006.
