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From:NCsoft
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#4046 |
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 An MMORPG new-B's review., 2008-01-27
I got this game for several reasons, playable on a 56kbs dial-up connection, no fee playing, optional solo/party playability, and I've been dying to play an MMORPG for years.
The graphics are stunning! The variety of monsters and scenery is huge! Finding party members, people to trade/talk with can be easy, if you're so inclined.
I gave the game a 4-star rating for fun, because, for the most part, it's a blast! My only gripe in that department is the lack of any detailed descriptions of anything. Not of the character classes, their skills, how to use the interface, etcetera. It's a case of "It's fun to learn on your own," which is far from my idea of fun. The manual has to be downloaded, but it's not really worth it, there's a lot of better info available on several Guild Wars related sites.
I gave the game an overall rating of 3-stars because of a problem us new-B's on a budget, running a dial-up connection aren't told of, anywhere. And I doubt many of the old-timers to Guild Wars are even aware of.
Guild Wars updates the game constantly. Small updates are downloaded as they're released, and while the player transitions from area-to-area. In and of itself, that's not a bad thing.
HOWEVER! If you buy the 2005 Guild Wars in 2008, or later, you've got 3 years+ of updates to catch up on, that aren't on the CD's!
When I put the CD in the drive, a splash screen said I wasn't connected to the internet, and it closed. So I connected, and reinserted the CD. Clicked on install, and it downloaded something for 20 minutes. THEN, it copied files from the 2 CD's to my hdd. It then connected to the Guild Wars site where it stated it had to download 4,896 files. About 9 hours, and 86mb later, I was able to enter my activation key, set up a new account, and create my first character. Upon completion, it notified me that it had to download 12,772 files. Twelve hours, and 111.8mb later, the opening cinematic played, and I've been having a blast ever since!
I presume that many of the files I downloaded are included in the later chapters, and most likely, in "The Eye of the North" expansion. (All of which, I can't afford.)
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
 Best game ever, 2008-01-20
I finished this game a few weeks after I got it, and it's probably the most addicting thing I've played. Sometimes it can be difficult and I've found myself trying to do quests and missions multiple times. I find that this game is fairly n00b friendly, since no one can really judge how well you play(which is good for me, since I think it's very strategic). It is very team based though, so you can either get the henchies(makes things harder), or you can get real people(sometimes a huge hassle because no one wants to invite you to their party). Obviously it's a good game (Game of the Year!) and a must have. Just don't get it when you have important stuff to do(like school work or something) because it's a lot of fun. It's a good place to start out on Guild Wars.
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
Good Game, 2007-10-22
I like this game because its a lot shorter than those other mmorpgs out there, plus ITS FREE. Not only to mention that my college internet doesn't block it like the other online games. You should give it a try if you don't feel like devoting your life to something like WoW.
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
My experience with Guild Wars, 2007-09-30
The game starts out a lot of fun. Once you discover the play mechanics and get past the first few tutorial quest you quickly get hooked in. Wow players will probably enjoy the balance here, Guild Wars is designed to not suck your life away and is missing some of the elements that make Wow players feel the need to always be on.
The graphics here are beautiful as well and the story very nice, I would say excellent. Yes, my first month with Guild War was one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. I joined a guild, made a few friends and greatly enjoyed the casual gaming experience, leveling up at leisure. If no one from the guild is on-line to team up with you, then you simply go into town and recruit henchmen (NPC's or computer controlled characters) to join your party and help you complete quest.
Then I made it about 1/4 way through the game (so I was told by other players, the area I notice a change in is called the Silverpeaks, I'll state that here for reference to others who have played). I quickly found my character in a position where I was always twice as strong has the available NPC henchmen and when I ventured outside of town it was a quick death even with six NPC's in my party. So I found myself in a position where I had to have real players in my party, all the time. On top of that, I found my quest log empty and no near by travel points. Dependant upon level 20 characters to help "run me through", and getting advice from multiple people to buy quest items from other players in town (using in game currency) the unbalanced nature of the game revealed itself, the game became a bit of a bore.
Eventually I resolved to always doing a party search. Making good use of my friends list and finally changing guilds. But I also found another solution. Yes, in this game (Prophecies) the henchmen seem underpowered when you need them the most, but you can "bridge" a character from this game into Nightfall or Factions. If you purchase Nightfall once you get through the Shiver Peaks to Lions Arch (this is about 1/3 of the way through the game) you can complete a quest and bring your character over to Nightfall and you will be granted 4-5 "Hero" characters which start at level 15. You can use them instead of Henchmen with complete control of their actions and you can level them up. This seems to be a gift NCSoft gives you for making the Nightfall purchase a long with the original Guild Wars, you are also going to get a pretty easy 9000 points once you land in Nightfall off of fairly easy quest given only to characters coming from other campange. So if you're really into the game by time your reach Lion's Arch, I highly recommend buying Nightfall and Factions when you get to that point. Take your char to Night Fall to get the four level 15 heroes and then go (with your new heros) to Factions from Lions Arch and you will be able to go from level 13 (or whatever low number you are) to level 20 within a 8 hours or so). It takes so long to level up characters in this GW game that many find this strategy the only way to make the game toleriable, otherwise the chase for level 20 will take you forever. On that note: there becomes a lot of pressure to "power level" and being involved in a guild you will quickly feel inadaquit and will face a lack of respect from others with characters below level 20. But the game does cap at level 20. This is created because of the design of the game and players need to depend on level 20's to help with things that should be accomplish able on their own or with henchmen. I realize that's part of what "Massive On-line Multiplayer Gaming" is all about, but my real problem with Guild Wars is this sudden transition around 1/4 into the game where if you have being playing mostly single player or with one or two friends, you are forced to change your playing style and team up with strangers. This results in a lot of time in chat and less time questing, which again might not be so bad if it were that way from the start, but the fact that the designers force this change upon you can really destroy the fun of the game.
Considering that Guild Wars is free to play on-line, I feel the game is still an excellent value and I feel I got my money's worth for the bit of time I played it, I just feel very let down with the change.
To circumvent this problem, the developer (ArenaNet) only would have had to provide stronger NPC henchmen and more quest, instead they manage to up the difficulty and force a change of play dynamic the result for me was a huge loss of entertanment value. If you're not being entertained then it's time to stop playing.
I also have Guild Wars: Nightfall and it does seem more balanced overall. It introduces heros early and you don't have to wait forever to get to level 20 with a Player vs Environment character.
2 of 6 customers found the following review helpful:
 Not very well thought out, 2007-08-31
Guild Wars is a truly unique game indeed, a mixture of genius and stupidity. I won't make my review long by repeating what others have pointed out; I will talk about factors I haven't read others mention yet.
As others have stated repeatedly, Guild Wars requires no monthly payment to play. This premise could lead one to think that they'd have less money to pay good developers, and hence, might be a lesser game with mediocre graphics and cheesy content to make a quick buck. Surprisingly, not at all! I have played Everquest 2 for several years, and I have to say that Guild Wars' graphics in terms of characters and environments are THE BEST compared to any other online game I've ever played (which are Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, and Everquest 2). Their nature environments were created with excruciating detail, and with stunning beauty I've seen only in single-player RPG games. This for me was a stunning positive surprise, and their 3D terrain, in my humble opinion, is a work of artistic genius.
But there is one thing Guild Wars has done very poorly -- their 3D camera angle management. This is the only game I've ever played that makes humongous *automatic* vertical angle adjustments on your view at the slightest move of a mouse! When you encounter an enemy mob, you'd want to adjust your vertical view so your target is in plain clear view, but depending on your environment (i.e. if there are walls, big rocks, etc.) the game could swing your vertical view almost 90 degrees up or down at the slightest move of your mouse! This has led to situations where I got killed because I could no longer see the enemy AND could *not* move the camera angle to bring the enemy back in view!! I have been in battles where it was such a major struggle just to stablize my view of the enemy mob, and this factor has caused me an inordinate amount of exasperation, especially when it led to the death of my entire group. You see, once you beat the primary game scenario, you will have the option to explore the areas in Hard Mode where all mobs are pumped up in level and in number. With this automatic vertical camera angle the game does to me, I have died all the more frequently. I've stopped playing Hard Mode altogether.
You may also have read from the other reviews that this game is all instanced except in towns. This simply means you only get to see other people in towns, or if you invite them into your group and adventure within an instance. Community-wise, this game is simply inferior to all the other online games I've ever played. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I have felt 95% of the time that I was playing a single-player game. Now I'm not the kind of player who likes to socialize that much in online games, but even I started feeling lonely.
Overall, it is just too bad. Guild Wars is a very well-planned game in many ways, with the most beautiful environments I have ever seen to date, but this laudible accomplishment is tainted by the difficulty of maneuvering within the game due to automatic camera angle adjustments. I think the developers didn't play this game; if they did, then they should kick themselves for allowing this to happen because for this player, it really killed my fun.
Lastly, Guild Wars 2 is underway, and they've announced that your characters in the current Guild Wars are not migratable. I don't know how wise this is, but maybe they should've allowed a minor migration. For example, maybe they could've decided to give a slight credit to all the accomplishments of a character in Guild Wars 1, perhaps in the form of some in-game object, something that won't give former players too much of an advantage over new players, and yet make them feel that the playing time they did in Guild Wars 1 has not been all wasted.
Guild Wars is unique in their business model (i.e., no monthly payments), and clearly demonstrates talent amongst their art designers, game designers, and developers. It astounds me to see such enormous talent making glaring oversights, which when rectified, could easily establish Guild Wars as the top MMORPG game in the industry.
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