They just announced Guild Wars Nightfall...

Looks mega sweet.

Hope it's got more RP content than Factions.

its a pretty good game considering there is no monthly fee, but its also got its downsides.

1) if you don't have a 128MB graphics card, the lag can be overwhelming at times.

2) you can only reach as high as level 20, so a lot of people stop playing when advancement is no longer possible

3) im pretty sure the most a weapon can have for base damage is 18-35, so don't plan on reaching a stage where you can overpower everybody you come up against

4) guild wars entertainment is at its best in its PvP and the actual wars between guilds. the Cooperative missions that advance you through the game are just that, ways of getting farther. most of the missions in the original game pay very little money compared to the work you have to do in some of them, however if you buy the expansion, money is everywhere.

5) Unlike WoW, you can only have 6 characters (8 if you have Factions Expansion) total, you don't get to make different characters for every server.

the biggest Pro in the game are being able to play the game without the disk, and creating your own guild. you get to choose the island, and you get to buy services for your guild to house, such as a weapon smith or a storage agent. starting a guild costs around 18 platinum (1plat=1000gold), customizing your guild's cape costs 2 plat, and service prices range from 10 plat at the cheapest all the way up to 100 plat.

to be completely honest, if you are looking for an MMORPG, stick with World of Warcraft and just pay the fee. its easiest to buy game cards at gamestop or something where you can pay $45 for 3 months of play instead of having to pay by credit card, and if you are short on dough one month, not playing will not cause you to lose your account. WoW is just much more worth it in the long run

I'm going to have to disagree with some of your points here nohitters.

I don't quite see what the problem is here. If you reach level 60 in WoW 'advancement is no longer possible' either. To be frank, there is going to be a level cap somewhere, but I don't think this is at all the limit of what we can rightly call advancement. You can look for better armour, items, you can trade for profit, you can unlock PvP content, you can go for the myriad of titles that you can earn.
I frankly love the fact that the levelling grind in Guild Wars is mercifully short, and I'd probably stop playing if I found myself having to labour through hours upon hours of XP farming just to get to the top.


How is this a bad thing at all? I for one don't like the idea of playing a game where one character can simply destroy everyone else they come up against because they have some preposterously overpowered weapon.

Once again, I don't think this really counts against the game. I have never had oodles of cash in GW, but making money wasn't part and parcel with doing quests and missions so that didn;t bother me. Anyone who has an eye for markets can make substantial sums by buying, selling, trading and keeping their wits about them. I like the idea that in GW you don't get rich by just doing missions, like everything else you have to earn it.

I'll agree that the lag and the 6 character slots is a limitation, but those are both being looked into right now which is good to know.

People can play whatever they like as far as I'm concerned, I just think you're giving GW a bit of a raw deal here.

Weapons dont do the damage, its the skills. So weapon damage is pointless. Except for the swords and arrows.

Picked up Factions the other day and I'm enjoying myself. I have a lvl 10 N/Rt, and I haven't joined a guild or actually played with other people (I use the War and Monk henchmen.) I've cancelled my WoW acct. which expires Aug. 22nd and I probably won't renew until expansion, if it's appealing to me. WoW is nothing but a PvE fest and it sucks, BG's are not real PvP and World PvP is dead (IMO, I came from DAoC.) Blizzard thinking they're going to somehow revive World PvP by adding some ridiculous sand collecting objective in Silithus is...well ridiculous.

I'm actually quite pleased with how well the game runs considering there's no monthly fee. I get the occasional lag spike in prime time but it's nothing like what WoW has/had, at least yet! I have a couple RL friends that were also thinking about quitting WoW and playing some GW. I still need to find a decent guild though, so once I'm 20 I can get some decent gear and explore a bit, even though from what I hear gear doesn't matter much in GW.

Well here's my experience with Guild Wars...

I bought Prophecies the first day it came out, and fought the rift wardens, spirit spams, and the ancient lightning surge+orb combos when they were popular with the Koreans. To be competent at pvp, you had to have stuff unlocked. So I spent my whole summer unlocking everything: skills, runes, weapon upgrades, etc. It got boring really quick, as it was no longer a game, but a chore. After that there was nothing left to do, except getting the overpriced fissure armor. And that's exactly what I did, farming hours for gold to pay the dummy forgemaster. By then I have finished every task aside and I was ready to play pvp, but I didn't know alot of people and my guild was mostly offline. I spent most of my time unlocking stuff and getting fissure armor when I could've made some new friends and earn some fame. :|

You're better off grouping with henchmens than waiting forever for some idiotic monk in pve. If you're in a good guild with some good friends then you can have alot of fun. Most of the guilds I was in broke up sooner or later because of differences and conflicts. After my last guild split, I was tired of all the bullshit so I stayed solo again, which I did most of the time anyways.

If there was a monthly fee I would not have bought it. You spend most of your time waiting in this game, waiting for something, waiting for something to happen, and sometimes, waiting for something to happen while waiting for something else to happen, while waiting for someone. But the Devs work really hard to keep players happy and make the game enjoyable, even if it means a Halloween or Christmas celebration, or an occasional nerf :) . I did learn alot from this game, stuff like how obsidian is really a rock, how you can run through portals without teleporting, how a ranger can run Elona, how much more you can know someone just by hearing their voice on TS/Vent, and that you can lose considerable weight if you play for 2 weeks straight without food on your mind. Haha. Well all the new stuff in Factions didn't convince me to spend another summer unlocking and farming, as I did not want to go through that phase again.

Oh yeah i also met a stripper online through the game, but that's another story...

That's ENTIRELY FALSE.
Level 20 just means you max out your health points and power but you still can develop new skills/spells, change up and refine your class, develop new skill combos etc.

The Level 20 cap DOESN'T mean you stop advancing. Level 20 is just where your character becomes mature - because there's a lot to develop after that. Most folks reach level 20 way before the campaign is over. I never heard of anyone quitting just because they reached level 20 - because by then they realize that level 20 is just the beginning.

The cap is just a way of keeping the game from being dominated by folks with 2 million health points and deliver 20,000 in damage with each blow. In Guild Wars a good player is one who is insightful and experienced enough to assemble an effective build and skillful enough to put it into action .... not just someone with bigger numbers. I prefer the game with that cap.

I quit playing a few months ago, primarily due to being too busy to play. I also opted not to buy Factions because it seemed bent on PvP.. and I don't really enjoy that in Prophecies. I love PvE in Prophecies, but I had a lot of trouble finding skilled people to finish the game (my monk has done everything except some of the endgame quests, and Lornar's Pass/Snake Dance). So I quit...

I love PvE and PvP, and I think there's enough of both for everyone.

That being said, Guildwars is not nearly as fun alone as it is with a Guild. Joining a reliable, organised and active Guild made this game exponentially better for me.

For a while my interest was flagging because I was in the same situation that Bolla was in. I ended up joining a big Aussie guild and since then I've had nothing but fun in GW. I've won Halls, I've never had problems getting weapons or items, and I'm not playing with strangers.

Woot, double faction this weekend, and Nightfall preview next weekend! Who all is gonna join in on the fun?

So who else absolutely DESPISES the new interface changes for Nightfall?