How was life any fun before Guild Wars?

Author's Rating:

Pros: great controls, high customization, no monthly fee, nice graphics, good music

Cons: can't play without the internet, hardware intensive for older PC's

The Bottom Line: 
An exceptionally fun game, the perfect multiplayer for people that don't normally like multiplayer games.

Author's Review
I don’t get into these massive multiplayer online games much. I liked Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege, but even then it was more about the single player aspects for me. I don’t think I ever actually got online to play although I did like to hook up with friends from work on a private LAN. I guess I'm just a recluse in my gaming.

But there’s another reason I don’t like most online games. I have a real problem with paying full price for a game that I then have to pay a fee to play. As big of a Star Wars geek as I am I won’t get Galaxies for that reason alone. They want the same amount of money as a game that I can play all I want for free? Forget that, give me Resident Evil 4 and turn me loose. I'll play until my fingers are sore without spending a cent to do it. You want me to pay to play? Fine, then give me the game for free, or a small amount. I’m not that dedicated a gamer, and I do occasionally have some semblance of a life meaning wasted monthly fees when I can't play for a while, and undoubtedly the time I would have time to play would be when my subscription lapsed.

THE BASICS:

So Guild Wars takes everything I find annoying about online gaming and makes them right. First and foremost online play has no additional charge. As long as I have the game and an internet connection I can play to my heart’s content.

The other great aspect is the multiplayer balance. I can hire AI henchmen if I want to play alone, and I have the option of hooking up with people from all over the world. The real reason I got into the game, though, is that it’s easy to keep up with specific people which means that it’s a fun way to keep in touch with friends that live far away. Friends lists are great but we stay connected through the creation of our own guild (like a private virtual club, more on that later). We’ll catch up on events and family, go kill a few monsters, and laugh like idiots when we do something stupid and get our butts handed to us in battle.

Some games are annoying in that they allow anyone to pick up the spoils of the kill you just made. All they have to do is watch you fight and be ready to beat you to whatever the monster drops. GW fixes that with private maps. Only towns are public; explorable areas (where you go to fight monsters and pick up treasure) are private to the team. That means if that if we want to talk about private matters or just not be bothered by others it's easy to stay only amongst ourselves. Although it also means that if we want to team up we have to stop anything we're doing and go to a town to meet. What's great about this setup is that it combines my beloved single player control with my private LAN party preference while still giving me the option to hook up with people worldwide.

While all of that got me into the game in the first place, the great game itself is what got me interested in the Nightfall expansion. There’s a lot of effort put into this game, and I’m continually impressed.

To start with there’s a lot of story-based material. The manual is huge because it gets into all of the many gaming aspects as well as getting into the history of the lands, people, deities, etc. You can really immerse yourself in the story if you want, although you can also just jump in for some mindless monster killing or player battles, too.

Player control is easy. There are a variety of ways to move the character including keyboard keys and the mouse. Skills, weapon sets, targeting, and such can all be controlled with the tap of a key. A quick reference card will help you get familiar with those keys.

The reference card also has a list of commands that enhance interaction with other players. With a command your character will act out with full animation agreeing, disagreeing, cheering, resting, coughing, scratching, yawning, and any number of other things. And if you thought that was cool we’re just getting started. You can play paper, rock, scissors, play drums, guitar and other instruments. The big one is the dancing. Each gender of each profession has a unique dance. The male Necromancer does a great headbang/mosh, while the female does the Thriller dance (for you children of the 80’s), breakdancing, ballet, a Martial Arts style dance, and numerous others provide much enjoyment for players.

SPECS:

I have heard of video cards burning out when running this game so you will need a decent one. I'm running a AMD Athlon 3000 with 500 megs of RAM and a 128 MB GeForce video card with a cable modem so if you've got that much you should be fine. It helps to make sure ActiveX is updated, too.

Graphics are great with plenty of detail in the terrain, players, monsters, shadows, and reflections. All of this can be adjusted if your PC can’t handle the maxed out graphics. I can take screenshots of my characters to show them off to friends and let them see the detail in the costumes and weapons, and I don't even have my settings maxed out. I also find myself just looking around at times, not playing just enjoying the environment. I can't say that a game has ever gotten my attention like that before.

Animation is smooth and detailed. While not all the voice acting is great you still get a variety of individual personas that help the game come alive with several CG animated cutscenes. Your character will be included in some of these cutscenes so it's fun to see them come alive and speak.

CUSTOMIZATION:

Next is customization. This begins with choosing your profession (6 choices in the original plus 2 in each expansion). So with both expansions you have a total of 10 professions to start, then you choose a secondary one out of the remaining 9. Different combinations of skills have different strengths and weaknesses and vary depending on which profession is primary. So from the get go you have numerous possibilities.

It doesn’t stop there, though. As you get points for skill categories and learn new skills you can create numerous different types of characters. For example, my favorite, the Necromancer, can be geared towards master of an undead army, a team support role using skills that weaken or disrupt the enemy, or a vampiric fighter sucking the very life from enemies in combat. The Necro can be all of one or a combination of those types, and that doesn’t take into consideration what the secondary profession might be.

Not only is gameplay customizable, but appearance is also. You control gender, height, armor color, hair style and color, skin tone, and facial features. And that’s just to start. Throughout the game you can find different styles of armor and weapons as well as various colors of dye that can be applied to pretty much everything.

Even weapons and armor can be customized to some extent. Attributes can be salvaged from items you find in battle then applied to another item. Crafting materials can also be salvaged then used to construct new armor and weapons. In the original game, weapon construction always seemed very cumbersome to me, I usually found the items I used out in the field rather than having them built. The recent updates make it easier to retrieve and combine elements which improve items customization much more fun. I'll get more into that in a moment.

And finally guilds are customizable. Start with a name and a mnemonic like Incredible Rebels of Narnia (IRON). Design a cape from a variety of styles, patterns, and insignias. Buy a guild hall from a long list of hall types that you can explore before buying. Then staff your hall with a variety of services like a private merchant and traders. It’s a place to congregate and prepare for battle and a necessity for going head to head with other guilds.


NIGHTFALL:

OK, if you’re familiar with Guild Wars I haven’t told you anything you don’t already know. What you might not know is how Nightfall takes customization to the next level. This is one of the big reasons I bought the game and why it has me addicted more than I’ve ever been.

First I might ought to say that if Nightfall is your first Guild Wars package you don’t need any others. Nightfall is greatly enhanced by having the original, but it’s completely self-contained. If you’ve been playing the original you can take your character over to the Nightfall world and play them in that realm, vice-versa, or you can stay in whichever you prefer.

I mentioned hiring henchmen. At any given time you can have x number of people in your group. If you don’t have enough human players to fill out the team you can hire AI characters. They can be useful but are nowhere near as helpful as a human player. Nightfall introduces heroes. While still not as great as human players, they are the next best thing because you control pretty much everything about them. They will have a predetermined appearance and primary profession (although you’ll have a list of characters to choose from after a while so you can just use whichever profession you like best), but you get to choose secondary profession, skill set and skill point placement. You can upgrade armor and weapons much like your own. Necros can have minions, Rangers can have pets (my ranger hero has a pet wolf). I only wish you could name your heroes and their pets.

Control of these heroes is greatly improved which also improves control of henchies (which you may still use sometimes since you can only have 3 heroes on a team at a time). You can tell them where to go and what to do when they get there. You can disable skills (which was helpful when getting my ranger’s wolf since it allowed me to keep her from attacking the animal and forcing her to use Charm). So instead of having henchies running around attracting monsters that you really aren’t ready to deal with thus killing the whole team you can have them all hide behind a rock or back off an impending battle while you strategize or lure a few members of an opposing group into a trap.

Even without NF you will get the hero slots and improved henchie control. You just can't actually add heroes to your team until you get to Elonia.

The new professions are Dervish, a scythe wielding warrior with enchantment abilities, and Paragon, spear wielding guardians that provide strong support capabilities. So obviously spears and scythes are popular weapons to find in the field. I’ve also been finding much better shields than what I had in Prophecies (the original game) and other weapons I haven’t seen before like daggers (probably from the Factions expansion).

I’ve been finding better weapons in general as well as more crafting materials that don’t have to be salvaged. I’ve been able to stock up on bolts of cloth just off drops in missions, plus bolts of silk and other rare materials that I haven’t seen as drops up to this point.

There are some new types of missions called challenge and elite that allow for some competition and looting. These are really just extra mini-games and don't have any impact on the overall game except for the spoils you gain. You're just running around killing things and picking up items on a time limit.

Sunspear rank is a new title for you to work on. You will get rewards for certain ranks such as an improved resurrection signet (for you non-healers out there). There are other new titles to work for as well.

The story missions are set up differently. In the original you pretty much have a set primary mission and a set bonus. You can complete one or the other and get the points for it meaning you can complete the whole mission in two passes if need be. Nightfall is a more inclusive thing. Your rewards are dependant on how well you do in the mission. For example if the bonus is to kill 5 of a certain type of monster, you can get points for killing some but not all (whereas before it was all or nothing). In some ways this is easier since you get some reward even if you don’t complete all of it, however, it keeps you from being able to tackle mission and bonus individually. You have to complete the primary mission and all bonus objectives at one time for the top ranking in the mission, so as far as top ranking goes it IS all or nothing.

The primary missions carry a storyline for you to follow. In the original game this is hindered by the ability to play the missions out of sequence thus confusing the storyline (especially if it’s been a while since playing the others), but allows for the play of any mission once you reach the appropriate town. Some players like to play only the story missions for quick experience points. So far (I still have a ways to go) the Nightfall story has been more linear making it easier to follow and thus more interesting, however getting to a town doesn't mean that you can play the mission there. It can be ambiguous about where to go next if you don't take the time to talk to people in town and complete the tasks they give you. It takes more story involvement which is fun if that's your thing, but can be annoying if you want quick and mindless action for big XP.

Rewards for the smaller tasks have been improved, though. You get Sunspear points that allow for advancement in the ranks, items that can be traded for a variety of things like salvage kits and experience boosts, and other such useful things that aren't in Prophecies. You also get more items a lot of times. The material trader's task, for example, rewards you with a number of free materials instead of just one thing. And the experience reward seems to have been increased a bit.

There are also field boosts available. When you find a wandering priest near a resurrection point they will give you a blessing to kill a particular type of monster. Doing so increases your rewards, and you can stack on as many different kinds of blessings as you can find. This makes monster hunting more lucrative than before.

I mentioned salvage and construction improvements. The old way is to salvage a weapon with the chance of getting what you want (a special item) and the chance of getting regular crafting materials. Then when combining you run the risk of replacing something you might not have wanted to. For example, say you have a bow to upgrade. You have the bow and the string that can have special properties. So say you have a health boost already and find a poison increase. If they are on two different components of the bow you're fine, you get both upgrades. If they happen to be on the same part and you forget you've just lost your health bonus.

New updates takes the guesswork out. When you salvage you see a list of possibilities and can choose the one you want. You might destroy the item doing that and you might not. If not you can salvage another part if there is one. I have gotten two special items and crafting materials out of a single item before. Then when combining you get a preview of the result meaning as long as you pay attention you won't accidentally remove an attribute you want to keep. This applies to the game as a whole. You don't need NF for this improvement.

There are also inscription additions. Some weapons can be inscribed adding to their power. This is another way to boost your player. These appear to be only in Nightfall, but there are other components that I've seen everywhere such as insignias (similar to runes except that you can add them to an item that already has a rune) and some new runes with health and energy boosts or condition reducers.

There's a lot more to this game than what I've covered yet I see that my review is already quite lengthy. I haven't really talked much about the player-vs-player capabilities since I don't play with that all that much, but it is a big selling point of the game to many people. Essentially you can go head to head by joining a random team, by creating an in-game team, or by pitting one whole guild against another. There are championships and global rankings for the best. Communities for the game are huge and dedicated.

This is a game you can really get into, but you don't have to be hardcore to enjoy it. I just like to have fun with it and goof off with my buddies in a virtual environment. We're never going to be the #1 guild, but we're going to enjoy being a part of the game.


*********Guild Wars Nightfall Collector’s Edition*********

As with all the Guild Wars games you can buy just the game or you can get the Collector’s Edition package with lots of additional goodies.

Here are the physical items you get in the box:

Basic stuff:
Manuscripts (manual), Quick reference card

Menial stuff:
-Access Key sheet: Nightfall access, Bonus music access, an Epic Trial (to try out the first 2 games if you don't have them), and a Buddy pass that lets a friend try Nightfall for 14 day or 10 hours (whichever comes first).
-Codes to try out Lineage 2, City of Heroes, and Auto Assault
-Catalog of games
-Larger than normal box to store all this stuff easily.

Cool Stuff:
-A cardboard standup of Varesh (the villain) that matches an in-game pet.
-2 button pins that come in a black cloth bag. Mine are Vow of Silence (a Dervish skill) and It’s Just a Flesh Wound (a Paragon skill). They look quite nice. I affixed mine to the cardboard standup over my computer.
-Large Nightfall poster
-Poster sized map of the Nightfall world
-124 page art book with some really nice images
-Behind the scenes DVD that is well-edited and contains some nice graphics. They have custom wipes built around some different characters. As much as it's a look at Guild Wars it's a look at how video games are designed. It's about an hour long.
-Soundtrack with 36 tracks. This is classic instrumental soundtrack music. The tracks range from a little less than a minute to a couple of minutes. Some are very distinctive while others are little more than background noise. Overall it's a nice collection of music that I will be listening to again.


In-game goodies:
-Varesh pet. This is an item in your inventory. When you activate it a small Varesh will follow you around. She doesn't do anything. It's just eye-candy.
-Exclusive dances, one for the Paragon one for the Dervish. Not knowing what the regular dances are I don't know if I should be impressed or not. I still like the Necromancer dances the best.

So to bottom line it, I highly recommend Guild Wars especially if you like multiplayer games but aren't necessarily a hard-core gamer. If you like the game I highly recommend Nightfall. It adds some great elements particularly if you prefer playing by yourself or with a selective group of friends. The heroes are a big help there. And if you know you want Nightfall I highly recommend the Collector's Edition. If all you want is gameplay, then you might not care so much for it, but I think the pet is fun and the music good. The only thing I don't like about this edition is that it makes me regret not getting the one for the original.