Another Great Guild Wars Weekend
I spent a good chunk of this last weekend playing Guild Wars – a new arena.net MMORPG that came out earlier this spring. GW, basically, is another swords and sorcery MMORPG. You get to choose a character from 6 different human classes, including the typical ones (warrior, monk, elementalist, ranger) and a few non-typical ones, such as the mesmer and necromancer. Unlike most of the other MMORPGs I have played (Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Final Fantasy Online, World of Warcraft) you can actually multi-class your character. I chose to play a mesmer/necromancer. The mesmer is basically a casting class with spells designed to cancel out or negate other classes (i.e. cast a spell to slow down fighters) and the necromancer is also a caster with a variety of curse related spells, also intended to “negate” other characters. Why would I choose such a strange combination? Well, the game isn’t called “Guild Wars” for no reason – the heart and soul of the experience is in team PvP play – which makes it entirely different in structure from the usual MMORPGs.
Let me explain. Instead of typical grinding to level 100 or what have you, there is a skill cap of 20. I reached level 20 after only 6 weeks or so of gameplay on the weekends and some evenings. You proceed in the game by winning various missions that take you across the fictional world of Tyria, defeating NPC monsters and finishing quests. At any time during the game, you also head to PvP arenas where you can take on other real life players with your characters. Once you hit level 20, you don’t really gain any more levels or increase your attributes or skill levels, but you do earn hard earned “elite skills” specific to your class as well as unlock various ways to increase your character’s PvP abilities. My character is nearing the end of completing the storyline and exploring th
e entire game world. However, by defeating more people in PvP play, you gain the “faction points” that enable you to unlock the various elite skills and weapons/armor that will make your character stronger. The PvP play is addictive. You can form teams and take on others, or your entire guild can invite other guilds for battle, and both your character and guild gains fame for defeating enemies. Right now, the rivalry is entirely international with Guild Wars players playing in 3 regions: North America, South Korea, and Europe. The majority of the time, the Koreans own the “Hall of Heroes” – where the guilds fight each other – followed by N. America and lastly Europe. The thing is, whoever has “favor” in the “Hall of Heroes” – ie whoever’s guilds are winning the most battles – affects the non PvP play as well. So only if North America has favor can all people playing on the North America servers access certain zones and dungeons critical for character advancement. This is a unique facet of the game which sets it apart from all of the other MMORPGs I have played. This PvP play is intense, and makes the game more accessible. Instead of logging in to grind every night and finish missions that can take up to an hour to complete, you can head straight to the team arenas to fight against real players in brief “annihilate the enemy” or “protect your shrine base” environments pitting your team of 4 against another 4 players in fast and furious battles that last no more than 3-5 minutes.
I may write a longer review later, but suffice to say, Guild Wars has been an enjoyable experience for me. The graphics are fantastic, the interface is easy to use, and you don’t have to worry about “the grind” where you go to bed and wake up to find that everyone else (ie the high school kids on summer break) is level 999. Pretty much the majority of players are level 20 now and when it comes to fighting, the victorious are those teams who play well together and know their tactics. In this sense, the game is sort of a swords and sorcery version of Counter Strike.
One more important thing to add – there are NO monthly fees to this game. You pay your flat out $50 for the game and that’s it. Arena.net will likely have an expansion out within the next 6 – 9 months or so (they gotta make money somehow), but its nice to have a game on that you know you aren’t paying for on a daily basis. This will give Guild Wars some staying power. It will be interesting to see how it fares when Dungeons and Dragons and the Middle Earth MMORPGs come out later (which I believe won’t be until Xmas or later).
I imagine I’ll be playing Guild Wars solidly for the next few months. I do wish, however, that someone gets around to putting together another, more creative MMORPG that takes place in a non-swords and sorcery world. I have heard many negative things about The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies and Anarchy Online (sci-fi worlds) and dabbled briefly in the hideous Planetside (I removed that one from my computer about 2 weeks after purchasing it). My dream is for some developers to put together either an H.P. Lovecraft based MMORPG or something akin to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” I also wouldn’t mind seeing a sci-fi MMORPG based in the “Star Trek” universe.
The Comments
Steve July 19, 2005 at 2:49pm
Now you’ve gone and done it. A friend loaned me his copy of Guild Wars a couple of weeks ago but I’ve refrained from installing it.
I’m afraid the Lovecraftian game your wishing for will be all but impossible to market since Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth was announced at E3 in 2001 and is still in development. It still sounds very good but has a Daikata or Duke Nuke’em stink to it after all these years.
Mr. T July 19, 2005 at 9:30pm
I’ll probably check out Dark Corners when it comes out. I’ve also been dissapointed in the long development time its been going through. Realistically I doubt there is enough of a fan base to make a Cthulu mythos MMORPG succeed. If I was dev I would probably concentrate on the JK Rowling universe. In anycase, I’m hoping Dark Corners doesn’t turn out to be a shoddy, one-hit Silent Hill type of outtake.