Product Details
 | Guild Wars Game of the Year |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
| Price: | $17.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Cosmogadget
71 new or used available from $3.43
Average customer review:
Product Description
Presenting Guild Wars a Competitive Online Role Playing Game with an emphasis on tactical combat. In single player multiplayer and guild-based missions players will explore a fantasy world while pursuing professions and gaining skills that help them develop and advance their unique character.Guild Wars is the first title from Seattle-based ArenaNet which was founded by key members of the creative teams behind the hit games Warcraft StarCraft and Diablo as well as Battle.net the most-successful gaming network in the world.Guild Wars offers cooperative group combat single player missions and large head-to-head guild battles. While each combat experience will be different achievements will be permanent so that the character grows and progresses over time. Unique items special abilities and a wide variety of skills add meaningful value for the player and for his comrades. Missions are not scripted adventures but are tactical battlegrounds where victory or loss is determined by skill and teamwork.Free Online Play (Internet Connection Required)System Requirements:Minimum: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP 800 MHz Pentium 3 or equivalent 256 MB RAM GeForce 2 class video card with 32 MB RAM 250 MB hard drive space Internet connection Recommended: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP 800 MHz Pentium 3 or equivalent 256 MB RAM GeForce 3 class video card with 64 MB RAM 250 MB hard drive space Internet ConnectionFormat: WIN XPVISTA Genre: ENTERTAINMENT UPC: 892566000507 Manufacturer No: FGXP000501Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #6187 in Video Games
- Brand: NCsoft
- Model: FG-XP-00050-1
- Released on: 2005-04-28
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.75" h x 5.25" w x 7.50" l, .38 pounds
Features
- After learning the game and building up your first character, you can jump right in to head-to-head competition or guild warfare
- Choose from a wide range of professions - Master nature as an Elementalist, serve divine spirits as a Monk, subvert with charisma as a Mesmer - along with more traditional classes like Necomancer, Ranger and Warrior
- The game includes integrated support for guilds, with guild banners and halls, chat rooms and forums -- guilds can challenge other guilds to battle, compete for control of key parts of the world, and be ranked on a worldwide ladder
- Unique streaming technology means no more patches -- new content is always being streamed to you directly, for new challenges and a continually changing world
Editorial Reviews
From the
Manufacturer
Guild Wars takes the best elements of
today's massively multiplayer online games and combines them with a new
mission-based design that eliminates the tedium of those games. You can
meet new friends in towns or outposts, form a party, and then go tackle a
quest together. Your party always has its own unique copy of the quest
map, so camping, kill-stealing, and long lines to complete quests are
all things of the past. Within a quest you have unprecedented freedom
and power to manipulate the world around you: your magic can build
bridges and open up new pathways, or it can burn down forests and tear
the ground asunder.
You don't have to spend countless hours on a
leveling treadmill to get to the interesting parts of the game, because
combat is designed to be strategically interesting and challenging right
from the beginning. You don't have to spend hours running around the
world to prepare for a quest, because Guild Wars allows you to instantly
travel to the beginning of any quest that you've previously unlocked.
You'll never spend days playing only to discover that choices you made
early on have left you with a permanently uncompetitive character,
because the unique skill system in Guild Wars allows infinite
experimentation but doesn't allow bad decisions to ruin a character. And
you'll never meet new players only to discover that you can't play with
them or compete against them because their characters are on a
different server than yours; in Guild Wars, all characters live in one
seamless world.
Built for Competition
After
learning the game and building up your first character, you may choose
to test your skills in head-to-head competition or guild warfare. The
game is designed to reward player skill and teamwork, not time spent
playing, so you won't need to spend hundreds of hours leveling up your
character to compete.
The game includes integrated support
for guilds, with guild banners and halls, chat rooms and forums. Guilds
can challenge other guilds to battle, compete for control of key parts
of the world, and be ranked on a worldwide ladder.
Unique
Streaming Technology
ArenaNet's unique streaming
technology forever eliminates the concept of patching a game. You don't
have to wait a month for the next big patch to experience new content.
Instead, the game constantly and intelligently streams new content to
your computer in the background while you play. The world can change
continually. This allows us to build a much more dynamic game world than
any that has existed before.
Customer Reviews
Solid game - encourages teaming & PVP, not powerleveling
Guild Wars is a very solid
MMORPG that strongly encourages team play. The graphics are top-notch
(if not up to the cartoon levels of World of Warcraft), the play
addicting, and it's well-balanced. With no monthly fee, it's one of the
best bargains in the MMORPG world. I take off a star and a half for the
forced team aspect as well as the focus on pure fighting versus creating
a world, but add 1 back for the value proposition so give this 4 and
half stars, or a 4/5 fun/overall split.
This is a tough game to
master with no outright 'uber' classes. Players choose 2 of 6 fairly
standard basic professions (1 tank, 1 mezzer, 1 healer/defender, 2
nukers, 1 mezzer/nuker) with the second profession lacking one of the
strongest attributes of the primary (including which armor you can wear
and runes you can use). As you level, besides gaining hit points you do
two things - specialize in the various basic class attributes and gain
access to the real key: skills. You're limited to a certain number of
active skills while in combat, so strategy and careful character
building take precedence over getting to level 20. Experience to buy
skills can be gained through basic PvE, missions, or PvP. Using a small
set of skills wisely along with picking and choosing your attribute
development is far more important than getting all the 75 skills
available to each profession. This is definitely not a game that is easy
to blindly powerlevel.
Cleverly designed, this sidesteps a lot
of the problems surrounding the genre. Rather than deal with constant
kill stealing, maps and missions are instanced, and you don't have to
spend a whole slug of time traveling between regions. (Once you've been
to a locale, boom, it's yours.) Recovery time is minimal as is
non-combat time. You don't need to spend time harvesting mats and
begging a friend to make your next weapon. Instead, kill things,
complete missions, and you can bring mats straight to the NPC crafter to
make a custom weapon (that can only be equipped by you, likely
eliminating much of the secondary market for gear in this game.)
My
reservations are four fold but minor. First, the way to truly advance
in this game is through missions - and the only way to accomplish many
missions is in a balanced team. Thus, you're basically forced to group
despite the nominal ability to solo. This really means you have to
figure out proper character development early - rather tough with your
first few characters until you find a good guild, and frankly, sometimes
many of us feel like playing solo. Second, the lack of any real
crafting system here means you fight...and fight...and fight. CoH has
done well with a similar model (without the PvP aspect) and it's worked
well - not to mention the biggest headaches in most MMORPGs are the
messes created with a bad item creation system - but if you enjoy
socializing more than fighting (the typical harvester/crafter) this
isn't the game for you. Third, the game really revolves around PvP much
more than PvE for the above reasons - so if you're looking for a game
without conflict, this isn't it. Finally, while the focus on instanced
events does prevent many of the problems found in most other MMORPGs, it
also reduces the multiplayer aspect except in non-instanced locales
like towns. The net effect of all of these is to slightly dilute the
'world' aspect, and for those looking for total immersion this may not
be a perfect match.
Still, this is a great game and deserves 4
1/2 stars, and if you're looking for an alternative to the hordes of WoW
that strongly encourages teaming this should be at the top of your
list. One final note: this actually runs quite well even on my
soon-to-be discarded Athlon 1100 and is geared towards doing well on
slightly older systems - and even 56k modems! - unlike most new games.
Big plus.
Engaging Team-Based Play
Guild Wars has been touted as
being revolutionary in several ways. For those that haven't read the
game overview, these can be summarized as follows:
1. Doesn't
require immense amounts of time to be really 'fun.'
2. Little or no
time spent doing repetitive tasks and travel.
3. Competitive
guild-based play, with custom guilds.
4. No monthly fees and dynamic
content change/addition.
The last point is of great interest to
many people (myself included) in that this is the first MMORPG to be
completely free of fees. However, everyone knows expansions are planned,
so this is only 'kind-of sort-of' true.
Though you don't do
repetitive tasks like gathering food or resources, to find anything
remotely useful you do have to kill enemies over and over again.
Additionally, the travel waypoints are sometimes very spread out, so you
are still going to do a lot of walking. This isn't necessarily a bad
thing, however (more on that later).
The level cap is 20, and
it's true that this doesn't make it very hard to become as powerful as
you'll ever get. In PVP only mode, you start at 20, so you spend no time
at all building up a character. However, this doesn't mean you can
become level 20 overnight- it does take quite a while, and the quests
are challenging enough that you will likely need (human) help.
That
said, this game is definitely built for guild-based play. The designers
say that solo play is optional, but truth be told it probably isn't.
Now that the main features have been addressed, a general overview of
the game is in order.
The only 'MM' part of the game is towns.
While in towns you can see other players in the same district, form your
party, trade items, start quests, and configure your skills (a maximum
of 8 can be used at one time). You can also take along henchmen if you
want to fill out a party or go solo.
You can leave town one of
two ways- by walking through a portal or by starting a mission. The
missions address the main quest and often take you to major cities, thus
saving you the trouble of walking. They also reward you with experience
and skill points. Quests are separate from these, and reward you with
experience, skills, and items. In general, the mission and quest design
is well done, but you will find the occasional glitch- some of which can
force you to repeat one. When in a quest area, a pointer will show
where the next objective is.
PVP can be done at arenas, and
there's a level cap for each to prevent overly unfair competition. You
get experience and (if you play enough) fame for winning matches. This
is always a team-based mode, and teams are selected either at random or
by party assignment. In RP mode, however, it's quite possible to get far
superior equipment than your competition, and thus have a massive edge
in combat. A winning team will continue to play matches, and the game
doesn't seem very good at auto-balancing the parties.
While
exploring the wilds, you'll encounter many and varied monsters, which
range in classes and difficulty. Most come in groups, and usually are
too dangerous or numerous to solo. This is where my first complaint
shows up. Frankly, the henchman AI is beyond pathetic, which is why
playing with other people is generally advisable (on occasion, however,
I've found human players that are worse in that regard than the
henchmen. Such is life). If you're in a party, you'll divide the gold,
experience, and spoils. This applies to henchmen party members as well.
Exploration
is really the meat of the game. I've done PVP, but it gets old pretty
fast- especially if you keep ending up in a poorly balanced team, which
seems to happen alarmingly often. You also get no loot for winning, and
nobody really cares about fame. The wilderness areas are very well done,
with excellent graphics and accompanying music. The world is massive,
and the monsters are hard enough that you have to think about what
skills you take- and what your fellow party members are taking. Unlike
many other RPGs, a bunch of offensive-oriented people each doing their
own thing will likely meet a very quick demise. Guild Wars really forces
you to coordinate (especially with healing others and focusing to take
down hard enemies) and punishes you if you fail to do so. I personally
find this a welcome change in direction.
If you should happen to
die, you can either wait for a party member to revive you, or (if
everyone's dead) you'll respawn at an altar. Sometimes these are placed
in very awkward places, which does need to be addressed. You don't lose
items, but suffer a 'death penalty' that reduces your health and energy
up to 60% (15% per death). You can work this off by gaining experience,
killing boss monsters, or completing mission objectives. Going to a town
negates the penalty, and this is highly advisable if you get to 60%.
Nevertheless, sometimes you really can't go back to town, because
leaving an area causes all monsters to repopulate. This can lead parties
to conduct suicide raids, in which the sole objective is to kill at
least one more monster blocking the way to that quest goal. At times it
can be rather frustrating- especially with the more difficult quests.
Since the max level is 20 and many monsters are higher, even if you're
an experienced player you will likely die scores of times doing quests
and missions.
As for character customization, you have a choice
of skills in which to invest points (a max of 200, which each
successively level costing more), and you can design guild capes and dye
items various colors. This, aside from the standard appearance choices
at character generation and of course equipment, is about all that makes
you unique. If you decide you want to change your skills, you can
acquire 'refund points' by gaining experience. These let you reallocate
skill points. There are six classes to pick from, and you can have one
'sub-class' that gives you access to some skills from another. This is a
permanent choice, so it's best to choose wisely.
The classes in
general are quite well balanced, but there is a 'paper rock scissors'
arrangement there. That is, Rangers dominate Elementalists, Warriors
dominate Rangers, Necromancers dominate Warriors, etc. If you know what
you're fighting, there are skills designed to counter every other class,
but some are necessarily better than others. Usually you'll learn what
to pick the hard way. Fortunately, there's unlimited refund points
available, and you can quite quickly rebuild your character if you
decide to just junk it all.
In sum, Guild Wars isn't an easy
game. This is especially true if you're not a team player and don't like
to make friends online. The bottom line is, this isn't a game for
everyone. I personally like the party-based exploration and missions,
but I know some others that despise it. If you haven't played in the
beta and aren't sure which sort of player you are, I'd advise you to get
the game and find out. Since there isn't a monthly fee, it won't hurt
too badly to try, and- if you decide to quit- you won't feel like you're
losing something you paid for by ditching your characters.
Just love this game
I got dragged into playing
this game for the word preview event and absolutey love it. I ran right
out an bought the presale package so I could play the beta events too.
This game is a lot of fun. It has storylines, missions, pvp in two
different arena type games, and even some armor weapon crafting. The
basis, of course, is competing with a rated guild and engaging in a
capture the flag type combat with other guilds, where teamwork is
emphasized. However, if you feel like guild stuff isn't your thing you
can go out adverturing solo. And for those who KNOW that going out alone
might get you killed but you still don't like working with others, you
can HIRE OUT, healers, rangers, warriors, elementalists, etc, to give
you a hand in the field!! And finally, if you think you'll miss out on
the pvp by not having a guild, you can go solo in a random entry arena
where you are pitted against another random, and possibly uncoordinated,
team.
I love this game and can't wait till the next beta event.
The graphics are pretty decent and surprisingly enough, I can actually
run it on my 5 year old computer with no problems and a cable modem
connection. I can almost never do this with the latest rpg games. I
wouldn't suggest this game to anyone running on much less than that,
though. People with dialup connections tend to spawn so late in the pvp
arenas that they're dead as soon as they appear. Overall though, I
highly suggest this game. It allows to you to enjoy the game and allows
character progression even if you don't have 7 hours a day to play,
which you sometimes need with other mmorpgs.
No comments:
Post a Comment