The facts about Guild Wars - (Long) Review

Innferno

Having just spent the past two days solid playing Guild Wars I thought I would share my experience for those that didn't get the chance. This review will have to come in installments are there is too much to write in one sitting this late at night .

I want to try and keep this as impartial as I can.  Obviously, this is not something you can really do with a review but I will try my best and add my personal feelings to the end of each section.  Please also bear in mind that the game is a way off release and as such much can and will change.

In order for this to make some sense i'm going to break it into several different parts:

1. Graphics

This is from the view of someone running the game on an Athlon XP  2600, 512mb Ram, geforce 4 ti4600.  With all settings maxed, with the exception of AA which was disabled, in 1280 x 1024 the game ran at an average of 35 fps according to FRAPS.  This gave a very smooth gaming performance and certainly was better than I expected.

The textures in game are crisp, the character models detailed and the landscape suitably 'alternate worldly'.  I noticed very few bad texture joins and virtually no other graphical glitches while playing.  There is a varied amount of scenery as you would expect ranging from grassland to desert, snow to volcanic. 

Characters and monsters are both well rendered and fluidly animated.  There is a wide variety of beasts to slay and a few to tame as pets.  Cloaks, tabbards and other adornments 'flap' around suitably and dont look like they are stuck to the character.

Spell and ability effects are bright and colourful.  Gusts of wind swirl around, balls of fire rain from the sky, green skulls float about and black mists bog you down.  There was nothing however that has not really been seen before and they felt very 'comfortable'.

To sum up with my personal opinion, I liked the look of it.  I was surprised that I could switch all of the features on right away and achieve a decent FPS.  Kudos to the dev team for the work on this.  Is it the best looking game around? I'd say not, but it is a good looking game and if the engine is futerproofed behind the scenes then all is well.

2. Sound

Hmm I find this tricky.  I actually had to log back into the game before writing this to remind myself. 

Sound effects consist of the usual.  Clunks and thuds, metal chinging on metal, bangs and whistles you get the idea.  Nothing really stood out but again it was well done in that it sounds fairly like you would imagine a fantasy battle to sound within the context of this game. 

Music....suitably ambient.  I find it hard to remember any of the in game music, I just get the one tune from the log in screen stuck in a loop when I think about it.  It was certainly not obtrusive and for large parts of the game non existent.

The appreciation of sound is a very subjective matter and while I found the sound effects to be suitable for the purpose but not outstanding, others may feel different.   

3.  Gameplay

Once you have created your character and clicked play you will find yourself standing at the beggining of a tutorial.  Your character starts at level 15 with a max level of 20.  I do not know if this is normal, I assumed starting at 15 was just for the world preview event but I didn't ask the question. 

Movement is done with either WASD, point and click or a combination of the two.  Mouselook is in place and most MMORPG or indeed FPS veterans should feel reasonably at home with the style.  My scroll wheel was configured to zoom me in and out from the character.  I was able to control my character easily in both first and third person modes.  Oddly, I found something to not quite feel right about first person view even though this would usually be my preference. 

The keys are completely customisable so if you find anything to your dislike, simply change it.

The tutorial guides you through the basics as you would expect and runs you through a mini mission which leads you to a main town.  It leaves you with a weapon and a few gold, which is everything you need to get started in the world. 

Once in town you really begin to see how this differs from other games.  The town is too small to support the vast number of people that there are logged in at any one time. To compensate, they have made 121 (so far) districts, which are an instance of the town you are in.  All 121 districts are available off a drop down menu in the top left of the screen.  Pick one and after a short load you will appear in the same but other version of the town filled with different people.  Quite weird when you are used to the typical MMORPG I can tell you.

Towns contain the usual set of NPC's to sell and buy from and they are the hub of trade and the place to craft.  There isn't much to do in town with no money so after talking to a handy guide NPC I have figured out I need to head out of a portal.  There are three choices; go and do a mission, go and explore or PVP.  I had no idea at the time about the map button but you could immediately use this to travel to PVP arenas, you cannot get to them from within the city.

I'll start with missions.  Once you have zoned into your mission area on the map you find yourself in a sort of holding pen for people wanting to do said mission.  People stand around and chat, look for groups or annoyingly go afk there.  If you do not find a group within your patience period do not dispair as you can hire henchmen to take on the mission with you.  Before you enter make sure to talk with the 'guard' as this will trigger the mission for you in your journal. 

Picking up NPC henchmen is free and a great way to wet your feet before diving in with other players.  The AI is quite good at filling its role, the healer heals you on time, the ranger and mage plunk away from distance.  Not once during any of the missions with these NPCs did they get stuck, lost or act completely out of character.  I was impressed with it to be honest.

Each mission has a storyline.  The first has you running to the aid of a village under attack from the undead.  Slog your way through some foes, dash into the village and start slaughtering.  It is nicely done and there are points within the mission where you can help or hinder yourself.  For instance, in the village there are several fights going on.  If you kill one of the mini bosses that is attacking an NPC villager and help him survive, then his brother, who guards a gate, gives you access to a shorter route to your next goal. 

Playing this through a second time with real players was an experience and certainly much more hectic and unorganised than with the NPC's...hence, more fun also .

When you sucessfully complete a mission you are rewarded with a cut scene, lasting around a minute, that thanks you for your help and moves the story along.  There was no way to skip this that i could find.  If you all die and fail the mission you are dumped back in the holding pen and its time to try again!

You can play each mission as many times as you like and enter it with as many or as few as you wish (within the upper limit of 6 or 8).  The more people you have the less experience and loot you will recieve but the faster you will finish it (if someone knows what they are doing that is).

Moving onto exploration.  Exploration areas are just that, you head out into the wilderness and fight, loot and generally cause mayhem.  There are a few different routes to take but it is not open exploration as such and has a little bit of structure to it.  There are outposts that you will need to find out there (for extra skills) and a few quests (well 1 that i found) to complete.  There was very little to explore that I could find, it all seemed to loop back round on itself, but I am thinking that this is just for the world preview.....they simply couldn't leave so little to explore.  Maybe I missed something though but in a few hours I think I covered it all *shrug*.

Loot randomly drops off monsters when you kill them so there is no corpse searching to be done.  Items are automatically assigned to party members and only they can pick them up.  I saw no arguments about loot in the time I played and to me thats a good group loot system.  It works because items of uberness do not just drop off things, you need to make them better yourself through crafting it seems.  Don't get me wrong, good items do drop but just not in quite the same way and you can't argue with who a computer picks to get it. 

The loot that you do get seems to consist of weapons to upgrade or sell, salvage items, crafting materials, gold coins or dye for your armour.  I did not see any armour drop as I believe you make it all from the craft materials and gold.

Skills.  You have a hotbar which contains 8 slots.  You have and can buy many more skills than this but, and it is a big but, you can only ever take 8 with you into combat.  There are no other bars, you choose 8 and you head out to fight simple as that.  You cannot even re-arrange the order your skills are in once you are in an instanced area so make sure of your set up first.  The skills are bought in town or at outposts in the exploration areas as far as I could see.

Combat.  This is fast paced to say the least.  Targetting is done via either the tab key and clicking on the mob name at the top of the screen or actually locating the mob on screen and clicking it.  Once you are attacking you can then start firing off those skills, balancing your health/mana and just generally pulling off fancy moves and spells.  It is not as straight forward as many games in terms of what each skill does, but this is a good thing.  While you may only have 8 skills there are many ways to use them and much to think about in a tough battle and i find myself hopping all over the bar doing different things. 

Targetting can be a little buggy and i would recommend using the tab (nearest enemy) button and click method over finding the mob on screen.  This can lead to problems though if you want to attack the mob on your healer but there are ways around it (people can ctrl click the mob and a message appears in the chat window saying press T to target my mob).          

Its getting really late and i'm too tired to continue but i'll post my next Installment tomorrow if anyone is interested...... Next up: PVP

A UK/Euro based PVP WoW guild - Interested? Check out Vae Victus

spizz

guild wars isnt even a mmorpg in my opinion those massive players you see only in the waiting areas before you start a mission or in shop areas. when u enter the game you are always see maximal 5 players or 4vs4....thats not an mmopg in my opinion no way

BigPeeler

it is an MMORPG believe it or not (Massive?... yes... Multiplayer?... yes... Online?... yes... RPG?... yes...) just not in the typical sense... i personally think it's a great thing what they're doing with this game...

oh... anyways, good preview Innferno

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Games Played - Too many to list~
Games Currently Playing - City of Heroes
Favorite Game So Far - Lineage 1 ^^
Waiting For - EQ2 and WoW (OB is gonna be hell T_T l33t d3wdz everwhere >_<;;)

Anindel

Yes I would have to say it is NOT an MMORPG. I think it should be removed from mmorpg.com. Guildwars to me is in the same section as D2, and I don't see Diablo or D2 on this site.

Adinion
[NonFactor]

adamk22

Even the devs are saying that it's not a MMORPG, they say that it's a CORPG (Co-opertive Online RPG)

Theely

I say who cares what it is. Its a fun new game and if your not a fan of it... stop reading about it and go look at a different post.

That was a good review and covered everything very well (that you did corver at this time).
I'd like to add a little information of my own to your Explorable areas part.

Explorable Areas:

So far this pre-beta version of the game only has two explorable areas. One off of the the starting city and one off of the other city that you open up after getting about half way through the missions. Both of these explorable areas are quite large (in a Guild Wars sense) and leave you wishing that you never entered them. Thankfully you can just click on your map and leave instead of having to walk back. The explorable areas look great and would be alot of fun, but there is one thing missing... MOBS. There are some, but for the size of the areas I felt that there just wasn't enough to make the area feel alive. Another thing that kind of tweaked me was that fact that once the mobs are dead, they are forever dead (until you leave and come back). Sure this might be a little more realistic, but it was one of things that I didn't like.

Other then that I don't have to many other complains. If this was my review post. I'd get into them, but its not, so I won't.

So far, I like the game and I'm glad I pre-ordered it. It will be what I always said it would be, a great in between games game.

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These are just my opinions, please direct your opinions of my opinions to your mama, not me and the other readers.
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Win XP Pro
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1600 Mhz FSB
1 Gig PC3200 DDR400 RAM
160 Gig Ultra ATA HD
GeForce FX5700 256MB AGP
SoundBlaster Live 5.1
8X DVD+/-RW

Innferno

It is a MMORPG for sure, and like Theely says who cares about the exact definition of it anyway.

On with the review

3. Gameplay Continued...

Forgot to add this.  There is no option to jump and you cannot fall off any edge, I have not found any buildings you can enter.  This goes for all areas.

4. PVP

During the event there were two designated areas in which you could get involved in PVP.  These were the Gladiators Arena and the Tomb of Privemal Kings (or something similar).  Each one, as with all areas, could be travelled to instantly by selecting it on your map screen.

As with the missions you start off in a holding area.  In the Gladiators area you could either choose to form a group outside or hit the start mission button and be thrown into the arena with a random group of players.  This was initially set up to be a 4 v 4 event but today they patched it to an 8 v 8.

You appear on a 'teleport pad' on one side of the arena along with your team mates.  The opposing team appears on their pad at the opposite end.  The arena is layed out in two tiers.  The top tier runs all the way around the arena with bridges across gaps and ramps down the the main floor and this is where you port in.   

The arena is quite small yet offers ample room for fighting.  The action begins the moment you port in so it is wise to have your strategy sorted out before you click enter (yes, this is a problem for the random groups).  At any point you can hold down the Ctrl key and see exactly where in the arena your opponents are. 

The bouts are usually over before 3 minutes has elasped (I took note of the timer at the top of the screen for 10 rounds, it was all over in under 3 minutes in all but one).  The general rule seemed to be port in, run to the left or right and meet the other players in a head on battle.  It is difficult to sneak up on people as at any time they can simply press Ctrl and target you.  I did notice a good deal of archers would split from the group and run down into the centre.  This gave them the opportunity to plunk away at the team fighting up top...and me the opportunity to break from the fight and chase them down *grins evily*.

Mashing buttons in the arena or not knowing what your skills do is a sure fire way to get yourself dead fast.  You will not be hitting /stick, switching auto attack on and spamming your one style for teh win in this game.  Setting up your skills correctly before entering is vital to success.  I tended to choose the role I would like to play (mage/archer killer, defensive tank, all out damage dealer) and choose a set of skills to match.  There are also general setups that seem to be good all round so your tactics here are definately not limited.   

It seemed to me that the battles could last a long time between balanced teams.  You caught hints of it when two good groups met but this was rare.  I put this down to the brand new community and expect it to change drastically with an established player base.

The second area, the Tomb of Primeval Kings, works in a slightly different way.  You cannot start the mission on your own and join a random group but must form up first, to a maximum of 8.  There are henchmen here if needed but it is highly inadvisable to take them into the arena as the AI does not hold up at all well in PVP.

Before you begin the arena battle you must prove your worth in PVE.  You are tasked with saving the Ghostly Guardian from a horde of lvl 20 undead monsters while he opens a portal to the arena.  It is quite some battle at times especially with an inexperienced group so do not be surpised if you fail it.   If sucessful you are ported immediately into the arena and given 30 seconds before the battle commences and if not you are dumped back in the holding pen.

The arena is much the same as the gladatorial one.  The graphics and sound are different but the layout remains essentially the same with it consisting of two tiers.  Here though you need to run down to the ground level before deciding if you should head up top.

In both areas you fight until the opposing team (or yours of course, but thats not going to happen now is it..... are all dead.  You are then told who is victorious and either remain in to fight again if you won or get dumped out into the holding pen if you lost.

Until today there was no reward at all for PVP except bragging rights.  They added XP for killing an opponent in todays patch.

 

Ok thats enough for today, I still have a few sections to write if anyone manages to last this long

A UK/Euro based PVP WoW guild - Interested? Check out Vae Victus