Gwen! You’ve Gotten Bigger…
As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I ordered Guild Wars: Eye of the North with some of my birthday money, it arrived yesterday and while I haven’t really progressed passed the first few quests I thought I’d comment on Guild Wars as a whole.
Guild Wars is often called an MMO-lite, you only see other players in the world when in towns or when those players are in your party. Out in the wilderness it’s just you and your party. Guild Wars also has no subscription fee, you buy the game and that’s it. You can play forever (well, until the servers shut down eventually).
At times it feels very much like a Diablo 2-esque dungeon crawler and although it has a very PvP-focused end-game it is an accomplished PvE game too. It’s probably one of the only games to really successfully blend PvP and PvE into a single game.
I’ve played Guild Wars on and off since it launched in April 2005, I own both extra campaigns and now the expansion. I have always loved how the game plays and I think it does a lot of things right, the setting is generally fantastic with both extra campaigns having a totally new feel (Oriental for Factions and Persian/Arabic for Nightfall).
Anyway, one thing Guild Wars does great is skill-based combat and graphics. Each class has 150+ skills to choose from, what makes combat interesting is that you can only have 8 skills on your characters hotbar at a time. Making tactics and strategy important, which skills you choose to combine and take with you really matter.
Graphically it still astounds me how good the game looks after all this time. Hopefully the few screenshots I’ve posted show some of that beauty. It is a very beautiful game.
So why hasn’t it ever really kept my interest over long periods?
I’m honestly not sure, while there isn’t the sheer amount of “stuff” to do as in World of Warcraft, there is still a LOT to work towards and obtain. Collecting “Elite” skills and getting high-end armour and weapons takes some commitment and with plenty of titles to obtain (think achievements) there is always something to work for.
I love the scenery, character designs and classes. I love the overall feel of the game and how it all works, but for some reason it’s never been enough to root me to it for days/weeks/months at a time like World of Warcraft, yet I still absolutely love the game.
What that magical “something” is that is missing, I’m not sure, but I know that at this moment I am loving Guild Wars again. Perhaps it’s the sight of Gwen, all grown up and fighting back against the enemy who destroyed everything she held dear as a child. (Ignoring the illogical nature of the fact we haven’t aged and she has, by 8 years 
)
