GUILD WARS goes green!

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By any chance is anyone looking forward to this game as much as I am. To make a long story short I played in the last Beta event and was amazed. I'm not an experienced MMOG player(mainly because of the monthly fees) so I was amazed when I found out it was free.

I now know what it means to be addicted to a MMO. I found it to be one of the most exciting gaming experiences I've had in a long, long time! Anyways, if your interested then go over to guild wars.com and check it out.

Feel free to comment on guild wars.

 

I don't know anything about this game. Could you maybe post the website?

 

It seems that not many people do? Well if your interested go to http://www.guildwars.com/ and see the future of MMO's.

 

Teh besto game evar.

 

I just finished another session of this game. I have finely descended into geek-hood by playing fourteen hours straight. I am firmly addicted and now know that my social life is gone.

I don't know if my words mean anything to any of you but this game rocks and you have to atleast try it out.

-back to Ascalon I go-

 

Bought it today and I'm on level 3 already. Thus far it has been rather disappointing how little teamplay there is, but I guess the player-base must be pretty young (who, of course, know nothing about working together). Another disappointment is the lack of good, immersive sounds and this reminded me of Morrowind -graphicwise good, soundwise empty. The system itself feels interesting, although I have to doubt could you even use bows in melee like my ranger does half of the time.

If anyone feels like joining in and bashing some worms, my player-name is "Vicius Archman (lv3 ranger, Europe)." Some boost to get through these initial quests.

 

Heard good and bad things about this game, like the fact that there is only on race and that since you don't pay to play online the patchet are going to be small and all extra stuff will come through addons, which you have to buy. But I'll wait and see.

so far I'm having a blast with WoW

 

The faults are becoming quite glaring, even though I have reached only level 6 (out of 20). Had my first PvP battle, and I can name the flaws that make this game just mediocre, IMO.

1) Clumsy. Is the character walking in tar or something? Why does it has to take so long from going one place to another? Why is everything just generally taken S L O W ?

2) No immersion. This is probably because of the aforementioned clumsiness and the lack of sounds. I simply couldn't get into the game. Also, lack of story might be one reason too. You just wander around, hoping to find something to do. Could as well do that in real life.

3) Limited. Why the strategies are so limited? Why the RPG-elements are so thin? (Remember Dungeon Siege?) Why can't I even give orders to my companions?

Needless to say, I wish WoW didn't have monthly fees so I could give it a shot. It has more unique races too.

 

I bought this some 3 weeks ago, after being practically forced to do so by my friends (this is the first online game I'm sharing with my core D&D / gaming group of friends). And it is excellent indeed.

In a peanutshell, the game sucks for a singleplayer. It allows pretty much zero improvisation and tactics from a single character alone, but that's because it relies on a team. With my friends and using TeamSpeak, this game is easily the best multiplayer I've ever played. Tactics become amazingly deep, and the fact that each character is so unique reminds me of the PnP sessions we used to have where every member of the team is important and has their own 15 minutes of fame in each session.

The team orientedness is the biggest problem and greatest advantage this game has. Basically no matter how good you are, as long as the guy next to you sucks, it won't make much of a difference. And they do suck. Just take my word for it, as I can't even begin to describe the ridiculous mistakes 95% (yes it's that high) of the pickup groups do. PvP, PvE, all's useless with a random team because a random team equals crud almost without exception. An arranged team with players who even if inexperienced are open to suggestions and want to learn, is literally tens of times stronger and a thousand times more fun.

Whatever else I say about this game is really quite pointless. Graphics, playability, replayability, musics etc, none of those have nothing to do with it really. I believe that 99% of the players will find this game annoying and boring and overly simple if they go at it alone. And 99% of the players will find it extremely fun if they have friends to play with them (or make good friends during the game before they get bored). This is truly a "multiplayer" game.

 

Maybe; can't tell since there aren't that many players willing to play "in a team." Today, though, I had the fortune to find 1 such player and it did add some tactics to it -if only because every fricking map is so full of that spammed sheit that you cannot even skip those utterly mandatory, but oh-so-meaningless, battles. Most enemies will just spam homing arrows to your back if you try to run away to skip the trash. It doesn't even yeld you any items or EXP. It's just there to waste your time while you read a newspaper or something.

Maybe the shop would give me my money back...

 

well ... i like the look of it and think i will have to go and buy it.

i have been playing diablo2 solidly for 8-9 months now and love the game ... the pace and multi-player aspect is so much better than BG/NWN, but BG/NWN is much more in-depth and better roleplaying.

guildwars looks like it will be a blend of nwn and diablo2, with so many skills taken from AD&D3 and the pace/multi-player aspects of diablo2

maybe we should team up again wirhe? our early diablo2 sessions were fun and with all games like this, they are so much better when played as a team.

 

Yes, in Guild Wars teams are mandatory. Count it like this: 1 monster with healing abilities can nullify ALL damage 2 players cause, so it would take 3 player team to take down 1 such monster. Mind that this isn't a quick job either, as the characters are quite sluggish in causing damage.

Then imagine taking on 4 monsters with spells, healing, and axes. With a group of 4 it would be a tought call, and since you almost never get any good items out of it nor good experience, you understand my frustration?

Don't compare GW to Diablo 2; it's more like Morrowind with it's slow pace and loads of running around. Keep that in mind when you play. As a positive side, I have to say that people are actually willing to join to your team pretty easily. If you want to join, do tell when you reach "real story" and levels 5+.

 

Well the monster description isn't really accurrate. The level of the team comes into play there. Depending on your class, you can easily counter heals and casters. But the tradeoff for a mesmer for example is that the more you specialize against one type of enemy, the less you can do against another. A standard PUG (pickup group) would indeed find similar level enemies of a similar number a challenge. A good group could probably take on 3 times as many without losing one member. That said, healers become more or less a norm in the future and almost everyone will learn to focus fire and take them down rather easily.

I don't really agree with the slow pace of the game and combat you're talking about. Depending on the class, I can see why someone would think that in the beginning. But the more skills you get and the further you get in the game, the more crucial those fast abillities / decisions become. At its fastest it's still only one command every second or two, with the addition of having to move around and be aware of what's happening so you can react properly instead of just repeating a memorized pattern. But the difference to other games is that this pace is constant in a combat situation. And because of the "reactive" nature of this game, the decision-making process makes the combat in reality a lot faster than in a game where you can just use pre-learned combos in every situation.

The damage also changes greatly later on, and depends entirely on your class. An air elementalist can cause some amazing burst damage, while a fire elementalist can eradicate an area with their spells giving a whole new meaning to AoE (Area-of-Effect) compared to the other games I've tried. There is the difference that you will rarely see single-shot kills here, especially against other players. But that makes PvP a lot more reasonable, for as opposed to many other games, here realism like that would actually do more harm than good as it would erase the tactical nature of reacting to what your opponent is doing.

For example, me and my friends were faced with several level 22-24 (level cap of the game is 20, for those who don't know) monsters who'd managed to destroy the PUG's I'd been in before. So our ranger ran in, pulled them into a sort of ravine some ways off so they were all piled up together, after which I would use my elementalist skills and a mesmer ability called Arcane Echo (which will replicate the skill you use next... very useful when you only have one version of a very powerful ability) to put 2 Meteor Showers and a Fire Storm on them, while our monk kept the frontline warrior & necromancer alive so the enemy couldn't move away from the area. We slaughtered an enemy that would have easily killed an entire PUG, without one of us dying once.

That's what the "fame" example meant too. There will always be a time when the group is dead and roots for the warrior that simply will not die and solos the last remaining enemies down (more often the warrior is paired with someone else and manages to let the monk / elementalist to do their castings in peace, being the only difference between life & death for the team). Or a time when the group is against an army of enemies and just when all hope is lost, they notice that the necromancer had been bringing up an army of his own from the dead and simply crushes the enemy. Or a time when those two bosses that heal each other and just will not fall are burned to crisp by an elementalist pouring every last spell he knows on them. All the time the ranger is the last survivor and manages to sprint off to come off later and resurrect others, so the team survives and we won't have to re-do the mission. Mesmer's ability to interrupt and use the enemy's strength against them is often looked upon with awe when other means have failed. And nobody ever forgets a monk with their downright ridiculous ability to heal (healings are far more powerful in this game than in most others, in good and bad... sadly PvP focuses around it too much for my liking).

It's that which I so love about this game. I'm sure they've told other games had that too, but I've personally never seen it despite their hype. DAoC, AO, SWG, WoW, CoH, Neocron, Diablo, NWN etc etc.. no game is as good as a team game as this one is. There are just so many ways for a class with any combination of skills to be useful in a way other characters in the same group can't be, that they'll always have their moment. Assuming of course that the one setting the skills had an idea of what he was doing. People like me who always focus more or less their entire lives into a game for the first few weeks can get a whole lot out of this one. I've spent numerous hours searching for skill descriptions from the net, planning and asking around and discussing, and then trying out what I can in the game. And as a result I've become incredibly proficient in both PvE and PvP. Skill really does mean a great deal in this game. Not the twitch-based skill, but the whole thing.

This is what I think of the game anyway. My roommate found it boring when he got to level 10 and quit, then sold the game. He never did try teamplay, and this game really gets a lot better the more you play it (the beginning is incredibly boring and the plot feels so meaningless for some reason). But as with all things, it's a matter of opinion. I'm sure many wouldn't like it even if they did play beyond the first 1/4:th of the game. I however started to like it specifically after just that long.

Sorry for the novel again. Then again after Big B's SW3 posts, I'm not doing too bad I think.

 

Better than some, yet worse than what it should be and not nearly as much fun as nimble, a bit quicker games like Diablo 2 are. Insta-gibbing is a problem in them, but the same happens in GW.

Yes, a GOOD group that has everything it needs in disposal. That would mean 1) no AI controlled henchmen, 2) decend equipment, 3) reasonably high level, 4) balanced skills against other team members, 5) a lot of patience and time from every member. Now, in an online enviroment; can you expect to find such people every day? No, you can't, and thus majority of the time it is struggling against totally unrewarding, spammed monsters.

Which means that often you have no chance to actually do anything to counter enemy attack or even react. Good example are those necromancer "leech" spells that can suck half of your HP in matter of seconds before you get your first restoration spell off (regeneration, in my case). Two or three of these spells finish your character before you can get off you second spell or arrow.

Basically the steady pace is a good idea, but I think the clumsy mechanics in GW spoil it. If there were a BG2-like spell repertuare it might be just the other way around, with enough possibilities to counter everything. On the other hand, don't you think it would be better that some things would take less time to do and some more?

I'm that ranger and I can tell you that running away won't do any good: getting anywhere takes time and since monsters have homing arrows/spells/whatnot, you are dead well before you get to the resurrection shrine. Besides, monsters NEVER give up chasing you. As to the elementalist, they are too weak to take down two healing monsters. My ranger is elementalist too (Lv.8 R/E) with every skill-point invested to marksmanship and fire-spells.

Remember that those spells take energy too -something you do not have nearly as much the monsters seem to have (infinite?).

I'm soon at the same level, so I have to see if I do the same. The increasing amount of skills is steadily making this game a bit more interesting, but I think the aforementioned faults are killing it for me... Have to see after a few more sessions -maybe there is some hook I have missed thus far.

 

You're exaggarating. Must be the only choice as I've never seen instant dying in any circumstances, and I've PvPed quite a bit in addition to playing those 3 characters to levels 20, 17 and 12. If you're up against 10 enemies, you'll die swift and easy. That's obvious. But no two enemies will kill you even close to instantly unless they're both using heavy and easily interrupted spells. You'll bump into those types only later on in the game.

The norm is that even against an enemy far more powerful than yourself, you'll take several seconds to die. While a heal won't make much of a difference, there are other skills that can do that (combining a knockdown move with Sprint for example to buy a few more seconds time and then run outside of range).

A good group actually means the skill level of the players. The character level and equipment is all the same as with a bad one. It doesn't even mean that you'd have to have the patience to wait for opportune pulling moments like in WoW or somesuch, since pulling individual enemies is quite impossible in this game (which sucks). All it means is that the players don't do stupid mistakes and understand how their friends work. As an example, later on the game gets really tough with cruddy groups. In the Crystal Deserts I spent a better part of 2 hours trying to get a group to the next town, failing all those times. Then I made my own and hand-picked the members from the appropriate classes and a few who I'd known from before, and kicked those loudmouths who would clearly become a problem. We walked right through without one of us dying... and our average level was 18 (several 16's and 17's in the group), while those other groups had been avrg level 20 or 19.5 at least. The items usually reflect your level, so that's a good proof of just how much a bad group can suck despite their apparent level.

Often this means things like sticking to the left wall when the party leader says so, to make sure you don't aggro the mobs on the right. Or the ranger staying put even with 5 mobs on him, even if he'd die for the monk not being able to outheal them... because if he didn't stay there, the AoE's from those 2 elementalists would be wasted (and with a 1-minute cooldown ability, you can't afford to miss even once in a tight fight). It also means focusing fire into one type of enemy, taking the healers & casters out first, protecting your monk, etc etc. Basics that in PUG's are more a rumour and a legend than anything else.

Solo play is boring though, no doubt about it. Henchmen do their job but depending on what your class is and how high your level is relative to your surroundings, they may not be enough. Playing alone is damn boring and unrewarding, and for that reason GW is not meant for those who do that.

It depends on your skills. A warrior has numerous counters and stacking abilities that together cause different effects. A mesmer is all about reacting to what your opponent does. If you can predict instead of reacting, it's even better.

There are no necromancer spells that get half of your health in a matter of seconds. Their effects work very slowly, and their direct damage spells are expensive and slow. The necromancer is built with the idea that it feeds from the victim. For that reason, the power is relatively much weaker than what an elementalist would have for example. As elementalists spells do not keep the caster alive or give them back energy, they simply do damage. Necromancers in PvP for example are known for being a class that shines later on, because the more time you give them to work their slowly affecting spells to harm the enemy and boost their own power, and raising the dead etc, the more powerful they'll become. They are by no means a class that kills swiftly, not in PvP, and not in PvE.

Oh there's a balance of speed alright. The standard elementalist spells I had before finding an elite air spell that changed my spec completely, was roughly this: Fire Storm, Meteor Shower, Phoenix, Inferno, Arcane Echo. All of those have a cooldown of 30 seconds, save Meteor Shower which needs 1 minute, and Infreno which I think is roughly around 20 seconds. That means that after using a few of those, I would spend some 20 seconds at least doing pretty much nothing. Much of the time I would indeed not need to use all the spells, which would make my attacks the regular "hit spacebar and wait" sort. Quite a difference compared to how an air elementalist / mesmer specialized against warriors works, who has to cast different conditions and hexes once every 2-3 seconds, constantly changing targets to apply the spells to the correct enemy... and still fit in those damage spells and anti-casting spells as well.

I see our ranger survive all the time. In both PvE and PvP this happens because a ranger isn't blunt damage *or* healing like other classes tend to be. They create very little aggro, and work their job from a distance. This ensures that they're usually among the last to be attacked. Combine this ability to see what's coming (and not being pestered by the indecidedness of wether to wait for the monk heals, the elementalist AoE's to go out, or just run for it), and the numerous skills rangers have to get distance (cripple & sprint, the ranger-specific skill names are different), and you'll see why they have such a high survivability. Also, you can run away from enemies. There are occasions when it has bugged, but 99% of the time it works just fine for me. All you need to do is get enough range so the enemy can't continue attacking you, and after some 10 seconds they'll turn back. After this our ranger comes right back and resurrects our monk, from which we regroup and go on.

The arrows don't home in on you either. They're simple projectiles lacking the ability to change direction once in air. Monsters and players both have an AI that predicts the movement of the target. That means that if someone is running at an unchanging speed, the shots will always hit. If you change your direction while running, they'll miss. Another example of skill, since knowing this and learning to side-step slower projectiles and spells that act in a similar manner helps a great deal in certain areas of the game.

As an elementalist it's easy to specialize in a few skills alone. Only Fire and Energy Storage. This ensures a high power in fire skills rather early on in the game (like levels 14+). In my case, I had a fire attribute of some 14 from level 16-17 forward I think. And you'll have what seems to me like well over half of the game left from there. As I said before, Arcane Echo copies the next spell being cast and acts as that spell for 20 seconds. With it, I'd have enough mana to cast a Meteor Shower, twice, with a Fire Storm, and a point blank Phoenix. After which I'd wait a while and then add Inferno to the mix.

Now a single Meteor Shower strikes roughly 3-4 times into any one enemy in the area, each hit doing some ~95+ points of damage and knocking the enemy down for a few seconds. A Fire Storm damages for some ~25+ damage per second, for 10 seconds. A point-blank Phoenix does a double-phased damage of ~95 + ~80 to every enemy close to you. And an Inferno does around ~105 damage to an area around you.

With slight ability to predict when the enemy reaches you, you can pre-cast Arcane Echo and Meteor Shower so that the spell fires off just as the enemy is there on your face. From there it's 5 seconds more for another Meteor Shower and 3 seconds after that for a Fire Storm. After another 3 seconds your Phoenix will fire off. Count the damage, its easily enough to kill anything save the strongest of bosses. And because of the knockdown effect of the Meteor Shower, the healers can't get much healing done at all, much like anything else can't attack or cast spells either... which makes this a wonderful protection at the same time. Consider the damage, and the protection ratio.. and the fact that all this can be done by just one person, as long as the enemy stays put. When you put in what the rest of the party does, it's easy to see that a single elementalist specced in such a way will often be the decisive factor in a battle.

This is high-end damage. But it would mean hundreds of points of damage even at your level, had you the skills that early on in the game. A Phoenix + Inferno combination is the basic I use when someone engages in melee, causing that nice 250+ damage after the armor in no less than 3 seconds.

Yes, the super-AoE combo takes out my energy and I can't do a thing after it. But do you think I care when there are 10 strong enemies lying dead around my feet? And since I don't use Flares or such that so many other elementalists like to spam, all I have are those powerful AoE's. There's always energy when I need it. If those AoE's aren't needed, then the party will do just fine with my just using my wand and Conjure Flame to do the damage.

I can't say what it'll be like. All I know is that like I said before, for me the game started to seem interesting only after I'd passed the first 1/4:th of it about. That means getting to Yak's Bend or Lion's Arch... somewhere inbetween those two. Indeed, the skills make all the difference, and sadly the game starts really slowly. The skills you get up to Lion's Arch about more or less all suck. Many of those skills would be useful but they lack the other skills that complement them enough to make them so.

And with the better skills, more experienced players, far prettier graphics and the far far greater tactical opportunities coming with the better skills, this game becomes much better. But even in the end with all the neat things I can do that 80% of the players in the game don't seem to realise, it still wouldn't be worth it without my friends. I press once more that you need a guild with active players (or at least half as active as you are) for this game to remain interesting.

[ June 07, 2005, 15:07: Message edited by: Foradasthar ]

 

Small contradiction there: if they become so powerful, how come they cannot kill swiftly in neither mode? I know for sure that when that leeching spell hits, half of my rangers HP will vanish in a few seconds. If they are so powerful, then they should be able to do the same as later mentioned elementalists: wipe out 10 monsters with a combo.

Only if he has that skill. Meaning: he has to be a Ranger/Monk or else it's a long, long trek back to the resurrection shrine. And then another trip back to meet the enemies. And if you fail again, half of the members might just leave and it's another new trek with a new team.

As far as most players care, they are. The characters don't move like Gordon Freeman, but slowly and you often need to adjust the camera manually just so you can see what is going on "up there." Hope you have time to zig-zag around when there is 10+ axes waiting just behind your back.

Hope the monsters do not have these skills like they tend to. I bet getting your whole team insta-gibbed like that isn't nearly as much fun. But that's some high-level magic; what about those players who do not have access to such spells in a long, long while? Guess they just have to keep on struggling or give up...

Which is to say that GW will lose more players than it will gain. But hopefully the next games will be free of monthly fees like GW is -the sole reason why I don't play games like WoW.

 

They just don't work that way. Necromancers aren't a DPS class. By becoming more powerful, I mean that they have so many hexes and enchantments on, and so many raised allies around them, that killing them becomes incredibly hard. They can leech off of your health or the health of their minions so easily that you can't possibly kill them before they and their minions kill you. They can cause damage, but nothing like an elementalist.

A similar level necromancer simply cannot eat half of your health in a matter of a few seconds (like under 5). With extreme mana consumption and very specific damage-oriented spells, maybe. But that means that the other half will take quite a while to get since all their better abilities are on a reload timer and they're more or less out of energy.

No-one should ever join a party in PvE or PvP without a Resurrection Signet. You should've gotten one from a quest in pre-searing Ascalon. If not, I guess you can buy it off one of the skill trainers. It's a signet that every class can use, and will in 3 seconds resurrect an ally with full health and 60% mana if I remember correct. Although you need to get a Morale Bonus or switch zones to reload that signet, it's still the best resurrection ability in the game. Even monks have one in addition to their own re-usable resurrections.

You can't dodge all of them, obviously. In a combat situation you're bound to be still or too close to do that. But when you're running away, it really takes no more than some slight estimation of when the next one is going to fire, compared to when you last got hit. Especially against ranged enemies that are stational, it's easy.

But as said, it depends on the circumstances. Like all skills and tricks, it doesn't work unless the situation is right. I only use it when I need to recover health / energy or stay alive while party members finish the enemies off but can't afford to heal me. Running away is faster when you don't dodge, assuming you can afford to take a few hits.

Well there's a reason fire mages aren't really that big in PvP. People tend to have higher resistances against fire than anything else. Additionally, while some enemies do use those spells, they don't combine them effectively enough to come even near the example I just gave. Due to the 5 and 3 second casting times, they're also incredibly easy to interrupt and counter.

I think you should already have Fire Storm, if not, it won't take long for you to get it. Phoenix will be found in Yak's Bend or close to it I think, and Meteor Shower can be acquired from an "unmarked" village north of Lion's Arch.

So while you won't have to play longer than around 1/3:rd of the game to get them, I still do agree that it's too long. There's no excuse to this really, the game is ridiculously boring and simple early on.

 

Hmm...most of these complaints seem to originate from someone who A)doesn't fully know and/or understand the game B)see things meant to take away bad elements from MMO's as being bad themselvees because they are unable to abuse the system much like in most MMORPG's C)Are annoyed because it is innovative and creative and breaks all the boring guide lines that they don't know what to do without D)Are confused because they can't learn the ropes of a new game and make quick judgements on things they truly do not know much about.
All of these answers are true about different Guild War haters. Hmm..which one could you be???

 

Gee I don't know, maybe none of them?

People have different opinions. What I might see as a positive feature, another might see as a disappointing one. Does that make either one of us more right than the other?

Even if I think GW is excellent for what it's made for, it's far from perfect. Others may not, for a bunch of very good reasons, like it. So no offense, but resurrecting an oldish topic simply to provoke someone (or to prove your own narrow-sightedness) is not really too constructive.

 

My husband's been thinking about GW, so I've been reading what I can about it on the boards. I'll keep this pegged for him. It seems as though MP is better than SP, with regards to AI (had that prob. in NWN)and the skill balancing. If we buy this and play, would it be better to start MP with ourselves complementing each other? Keep in mind, I know next to nothing about this game and am trying to get a feel for it before buying.