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Guild Wars

	Author: Chris Massey Article Type: PC Game Review Publication Date: 9/22/2005 Developer: ArenaNet Publisher: NCSoft Related Categories: Ground Combat, Role-Playing

Hoping to be Wrong

Over the years there has developed a rather unstated contention between Jim Zabek, the Editor-in-Chief here at Wargamer, and myself. Jim has always thought that the arrival of Guild Wars would trigger a change in the pricing conventions of the MMORPG market. I have supported the belief that Guild Wars won’t impact pricing models for games like World of Warcraft or EverQuest at all. Considering my addiction to all things MMORPG, I was hoping to be wrong all the while. The more MMORPGs that are free, the more of them I can play! Since the release of Guild Wars, many players have picked it up and enjoyed it, and it’s wildly popular by all accounts, but it hasn’t changed a single regular MMORPG price. Still, there’s always hope that Jim will prove me wrong.

Hidden wonders abound	Strike a pose!

Guild Wars is certainly hard to classify. When I first played it during one of the early preview weekends, my initial thoughts were: “Hmm, this is a 3-D Diablo.” I wasn’t happy with having only eight skills at a time, but that was before I realized how many skills there were to choose from, and how integral skill choice can be to both PvE (Player vs. Environment) and PvP (Player vs. Player) in the game. It played like Diablo, with quick missions and streamlined play. However, it’s also a bit like an MMORPG with its towns full of players looking for missions, crafting, and such. Even after I picked up the full release version of the game, it still took me a week or two to fully wrap my noodle around the game and its conventions. It’s a strangely innovative game, and has proven rather tough to review.

A Tale of Two CDs

Installation is a breeze. Guild Wars ships on two CDs, but neither are required to play once the game has been fully installed. The game takes up a little more than 900MB of hard drive space once installed. It was very easy to register an account using the included account key, and game updates are small and painless, despite some rather large changes that have been made since the release of Guild Wars.

Feeling noble…

Learning to Walk

Guild Wars comes with a fairly exhaustive manual. The first third of the manual concerns the history of the Guild Wars universe and the rest of the manual offers details on classes, gameplay, skills, and more.

On top of this, the first area of the game, commonly referred to as Pre-Searing, is a pseudo-tutorial that offers a few pop-up windows which describe what’s going on and why. Unfortunately, most players will likely feel lost for a good while. With my first character I ran through the “tutorial” far too fast, not really knowing what I was doing, and ended up in Post-Searing Ascalon at level 3, looking like a fool with no money and no decent gear…but I quickly remedied that with some further play. Then I made another character, and played through a good bit more of the tutorial Pre-Searing Ascalon areas, which I would recommend all new players do at least the first time through.

Ascalon burns

Sights and Sounds

Guild Wars is a beautiful game, and runs great on just about any system. The environments are rich with detail, and although I dislike some of the character models and animations, they are still very well done from an artistic standpoint. At some settings the bloom effect can be overpowering, however, which I found odd. It’s not so bad in the lower settings, but can be annoying at 1280 x 960 and up, and I couldn’t find a way to toggle it off from the main video settings menu. The characters around me in the higher settings seemed to shimmer and glow too much. I just set my video resolution to a lower setting and forgot about it, though. It’s a minor complaint considering how amazing the Guild Wars engine is, offering nearly instant load times and amazing vistas.

Brrr scary	Lightning strikes upon yonder hill

The sounds of Guild Wars aren’t quite as pleasant as the graphics, but they are well done if somewhat understated. On top of this, the soundtrack is outstanding, featuring an orchestral score, but for much of the game the score is under-utilized, and the player is usually playing in silence.