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| The Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing genre has, more often than not, primarily consisted of something players have often callously referred to as “the grind.” Grinding is essentially the act of mindlessly slaying enemies (usually the same ones) over and over (usually to ridiculous extents) in order to gain experience. While grinding in any Role Playing Game is usually a welcomed option, the MMORPG genre, for the most part, not only makes it a requirement, it makes it the game’s primary focus. While there is an unquestionably greater sense of accomplishment in reaching a desired level or gaining a piece of equipment in such a dedicated fashion, the act itself is often frowned upon as repetitive and robotic, to the extent that some players have been known to utilize illegal computer programs to do their leveling for them. |
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| When you step outside the box and see the time consuming grinding process coupled with the monthly fee, you merely need to put two and two together. So what happens when an MMORPG comes along that not only avoids focus on grinding, but virtually gives you no option to? Yup, you guessed it. No monthly fee. |
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| While the lack of a monthly fee in and of itself is great (you don’t have to feel committed to the game, and are free to take a week or two off without feeling like you’re pissing your hard earned money down the drain), it creates an unexpected and unwanted characteristic; a more immature player base. Younger players have easier access to Guild Wars as opposed to a game which would require their parent’s credit card in order to play. While I may be segregating an audience by saying this, the game relies on the players’ actions from minor aspects like cooperative missions to major universal aspects like the economy. Adults can’t handle this stuff in real life, so ideally you don’t want your virtual economy determined by pre-teens. |
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| With the politics out of the way, let’s delve into what Guild Wars is all about. By eliminating the monotonous leveling constraints of the genre, a powerful Guild Wars character is one based on skill, not how much time they’ve logged in. The game caps your maximum level at a meager 20, which will no doubt turn a lot of people off right from the start, but these gamers are missing the point. With most MMORPGs, the journey is the destination and once you hit that level cap you’ll be hard-pressed to find a lot of compelling content. In Guild Wars, think of reaching level 20 as merely a step in the path to fully developing your character build. Guild Wars’ level cap should hit you a little after you’re half way done with the game, and if it somehow doesn’t, it actually forces it on you a little later via a quest. While this is completely unorthodox within the MMORPG genre, Guild Wars relies on actual gameplay to keep you coming back, as opposed to the promise of some indefinite diversion consisting of level-up after level-up. In addition, with levels capped at 20, Guild Wars becomes the most balanced MMORPG out there. Nothing can even remotely come close to the level of refinement this game has accomplished simply due to the fact that variables have been minimized. |
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| The ambition of the relatively minuscule level cap is to reward skill over time played. With players balanced by confining statistics, they are ultimately limited only by their ability to think up creative character builds. Herein lies the beauty of Guild Wars’ character build system, and why a low level cap is comparatively trivial. Throughout your journey you discover skills, bought from vendors or awarded from quests. These abilities range the gamut from disruptive spell-canceling hexes to massive meteor showers that rain destruction down upon the battlefield. While each character class has an impressive count of 150 unique skills, you are only allowed to equip eight at a time, intertwining a high level of preparedness and strategy necessary before venturing outside of town. To complicate matters even further, after deciding on a primary class, every character must choose a secondary profession out of the remaining five classes. This bumps the number of selectable skill choices to a ridiculous count of 300 per character. Both the collectability and perceptiveness required in choosing the right combination of skills gives this system a very Magic: The Gathering-like feel. Developing your character ultimately becomes an exceedingly deep and rewarding experience, one that practically forces you to care about (and take pride in) your character. |
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| Guild Wars’ ambition truly seems to set itself apart from the pack. It deviates from the MMORPG foundation so much, in fact, that most players don’t even consider the game to belong to the genre. From the unorthodox level restrictions to the collectable skills, the game is filled with things you most likely haven’t seen implemented before. More aspects of Guild Wars seem to be unique to the genre than not, and traveling throughout the world is no exception. You are limited to no more than your own two feet while adventuring outside of town; no mounts, ferries, zeppelins, or silt-striders here. However, once you have discovered a new town you may instantly teleport back to it at any time by simply opening your world map and clicking on your desired destination. While the game world is essentially a giant, non-linear overworld, it is divided into sections as opposed to a single, seamless map as previously seen in numerous other MMORPGs. The load times between these sections are practically non-existent, but the problem lies in the fact that they are joined together by doorway-like bottlenecks, pretty much limiting your trek through a section to a point A to point B experience. Regardless, the game world is still an enormous non-linear landmass, but the boundaries placed upon traversing around inside of it feel a little more restricting than they should. |
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Another aspect that sets Guild Wars apart from the rest of the MMORPG crowd is that once you venture outside of town, the game becomes instanced for your party. While other parties that venture out (even if from the same town you just left) get their own exclusive world, the two parties never cross paths outside of town. This does away with many of the pitfalls involved with sharing a game world with an anonymous user base. No more annoying item hogs, campers, looters, kill stealers or player killers. Here, the game world is yours to plunder and yours alone. This nearly negates the aforementioned immature player base way back in the third paragraph. Find a good group or guild, and stick with them; you won’t ever have to deal with anyone else, if you so choose. Or if you are so inclined, you can even go through Guild Wars as a solo experience. In each town, groups of employable henchmen are at your disposal that are not only semi-suitable replacements for real players, but are at your service completely free of charge; the major downside being that they share item drops and experience as if they were actually real players. Henchman work exceptionally well during the first half of the game, but later on they become less effective. This is most likely intentional to promote teaming up with real players, considering the enemy AI proves to be more than adequate. Henchmen are always a viable option, as opposed to a last resort. While their AI definitely can’t compete with a skilled player, they are often a more suitable replacement that a good majority of the community, even if it means your character needs to pull a little more than his own weight. |
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| The downside to this game world exclusiveness is not only the obvious elimination of both the randomness and immersion of adventuring throughout a game world inhabited by other players, but it also removes the player versus player combat to be integrated into the player versus environment combat. ArenaNet’s answer to this was to split the PvP and PvE game into two separate entities. During your journey, you may stumble onto a few PvP based hubs, dubbed Arenas, that function just like the regular towns. Once within, you may choose to enter instanced, team-based arena combat with your developed PvE character. In addition, you also have the ability to create a separate PvP only character at the start of the game who begins at level 20. The interesting thing about a PvP only character is that since you can’t further develop them in-game, you unlock new skills and items for them by playing through the PvE segment of the game or as rewards for fighting in the PvP arenas with a PvE character. The PvP aspect of Guild Wars is certainly off-putting at first, but once you start finding new items with your character and seeing those “PvP item unlocked” windows popping up, it kind of makes since. Kind of. |
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| While the barter system works well enough to keep tabs on prices by littering towns with NPC item merchants whose prices fluctuate based on the economy (and can even run out of stock), Guild Wars really needs to bite the bullet and implement an auction house. Attempting to sell items to real players is ridiculously archaic at this point, which is limited to flooding trade channels with your bounty and hope someone manages to catch your message in the rapidly moving sea of text that makes up the chat window. |
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| Despite the name, Guild Wars’ guild system really isn’t as fleshed out as one would think. There are a few cool accomplishments like acquiring a guild hall or a customizable guild cape, and competing in exciting guild versus guild battles whose outcome can actually determine other players’ access to a high level dungeon. But in the end, guilds really don’t seem like something substantial enough to name the game after. |
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| Despite a good number of problems and questionable implementation, Guild Wars’ unconventional elements combine to make it a very unique and important step in the MMORPG genre. Guild Wars is successful because it has the guts to break out of the MMORPG mold, even if that means creating new problems in the process. This is the massive shift in the genre I expected when Blizzard attempted the MMORPG. Perhaps it’s fitting to know that the developing team behind Guild Wars is partially made up of the ex-Blizzard developers responsible for Diablo II. That, I should think, speaks volumes. |
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9.5 |
 ++ Artistically and technically outstanding. The game is simply stunning in every visual facet. |
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7.9 |
 ++ Jeremy Soule implements a symphonic masterpiece throughout the entire game. - Voice acting not on par with the soundtrack. - Sound effects tend to get repetitive. |
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9.0 |
 ++ Offers a new spin on what could have become a stagnant genre. ++ Emphasis on skill over time played. - Environment navigation and pathing still needs work. |
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8.0 |
 ++ Easily one of the most diverse and well designed environments in the genre. ++ Top-notch presentation, a slick and streamlined interface, and the best glorified tutorial map in existence. -- Immersion is stunted due to instances, trekking limitations and a fragmented map. |
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6.9 |
 + Those who get engrossed in the game can easily wrack up an impressive number of hours... - ...But the game doesn’t even remotely come close to the longevity offered by competing MMORPGs. -- Missions, while optional, pigeon-hole the game into a very linear experience, and are a chore to play through multiple times. |
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8.9 |
 + Change, for the most part, is good. |
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