Guild Wars: Factions Comments by Kieron Gillen

Sounds alright.

I'm not sure if I want to put in all that effort though, I've got a full time job already... :/

I've had this on order from Play.com for ages! I wish they'd get some in stock. That and I'm being tempted to take up WoW again....there goes that productive summer...

I really like the "time played" reminder. One for the notebook.

The one problem I have with Guild Wars, as mentioned in this review, is how ridiculously easy it is to level. The maximum level is a paltry 20, which can easily be achieved in a week of less than hard play. Me and my housemates got the game not so long ago and within a week we were all roughly level 15. And that was around Uni classes, exam revision and social lives so we weren't playing 24-7. Not even close.

I was hoping the level cap would be raised for Factions, but it seems not to be so. I know Guild Wars isn't meant to be a hardcore MMORPG (a la WOW), but they could at least try to cater to those who don't really want to be as powerful as they'll ever get in a week.

@Razz: Trust me, Guild Wars is anything buy a full time job. There's more to Oblivion to be perfectly frank. You could maybe try EVE Online if you want to play a MMORPG without it sucking up too much time. In that game your character levels up over time, so you can select a skill to learn, log out and then the next time you log in you'll have learned it (provided enough time has passed of course). However EVE does have a subscription fee.

Mouse, you are kind of missing the point - they don't want players to have to grind in this game, so they get levelling out of the way as quickly as possible. From that point in its all down to the skills you use in the game and the skill you have in using them. Reaching level 20 is just the start, getting the elite skills is what will make you more powerful, and the good ones are hard to get.

One of the other big changes from Prophecies is that skill points are rewards for quests, rather than skills themselves - this mean that you get a far wider spread of skills amongst players earlier in the game.

Factions also brings lots of new ways of playing the basic same game - 12v12 is a hoot, total carnage, but there are also some really tough PvE levels, the sort of thing that will take a couple of hours to complete.

Razz, there's no monthly fee, so theres no demand that you play it all the time I've played one character for the last 11 months, every friday, with a good bunch of guys in the guild. Always fun, never boring.

I've been playing the original Guild Wars for a couple of months now. I really like it, but I've not got beyond lvl 18, nor have I joined a guild. But for me it's perfect. I wanted to try a MMORPG (even though GW isn't quite the same thing), without having to pay a monthly fee as I tend to not always have the time to justify paying it.

It's a really fun game though. Although I'm not buying factions yet as I only paid £15 for the original campaign so £25-30 doesn't seem worth it.

>It got dismissed as "Not A Real MMO" by many MMO purists, which is normally a good sign you're onto something right.

Hahaha ZING'D. Mucho love Kieron :D

Anyway, that should convince me to dig up my old Guild Wars copy and see if I get immersed again... then maybe factions...

love GW's, love Factions - best no sub MMO you can get. You can play it, put it down for months and pick it up again and start a new chara, or pick up where you left off, and you never have to worry about wasting money. People are freindly, Its very well populated, and the game is fast and fun. And both the CE's are beautiful.

highly recommend :)

Nice game. Played the original for a couple of months.

The only problem I have with it is that the combat is plain stupid; there is no notion of aggro, pulling, crowd control, etc, so it felt really dumb compared to the likes of WoW. That and the non existant economy, and the loot trees made me want to cry.

Heh, nice cheap shot at RPGCodex. Their Oblivion review has to be the whiniest pice of reactionary video game elitism I've read all year.

Great review, possibly great enough to get me back playing GW..!

"Mouse, you are kind of missing the point - they don't want players to have to grind in this game, so they get levelling out of the way as quickly as possible."

I understand that, but I still think the level cap is too low even for casual players. A week of playing 1 hour a night or less shouldn't see you approaching the highest level, but that's just my opinion. But for a free MMO it's really rather good, don't start thinking I don't like the game! ;)

I think WoW will be more my cup of tea, and plan to start that as soon as the expansion becomes available. :)

RPGCodex's review of oblivion was the opposite of EG's, one was gushing, ignored every negative point and was pointless to the extreme, the other was whiny, ignored most of the good points and was pointless to the extreme.

I thought guild wars was fun for a bit, but then I went back to WoW and BF2(for my cheap pvp thrills) and dont really regret it.

re funktopia:

Could you be any more wrong? Guild Wars has possibly the best combat system in any MMO I have played. There is not another MMO which involves as much skill and forethought.

Being a bit of a Guild Wars fanatic I can't help but feel a bit let down by Factions. This is mostly due to the system in place which only lets a very very small percentage of the population to access the Elite mission. Though; ANet do seem to listen to the community by large, so I expect they will change this in some form. Other than that, I would say the review is pretty much spot on.

It got dismissed as "Not A Real MMO" by many MMO purists, which is normally a good sign you're onto something right.

I did that too - not because I didn't like GW, quite on the contrary, but because I was getting tired of people complaining about MMORPG fees "when GW manages without".

Though not interested in guild wars I am grateful for this review for pointing out the rpgcodex review of oblivion. Best review yet!

edit: o.k. o.k., maybe not best. But it raises a lot of good points

"Heh, nice cheap shot at RPGCodex. Their Oblivion review has to be the whiniest pice of reactionary video game elitism I've read all year. "

More like an extremely honest article (with some over-the-top flavour, but it's not like some positive reviews don't have the same problem). I think someone missed a point here, there is nothing 'creative' or nothing really original about Oblivion (which just built further on a TES-base, great graphics, big value for money and a humongous hype) compared to Guild Wars which really created a space of it's own in the bizz with the instances and the cool skill system.

People dissing GW of Factions for not being 'real' mmorpg's should know better in the first place. They ain't mmorpg's at all, but more like the next evolution of the Diablo 2 Battle.net era while at the same time losing unnecessary timesink grind/level mechanics. Player skill matters here and that's the kind of thing you don't see enough in these games. CORPG ftw!

Finally got my collector's edition, loving it so far. Connecting the two continents in the same world really is very cool. Some characters really do look foreign in some zones.

*sigh* if only my computer wouldn't crash everytime I try and start the factions campaign. Although it does work with doing a pvp char.

bloody annoying.

I bought this game a couple of days ago and I've completely fallen for it. Its my first experience of a PC Full Blown RPG (System Shock 2 does'nt count) and its truelt surprising. This is coming from a complete new person but when I entered the first town I was truely shocked at the amount of people freely running all over the place. I tried not to look at the dancers.

The character classes pleased me aswell, a good wide ranging selection with some cool possiblities to play with. Im a Necro/Monk, good combination huh :P Katzen Az.

Did I mention the manual is 128 pages long?!? This may not be surprising to those people that play alot of fantasy games but it shocked me to see such a hefty tomb printed in nothing but English, and not English, German, and French.

And this look just like Oblivion review.

I was told if you dont want PvP ... tough luck since Factions have missions being PvP events, I was looking to see THAT in the review but somehow managed to be ... "forgotten".

Yes, GW is the "god" of PvP in RPGs but beyond that we must wonder at what it offers and as MMORPG with a living world ... well there is not much, its kinda of a wierd online action RPG with a co-op for some areas.

And I was bored with Oblivion ... can someone say what are the good things on it beyond the graphics because I really cannot see it.

Dire - contact NCsoft support abou the crashing issue - they seem to be very good at sorting things out.


Goos review but they had always planned 6 monthly expansions/standalone versions that link up from the start - I think they really got it right and i'll be looking out for more games from that stable. Original ideas that break the mould is so good rather than your standard fantasty rpg bollox

have ..played it.. its quite good.. the camera annoyes the shit outta me tho..

have this and eve running together.. wheee

Love Guild Wars. Great game.

I've had a level 20 w/mo for aaages... Still haven't got anywhere close to all the elite skills :) Soloing it to the Granite Citadel is my biggest achievement so far... and I haven't even seen the underworld yet :D

That's what I love about Guild Wars, no matter what level you're playing at you always feel like you've achieved something cool.

Am loving the Factions continent and it's artstyle. Am loving the slightly more intelligent henchies and the fact that they "talk" now. Am loving the onus on skills. Am loving "'Character name' is attacking The Undergrowth!". Am not loving all the to'ing and fro'ing some of the quests demand.

@funktopia: If you think there is no way to pull mobs, then you need a ranger in your party :)

A ranger? What for? Just bring a Longbow on any char and you can pull just a Ranger does.

A tí te sea más malo? Guild Wars tiene posiblemente el mejor sistema de combate en los MMO que he jugado. No hay otro MMO que implica tanta habilidad y previsión.

Siendo un poco de un fanático de Guild Wars no puedo evitar sentir un poco defraudados por las facciones. Esto se debe principalmente al sistema que sólo permite que un porcentaje muy pequeño de la población para acceder a la misión de Elite. Aunque, Anet parecen escuchar a la comunidad por las grandes, así que espero que va a cambiar esto en alguna forma. Aparte de eso, yo diría que la revisión in situ es más o menos en.
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