Guild Wars SuperShort Review with about 3MB worth of screens

[edlavallee]

The game is nice looking, though in a generic way. I had high hopes given the pretty-pretty log in screen with animations. Too bad all the models look pixel-y and angular. Except those boobies on Schild... they looked... well, distracting to be quite honest.

The initial reports of the game made me very interested; I kinda had hopes it would be like a BF1942 in a fantasy setting. Unfortunately, I could not be interested enough in the game play to get any farther than the initial area.

[Signe]

His boobies ARE distracting, but only because they are crooked.

[Phred]

I thought it looked bland and ugly as well when I first started playing, but if you open up the map and look in the bottom left corner, you'll see 3 buttons. Click on the one that says it's a demo of jungle scenery and you might be a bit more impressed. There's also a demo of some arctic scenery there as well. Still, it is a lot like the Dungeon Siege engine and a bit annoying how it limits where you can go, but I found the missions quite fun, with some interesting scripting of npc's at later levels helping you feel a bit more involved.

As to PvP, I found the arena to be a blast. It's nice, instant action, where you get dumped in a random group with 3 other people. If you win, you hold the arena until another group is added and fight them again. Getting in a group that happens to work well together was a fun experience, and fortunately, if you are in a group of ppl with little clue, it's over quick and you can try another group. I think it would be better if they matched 2 winning teams myself though. There's also a defend the castle scenario that's 8 vs 8 which I also found fun, though it currently seems a bit weighted in favor of the defenders.

Some concerns I have however. Right now it's kind of ideal in the PvP sector, all characters are exactly the same level. I'd like to know how they plan to do it on release, if they will level match you or if everyone is going to have to reach the level cap to compete. Also, some skill combinations are way out of balance. Archer/elementalists with a bit of work to get the right spells and a better bow can do a ton of damage, cast zone wide rituals that can have beneficial or detrimental effects like no rezzing or no buffs, while not only doing big damage with bow specials, but having a lightning bolt that can do 120 dmg to a warrior, as the warrior armor has a huge weakness to electrical damage. Some people are complaining about the necro's poison spell (it's desease actually) as it does pretty hefty damage as well, but that ignores the fact that the team casting the spell can also contract it by contact with the enemy who's diseased so it can be a double edged sword. Probably the complainers were archer/elementalists as it's very effective on them when they are sniping from a distance.

With the limited gear available in the demo it's hard to tell how much gear will matter for effective pvp too.

In the PVE missions, there is a semi random treasure distribution sort of like daoc's except the time out for loot to go free for all is a bit short. Unfortunately, because of the usual poor random algorhithm, I've seen one person get 4 pieces of loot in a row, and loot drops are way less frequent than daoc, at least back when I played daoc. This will hopefully be less of an issue on release when you can make a party of all friends rather than random strangers.

All in all, I think it will be worth the price to buy when it's released. I just hope it's released tuned a lot more than it is currently. People are going to work out power combos fairly quickly if the demo is any indication, and I'd like to see the pvp balanced enough to remain fun. With no monthly charge and regular expansions of content it looks like a good alternate game to play for a while when bored with other mmog's rather than a place to live regularly, at least for me. If they don't release early it looks like it will at least be worth the box price to have a month or so's fun with. I played Diablo and Diablo 2 the same way. Often heavily for a few weeks then putting it aside for a few months until I got interested and picked it up again. Of course this meant I couldnt play on closed battle.net with their deletion policy but it didnt bother me that much as I only played with friends.

There is supposedly more open pvp in other zones, so people that annoy you might be killable later if you can convince them to join you there, but currently the best way to deal with idiot spammers is just put them on ignore. I hope the ignore list isnt too small. Personally I'd still rather have it this way than the open uo/sb style some people like. Too many people abuse the system in open pvp games for my taste, while with this game, I've spent over half my time the last 2 days in pvp having fun, losing and winning arena battles.

On instancing. They have made the towns and other meeting points for mission generation set to a preset population it seems, at which point a new instance is spawned. In the top right corner of the interface there's a dropdown menu where you can see how many instances there are and pick a different one to move to if you want to hook up with friends or just leave an instance that's too noisy or annoying. They call these instances districts, which through me off at first as I thought it was just different areas of town early on when there were only 4 of them. Today there were up to 20 or so of the main shopping town, and the first pve mission area.

[Signe]

Ok... I've played a bit, now.  The damn game is so fast that I'm having trouble controlling my movements my camera.

Sheesh... am I just used to lag or what?  I'm sure this problem will disappear when I'm actually playing with others.  Never thought I'd yearn for a game that didn't work so well.

There is just no pleasing me.

[Kenrick]

r00fle ir0ny PwNed signe!

[Sloth]

I'd agree with the Lineage 2 comments IF IT FELT ANYTHING LIKE LINEAGE 2. This feels about the same speed as diablo. The spells are all beautiful, different, and useful. And I don't feel like responding to the detractors.

The combat reminds me almost exactly of lineage 2. The mission set up is like Bnet except the loading areas are in game settings instead of server lists.

The speed of the game reminded me of Dungeon Siege, the world layout also reminded me of Dungeon Siege were your movement is limited by "trails"

Overall I find the best part of GW is the co-op missions. The PVP is questionable, especially given that eventually everyone will be different levels.  But at least the PVP is 4/4 and not zerg battles.

The game will defintely be worth buying for the co-op missions though. However its a good thing there is no monthly fee.

[schild]

Nix's thoughts on Guild Wars

[Dabry]

(first post for me, be gentle!)

For those of you saying the graphics look bad, check your Options (the little castle like icon on the upper right side) and make sure the graphics are turned up. Unless you are running a crappy non-3D card it should look pretty good.

I like the game. I don't think it's shallow at all. Sure, if you only play in the solo area you might be bored out of your mind - but, as already mentioned, it's the one area that's sparse and without direction. The Coop PvE missions are a lot of fun (the third one is hard! Still haven't beaten it) and you get some pretty good loot/gem drops from the bosses you kill. Just from Missions 1 and 2 I was able to sell enough drop items to buy some other skill gems to play around with.

PvP is where the action is.  Obviously, if you don't like PvP you should be shot and buried under a 5 tons of concrete. As someone mentioned, it's a lot like Magic:TG. There's a ton of strategy in a) picking what spells/skills you are going to use (you only have 8? slots), b) knowing when to use what on whom.

Just because there's not a ton of skill trees and random "complicated" crap doesn't mean this game lacks depth. Just like chess, a finite BALANCED set of possiblities/options can lead to a ton of interesting tactical and strategic choices.

Overall I think this game has a lot of potential. Once they add in the systems that are missing (trading, some class abilities, etc) it'll be a blast to play if they keep up the quality of game and quality of players.

My two cents :)

- Dabry

[HaemishM]

Finally got around to writing that review I've mentioned.

[Threash]

Normally when i play a beta i like my fanboi side starts sprouting things like "its ok that its not very good, its only beta" this time though its more like "holy shit its already this good in beta its gonna rock at release".  I would pay for it on its current state.

[XmasReturns]

Well, I suggest you all who oppose this alpha give it more of a chance. for the people who claim that the solo areas suck, it just means you aren't finding the right spots to continue on to the next area. Personally I've found 2 new respawn towns and many, many, many named monsters just roaming around. I could probably name 3 that are extremely easy to get to right off the bat....



Btw, not trying to show off, but give it a while, I mean....it's in alpha, and I say this is pretty good for an alpha version of an MMOG

[Riggswolfe]

I'll give it another shot, right now I'm just not impressed. I see some potential but overall I had a sort of "eh" feeling.

[Pug]

I was thinking about common MMOG problems that Guild Wars may share and thought of Ebay. In a standard MMOG people who Ebay deprive a publisher from selling a box but don't negatively impact the subscription revenue. Guild Wars doesn't have a subscription fee. Will people who Ebay Gulid Wars accounts cut into Guild Wars' revenue stream?

I suppose no matter where the account came from that most players will still purchase the expansions. I really like both the game and the business model so I hope that they can pull it off.

The starting solo area is by far Guild Wars' weakest aspect. It's ugly, there aren't enough mobs, and you can't bring a friend to keep you company. There are other solo areas on the map that you can get to after you complete more coop PvE missions, but that doesn't change the bad impression that the solo area leaves on new players. If anyone knows a Gulid Wars dev, tell them to add more mobs, add a little color and allow groups of friends to enter the solo area so that players can enjoy it more like a traditional MMOG zone.

People who drop out of missions should be penalized by making them wait before entering a new mission. It doesn't have to be much. Penalize them a minute or two before they can join a group or enter random PvP again. Increase the penalty if they do it often. It's very irritating to have another player drop out early just because things aren't going their way. I've seen teams come back to win random PvP matches after being taken down to the last man standing because of getting a res off. If you quit you can't be rezzed. Fuckers.

One neat feature that every reviewer seemed to miss (or I failed to read about) is the ability to dodge projectiles. You can time your moves and dodge projectile spells and arrows which adds a ton of options to combat other than standing in one place and blindly mashing buttons.

Another missed feature is collision detection. You can't walk through characters or mobs when inside a mission. This means that you can surround and block players and mobs. You can employ tactics such as building a tank wall with casters and archers behind or cornering a fleeing foe. Just having collision detection adds a lot to the game.

The advanced spells and abilities are extremely complex. It takes a great deal of skill to know what to use when and on who. It is every bit as complex as Magic: The Gathering only it moves at a much faster pace. Nobody is going to sit around waiting while you try to figure out what move to make in this game.

Even though I've done more of the PvE coop missions now I still don't think the PvE will hold many players long. The PvP is too fun to want to spend much time in PvE.

I didn't get to play as many of the team based PvP missions as I had wanted to, either. Trying to form a cohesive group from a mix of complete noobs to experienced prior Alpha testers is insane. This feature is something that won't really be useful until groups of players form guilds and play with one another on a regular basis. It's one thing to have a bad group in the random PvP area but it sucks to be stuck with a bunch of morons on the group PvP missions and facing a well organized team.

Right now in its current state Guild Wars is easily as fun as Quake with swords and is in my opinion worth buying. I can't wait to play the beta.

[CassandraR]

Alluvian you probably had problems finding mobs because they don't repsawn ever. So inless you go back to town then go back into the solo area, once you kill something its dead permanently until you leave the area and return. So its probably not good to wander around for 4 hours looking for things. Otherwise there are two rock bosses right near the starter town. Just go straight away from it and turn left and go down into the canyons and you should find two of them there. :)

[Riggswolfe]

One neat feature that every reviewer seemed to miss (or I failed to read about) is the ability to dodge projectiles. You can time your moves and dodge projectile spells and arrows which adds a ton of options to combat other than standing in one place and blindly mashing buttons.
Right now in its current state Guild Wars is easily as fun as Quake with swords and is in my opinion worth buying. I can't wait to play the beta.

Dodge projectiles? If this is true it means that the game has some twitch elements to it rather than being entirely level/equipment/template based. If true it might mean PvP actually has some element of skill in it. This merits thought....

[gith]

it has full collision dynamics: you can dodge projectiles, block runners with your body, etc. (there is no z-axis)


at e3 in the nvidia area, I had the chance to play one of the animator's characters (i forgot her name though) somewhat in the arena. let me tell you, being able to pick more than the skills you start with is a huge benefit

whoever said it was like magic the gatherign is correct, i think that with a limit of 8 skills per character that pvp will be more of a strategy type of combat system than in other games (where every warrior has the same skills, etc).

p.s. i won a key drive :D :D :D

[Phred]

I guess they got a lot of complaints about the barrenness of the first solo area. A patch today (13th) added more mobs to it. Unfortunately, IMO, they picked some  pretty nasty mobs to add. Anyone playing a more fragile class like a caster is going to die a bunch to them. I can't remember the name atm, but they added the mobs from the pve missions, the horde enemies you are sent out to scout in the first mission and fight through the other missions as well.

I also wish they'd allow you to bring  a friend or two into a solo mission for a less structured type of play. The regular pve missions are obviously tuned for the 4 player parties and other than the first one are quite difficult to win with less people.  A rl friend and I played quite a bit the last few days but had to add some people to get past all the missions but the very first one.

They have also added a new style coop pve mission where the ice mountains demo area was before. It looks like it's an 8 person mission. I didn't have time to play it today, hopefully tomorrow. I did spend time in the pick your own team PvP area and it was quite fun. Obviously, as I only knew one other person playing it wasn't much different than getting a random group but the games themselves were quite well designed I thought. Variations on capture the flag essentially. I saw three different games in the same area while playing. I don't know how many more there are there. You get a random mission when you join up.

I wish they had the graphics, landscape and animations of Sacred rather than the 3d Dungeon Seige like engine they're using, but some people like the 3d, even when it does look worse than 2d graphics. I agree with others that the starting areas are kind of blah, but then they do fit the story, which is of an area under constant invasion pressure from an ongoing war. The areas definately look like they've been ravaged by major battles to the point where all life is gone, sadly that's just not very pretty. The jungle area, as I said before, is much more pleasant, but you probably wont reach that until you've hit the point in the story where you've fled the area under siege. The pve story missions end when you reach the mountains in the demo though.

[HaemishM]

Well, I suggest you all who oppose this alpha give it more of a chance. for the people who claim that the solo areas suck, it just means you aren't finding the right spots to continue on to the next area. Personally I've found 2 new respawn towns and many, many, many named monsters just roaming around. I could probably name 3 that are extremely easy to get to right off the bat....

I actually wandered quite a bit, all the way from the starting area into the wastes. I think I hit 3 or 4 different solo areas, as well as some puzzling zones that seemed to have some kind of story but were really nothing more than a few NPC's in one room that talked about something. They seemed to be unfinished, or just not make much sense. I fought at least 2 or 3 boss type mobs, and actually managed to kill one. They were tougher, but not really anything different in terms of tactics. I still maintain that it took a lot of travel to hunt in the solo areas. It felt big and empty. I'm glad they upped the spawning rate though.

Solo, I think the game will be very solo unfriendly. You'll be able to solo, it just won't be very fun. The team PVP and PVE missions are where it's at. If they can build on those, and make the solo PVE not quite so boring, the game has a good chance. I am not convinced yet, but I am interested.

I also failed to mention one feature I did like; instant travel via the map. No travel times is teh gud.

[Threash]

Can someone explain how to use skill gems? i bought one and i have two skill points but i cant figure out what to do with it.

[Margalis]

Skill Gems: It says go to town and a trainer can teach you the skill.
---

I also see the comparison to magic. I notice that a ton of skills all cost the same amount to use, it's not like one skill is strictly better than another. Rather they are different. One good against high armor, one good against clumps of guys, one good for slowing down fast guys, etc.

I hated the movement and the targetting. It seemed to work poorly with the mouse or with the keyboard. Targetting with the mouse in very frustrating, it is difficult to tell if you are engaged or not. (I was a ranger) Moving with the keyboard seems jerky and the camera tends to move either too slow or too fast.

The collision is...interesting. I like the fact you can block people and get blocked, but combined with akward movement I found a lot of the time I was stuck on things I shouldn't have been stuck on.

Overall it was pretty decent...for a preview/beta. Wait and see.

[geldonyetich]

Personally, I liked the game.   I'll very likely be picking Guild Wars up, assuming I have any free time whilst in the middle of 20+ credits of school work by then.

That it will have no subscription is good news to me (I guess I should have read the FAQ).   I guess that's another nail in the "non-MMORPG" definition.   Although really, I think the difference between Everquest or City of Heroes and games like Phantasy Star Online and Guild Wars is very minor.   Sure, there's not hundreds of players fighting mobs on the same map as you, but the thing is you don't have a *need* to interact with more than a few players at a time.   More often than not, this uncompartmentalized approach of tossing everybody into the same mixxing pot just complicates the gameplay, especialy when other players butt in and steal your kills.

I hesitate to call the gameplay in Guild Wars either Diablo or Magic The Gathering, so much as an uneven fusion of sorts.   The way the combat is balanced and quickly flows is where the Diablo resemblence is -- there's even an Explode Corpse ability.    The only resemblance to Magic The Gathering is you can only take 8 abilities at a time (plus two temporary abilities if you discharge skill gems, for a total of 10) out of your "deck" of learned abilities.    This is a good thing because it keeps the balance relatively fair between starting and veteran players, but I imagine post release there will be a definate advantage for higher level players.

One thing Haemish didn't mention in his review is that there is also team PvE events.  You can solo PvE, or you can team PvE in a scenario (as opposed to just roving around and killing everything) where you and the rest of the group are actually following an unfolding scripted story.  Chalk group PvE up as another thing Guild Wars innovates upon.

Also, if you've been walking to your events, you've been going about it the wrong way.

In Guild Wars you teleport to the outpost you'd like which than advances you to the instanced map you'd like. The maps, which host the quests you participate in, vary in size. The actualy size of each map hasn't been released, nor has the number of maps.

So yes, while you can walk, don't complain about the boredom of it considering they actually offer you ways to teleport directly to where you want to go instantly.   I guess this is a release feature because NelsonT says it is.  (Source Here)

The PvP is quite fun, which is quite an achievement for a MMORPG, and there's actually three distinct varieties of it in the E3 demo.  

[*]Arena Mode: Randomly decided two teams of four battling it out.
[*]Siege mode: Randomly decided two teams of eight, one defending the castle (with a heavy NPC enforced defensive advantage), the other attacking it.
[*]Competitive mode: The one that Haemish describes with the picked teams, qualifying round versus undead, then several deathmatch/capture the flag/ect elimination rounds.    If you get far enough you actually get to raid this treasure crypt, then defend it against others players in a 2:1 battle.[/list:u]Right now Mesmers and Elementalists are somewhat gimped.  I've noticed a trend where the group with at least four warriors and a good support team seems to be the one that consistantly wins.  But with 6 months left to balance the game chances are good that this'll be ironed out.

[Margalis]

I played one large group vs. group battle, we got *reamed* by a team that was nearly all warriors. Part of that may be inexperience though. We could have set up a blocking wall and rained arrows on them, but we were very disorganized. They ran straight at us and that was it. There are a lot of abilities that slow people down, using that plus a few warriors as a wall might have made us do better.

In a team vs. team of total newbs, you would probably expect a straightforward warrior group to do well.

[geldonyetich]

Yeah, Guild Wars is far from balanced yet.   Warriors pretty much power through anything, and if you have a lot of them then you're going to win for sure.    You can snare them, and that's why you need a monk on your team to keep your Warriors relatively healed, but in general it takes so much time to kill a snared Warrior that snaring them is a temporary fix at best.

So, what happens when you have a team of 8 Warrior/Monks?   Running around, healing themselves and eachother, rezzing any of them who you actually manage to take down?

Good thing they've still 6 months left to balance things out.

[Phred]

Part of this is the spell line you start out with. If you look at warrior's armor, it has a huge weakness to electical damage. However mages don't start with any lightning spells. I tried lightning on a warrior and got one hit for 110 damage. 2 Mages could kill a warrior before he even got in range if they coordinated their kills.

Another interesting part of the game is the spell economy. When there are lots of people playing and doing the pve missions, spells sell for cheap to players from npcs but the npc's don't pay much for spells. Yesterday afternoon spells that had been selling for 100+ gold on npc's were down to 12 gold. The first day of the game most spells seemed to be selling for over 100 gold

Another interesting thing I noticed is all characters naked have exactly the same stats. Mages gain their extra mana and mana regen from their armor. Different classes cant wear each other's armor even if their secondary class should allow them to, so you won't see elementalist/warriors running around in plate.

[Valle]

I liked this game as well. Not exactly what I'd call balanced,but it was after all not the full game.

Just thought I'd add something about the economy: Having useless skill gems that only sell for 1 gold is pretty crap. BUT! Spend your golds at the GEM COLLECTOR and you could score some skills the Gem Traders don't even have. Every time I spent all my money on his random gems (25gold for a random gem) I made a profit reselling the ones I didn't want to the Gem Trader.

Of course,this is why the economy went to hell. People did this,earning shitloads of gold,all the while lowering the selling/buying price of all gems,until you couldn't sell at all.

Where the collector is you ask? NE in town. Guild area.

[XmasReturns]

Well, the gem collector was something I had absolutely no idea about...thanks, however I only have 2 hours left to play! MUST KEEP PLAYING AHHHHHH

[Phred]

I missed the gem collector too, but if it got abused that badly I'll bet it won't be in release either. That sure explains why prices went through the floor on thursday.

[Grave]

anything resembling Diablo gets priority in my multiplayer rpg gaming book :) (Diablo 2 Online would kick some serious ass :))
-they should have made combat much more streamlined instead of click-n-yawn-eq-boredom
something with fast action which depends on good player skill (e.g. you have to aim/dodge/and move around, not like usual boring static combat)
basically character/game structure of rpg with fps combat (combining best of both worlds, player character development and player combat/movement/aiming skills)
-camera needs a lot of work too, ability to lock camera, switch chase cam on, etc, same for fully customizable controls, playable in both 3rd and 1st person view with full 3d movement (unrestricted xyz)

dont get me wrong, i'm a big fan of immersive deeply complicated rpgs (Planescape - Torment, Fallout and Realms Of Arkania - Star Trail being on top of my all time fave list), but they just dont work or get boring in massive multiplayer environment

[Rasix]

SHIFT KEY

[NiX]

Overall it was pretty decent...for a preview/beta.

It's not even a beta. This is an alpha client. It did pretty damned well for an alpha. The most I saw as a problem were some pathing issues (my toon would run sideways/backwards and go incredibly slow) and a need for some minor balancing. I like the PvE as some of the mobs I fought ran away and made me chase while they found higher ground to attack me.

I also like the fact that shooting your bow from higher ground makes you hit harder. It's pure logic that usually doesn't apply to any bow type player in any MMORPG.

[Grave]

I also like the fact that shooting your bow from higher ground makes you hit harder. It's pure logic that usually doesn't apply to any bow type player in any MMORPG.

yeah that was cool, highest i could get was about 3-4x normal damage

[Belzac]

I really enjoyed playing.  My favorite bug was respawning after a death, but still in the dead postition.  Having my dead looking monk slide over the ground, popping up to cast spells was hilarious looking.  Plus it was a tatical advantage because the other team thought I was dead and just ran past me.

[XmasReturns]

I really enjoyed playing. My favorite bug was respawning after a death, but still in the dead postition. Having my dead looking monk slide over the ground, popping up to cast spells was hilarious looking. Plus it was a tatical advantage because the other team thought I was dead and just ran past me.

Too bad that bug won't stay around forever eh?