The Best Free MMORPG (Guild Wars (PC))

Name: Oatso

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Product:	Guild Wars (PC)
Date:	28/11/06 (835 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its Free

Disadvantages: Limited entertainment

So Guild Wars. It's one of the few MMORPG's out there that is free and because of that many people believe it to be rubbish. This is entirely untrue it's a fantastic game I still play it occasionally even now and that's because its free. Unlike the more played MMO's Guild Wars doesn't cost a penny (aside from buying the disc) this means that if you want to play you can, there's no more I cant play this month because I can't afford it or wasting money because you paid for a month then got set a massive assignment. You juts pick up and play when ever you feel like it.

Surprisingly for a free MMO it is updated on a regular basis, about once a month, not huge updates mind only ever bug fixes. As you approach Christmas and Halloween they but in seasonally features as well and this combine with the already good visuals make the whole game even better. Sadly however these environments are only that good because aside from cities or outposts everywhere is spawn separately for you and your party. This can be incredibly annoying as you can't just pick up a group when ever you feel like it you have to form a group in a city with a specific purpose in mind and then go and do it. Sadly the fact that it is hard to group destroys the fact that it is an MMO and often you find yourself just using the computer henchmen the give you so you can quickly get the quests done.

That leads me onto another one of the games lesser flaws. Many of the quest involve huge amounts of travelling often being attacked all the way. Just so you can give someone a note or they can tell you that they don't know what in the hell your on about go and speak to somebody the other side of the continent.

Anyway back to the good bits in Guild Wars you have a primary and a secondary profession this makes it more fun as you can try out the different skills of the different professions without having to delete your characters (you only get 4 slots) there is also very little penalty to which class you chose as your primary, you only lose one of the secondary classes skills. The 2 profession system also make the PvP of Guild Wars much more entertaining as you never know quite what skills your enemy has until they use them.

Sadly Guild Wars is lacking in extra curricular activities, other than questing and PvP there is very little else to do, all the armour looks the same so you cant even look unique and there are no crafting skills or mini games or anything to divert your attention for even a minute, the best you can hope for is to join a new guild and spend hours earning enough to upgrade your guild hall.

PvP in Guild Wars is pretty much the same as every other MMORPG you fight people to get a better ranking, with a better ranking you can get better items and skills which you haven't unlocked yet. However unlike most MMO's if you want to do PvP you can create a PvP only character that is already lvl 20 (the current lvl cap) this means that the fights are down almost entirely to the skill of the play rather than how many hours you have put into getting the best items I thought this was a breath of fresh air after getting owned on a regular bases by people with tier 3 armour sets in WoW.

And finally we get onto guilds as you would expect for a game called Guild Wars there is a lot you can do with a guild. Everything cost money so to create a guild you need money to have a cape you need money and to own a guild hall you need money. Personally I think that the guild hall is the best bit of the game. For a price you can put nearly everything in your guild hall merchants, furniture, armour smiths and portals to the PvP arenas to name but a few

Summary: A game you can enjoy whenever you like