Epic questing (Guild Wars (PC))

Member Name: bored_at_home

Product:	Guild Wars (PC)
Date:	11/01/09 (7 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Requires real skill, a lot of content, endless things to aim for

Disadvantages: Young community, may be lonely at the start

The guild wars content is the mercedes of storyline questing. The "Prophecies" storyline is the most compelling piece of gaming I've ever followed, I'm not huge on roleplaying and I don't even read fiction books but I was completely blown away by it. The initial purpose of the game is to follow the story completing the major tasks - these are 60-90 minute scenarios where you and up to five others have to kill your way through a puzzle in line with the storyline. These are so engaging, a lot of the time they involve a lot of team work like "Split up, one team take the door the other look after the prince". Guild wars faces a lot of criticism in the online gaming community as its very easy to reach maximum level but level has very little bearing on this game. Once you reach maximum level you earn skill points to spend on stealing spells from bosses! "Damn that boss was difficult, I think I'll have what he's got!".

You reach maximum level about half way through the storyline and then just keep going, it gets progressively harder and can require an immense amount of pre-planning i.e. "I need frost resistant armour for the snow-boss". Everything you earn carries forward to guild wars 2 and if you get completely bored there is always rare pet collecting.

The games main draw back is its young community but the games developers have fallen over themselves trying to combat this by letting you complete the quests by yourself with your own personal computer army. They've taken this to the extreme by adding named heros to collect and equip.

A great game with a very long shelf-life.

Summary: Great game, still has some punch left in it