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Guild Wars

For all of the accolades that online RPGs have gotten over the years, there has always been a chorus of gamers who say, “Well, that’s cool and all, but I’m not paying a monthly fee for one of these things.”  Enter Guild Wars, which takes this whole pay-to-play concept and tosses it out the window.  This in and of itself is a pretty neat approach an online role-playing, but it doesn’t mean a whole lot if the rest of the game isn’t very good.  Thankfully that isn’t the case here, as Guild Wars provides wonderful visuals, well-paced battles, a story that players actually want to learn more about, and a very strong player versus player component, all of which can be enjoyed with others, or all by your lonesome if you’re so inclined.

Right from the start, it quickly becomes apparent that a lot of work went into the Guild Wars’ graphics, as the landscapes that can be explored are absolutely breathtaking.  There are mountain ranges, valleys, forests, creepy dungeons, and everything in between.  All of these have a ton of detail, and are bathed in some of the most impressive lighting one will come across in quite some time.  Beyond this, the game’s characters, monsters, and various other creatures are equally easy on the eyes.  What is nice about them, though, is that their animations are all very smooth.  There are plenty of different animations to see with the various attacks at one’s disposal, though this is far more the case for melee types since the attacks differ depending on whether one is using an axe, hammer, or sword, in contrast to magic-users who are busy casting spells which don’t require quite such grandiose movements in order to be performed.  What is really amazing about Guild Wars’ visuals is that players don’t need a ridiculously powerful PC in order for the game to run.  Usually when someone sees a game as gorgeous as this, they suddenly breakdown in tears because they know they’ll have to blow several hundred dollars on high-end videocards, processors, and so forth just to get the thing running.  This just isn’t so with Guild Wars.  My PC’s strength barely qualifies as being “so-so”, and the game has worked marvellously for me so far.  Hopefully PC game developers will take notes about what ArenaNet has done with Guild Wars’ because the sheer level of visual quality the game can achieve on mid-range computers is really something.

But Guild Wars is more than a pretty face, as the game is also extremely fun to play.  From very early on, players will find themselves being swarmed by enemies as they fight their way through quests.  In a lot of similar online RPGs, this just isn’t the case.  In fact, any additional enemies that join a battle, often referred to as “adds”, can doom a party since they need to focus so much of their attention on defeating enemies one monster at a time.  Guild Wars goes in the complete opposite direction, often times throwing monsters at players six to ten at a time.  Because of this, the level of intensity in Guild Wars’ combat is quite high.  When rounding a corner and suddenly having to face a dozen enemies the initial feeling leans more toward dread simply from the intimidating numbers coming down on the player, but there’s always a sense that victory is possible if everyone in the party plays their cards right, and when the enemies are finally defeated the sense of 

 

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satisfaction is difficult to beat.  You and your party really feel good about the win, and happily pat each other on the back.  Usually such strong sentiments of “Yay us!” can only be found when tackling notoriously strong end game bosses in an MMORPG, but just from the way that Guild Wars sends wave after wave of enemies at players it’s quite possible to feel this good right from level one to the game’s level cap at twenty.

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Controlling one’s character in combat, or even just while wandering around, is very straightforward.  Players can either move around via the keyboard with the a, s, d, and w, keys just like in World of WarCraft, or one can simply go with a point-and-click approach a la Diablo.  Either is very simple, and the camera manages to behave itself, ensuring that players can see what they are doing in battle.  There are also a number of special skills that players can use while adventuring.  These are assigned to eight slots toward the bottom of the screen, and players need to do this before leaving town, because it isn’t possible to swap out skills while out in the frontiers, beating down monsters.  The skills in and of themselves are cool and generally useful, but the problem comes in that there aren’t enough slots to really get the most out of one’s character.  Ten slots would be perfect, as eight of them are cutting things a little tight.  It wouldn’t be so bad if there were no sub-classes, but as it stands players are stuck using the majority of their skill slots for their main class, and maybe a couple others for their sub-class.

It really can’t be stressed enough that while this game is an online RPG, it isn’t exactly like an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, or Everquest.  While in a city or outpost there are indeed dozens of other players roaming about to get new quests, sell things, and get new gear, but once one steps out into the wilderness the game is instanced.  As such, only the player and his or her party are in the game world, fighting off the bad guys, and trying to complete whatever quest they are on.  If anything, it makes questing a lot more convenient over the course of the game.  In your standard, run of the mill MMORPG, there are plenty of times when a quest asks for a certain NPC to be killed, but when you get to where this character is supposed to be it almost feels like you’re in a deli and have to take a number, then wait your turn to kill the thing because there are three other parties already there waiting for the thing to re-spawn.  Since the game world is constantly being instanced outside of the safety of the cities in Guild Wars, players don’t need to worry about this sort of thing.

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