Guild Wars (PC)
Developed by: ArenaNet
Published by: NCSoft

Ah yes, yet another fantasy style online role playing game. You uber nerds can’t get enough can you? I guess each one has its own thing that makes it unique, but what does Guild Wars bring to the dinner table?

In total there are 6 professions to pick from and you are also given the ability to combine any 2 professions together. In terms of character creation, it’s fairly basic and there really isn’t anything too complex in terms of options and selection. There is also 2 different modes you can play, the role playing and PVP. Role playing is the story mode/quest oriented game play, and the PVP mode allows you to create a high level character you use in player to player battles.

The thing that makes this game different from others is that you get your very own world to play on, unless you invite others to join you. This means that you won’t be seeing others run around during your quests. The only time you will see other players are in certain cities where you can hang out chat and do all those Geekalicious things people do in online RPGs. So in other words it’s not a persistent world where everyone lives. Sounds lame at first but there are benefits and drawbacks from it. For example lag issues that bog down frame rates are rarely evident because you’re usually the only one in the world using bandwidth.

Guild Wars manages to borrow and fix most of the setbacks in MMO style games. The tedious traveling issues have been solved by allowing the player to freely teleport to cities they have already visited. Instead of traveling halfway across the world only having to find out you have to return back to the same guy. Why not teleport your punk ass too him/her? Another cool feature is the ability to hire mercenaries to help you conquer harder quests rather then going through the hassle of gathering a team together. Overall the quests are typical style: find this, kill this, and talk to this, but it’s still fun walking around and absorbing the stunning environments.

Overall Guild Wars has its minor annoyances of having to reform you party every time you teleport, invisible walls, not being able to jump, and enemies aggravating you from great distances. But the game will be improved over time as more and more chapters are created. With all those things set aside; Guild Wars is definitely worth a try. The major thing that attracted me to this game is no monthly fees and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I know that many people will want to compare this to World of Warcraft and if I had to pick between the two I would pick Warcraft simply because its more in-depth. But with free monthly charges, you don’t have to worry about committing vast amounts of time in order to get your money’s worth. — Chian

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