Guild Wars Gone Gold, Previewed

Guild Wars, the first offering from NCSoft subsidiary ArenaNet, has gone gold. A preview of the game based on the last weekend of the Beta is available at 1up.com. From the article: "Once the wonder started to wear off, a creeping hangover of disorientation replaced it. Still standing there slack-jawed, the bustle of people going here and there with purpose made us suddenly aware of how clueless we were. Gathering our senses we fell into the familiar pattern of talking to the residents and picking up the quests of the day." Guild Wars is a unique MMOG offering, as it will not require a subscription cost, has almost no grind, and will focus on organized PvP. The game releases next Thursday, the 28th of April.

Comments

no subscription.....

[Vermifax]

Of course they're also planning on releasing expansions every few months.

This of course is your monthly fee.

Beta

[Rs_Conqueror]

I beta tested it on the 15th. It was pretty good from what I've deen, although the only other MMORPG I have played has ben city of heroes, so I don't know how it holds up to other D&D based RPGs.

There were some things about it that kind of bugged me however, first, you can't jump. I know in RPGs where the point of the game is fighting and leveling up, jumping isn't that big of a deal, but still having the ability does make the game seem a bit more "real" for me.

Secondly, you can only play as a human, no elves, dwarfs, gnomes, or super intellegent shades of the color blue. This was a bit of a bummer for me, becuase I had really hoped to play as a shapeshifting elf (half elf half volf). But I guess they were really trying to avoid the steriotype that has been slapped on them as "WoW rip off".

And lastly, the lack of character design choices, you get maybe 12 hair types (that tend to be the same, no matter what profession you choose), 12 or so hair colors, 6 face types, your basic skin colors, and thats about it. I had really hoped to be able to change tome of the body proportions to have a character that actually looked like me, but all you can really change is hight. Also the clothing choices are very limited, in fact there are none. You get your basic profession spisific clothing and thats it. Although yes you can get new cloths in quests and by trading, it would still be nice to have say, three different suits to pick from at the start of the game.

The gameplay was pretty much what I expected, you have standerd WASD controls, you click objects to select ect... However one minor thing that bugged me was, the second you select an enamy object, you start attacking, regardless of its level. You CAN call off the attack and still have him selected so you can see what level it is, if you have a hand-to-hand weapon out, however if you are a range attacker you shoot one arrow, and you comitted to this fight till death (and death is useually the case).

now these problems are not rearly as bad as I make them out to be, the gameplay is very nice. I had a blast playing it. The quests are quite fun, and not in the least bit dull or tedious, the level design is breathtaking to say the least, even on lower graphic resolutions.And if you can rope a few friends to shell out the 50 bucks and pick it up, get a party going, there will be no end to the fun you will have.

Re:Not likely

[Golias]

Huh. Lots of battlenet "d00dz" crowding into a server called "Hellscream." What a shocker.

Log into a server with a name which doesn't sound cool to twelve-year olds, and you probably will have much better luck.

(Currently playing on Silverhand, not seeing much of that crap.)