Guild Wars

Introduction

Guild Wars
Publisher: NCSoft
System requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 800MHz P-III
Price: US$49.99 (shop for this item)

The thing with MMORPGs is that they kill gamers. You heard me. We used to be a proud race, grazing in video game stores and malls. We bought games, a lot of games, and we played them. It was a glorious time. Now with MMOs we're hobbled. We buy one game every three years or so, and we play that game exclusively. All night. Through the weekends. Missing your friend's weddings. Skipping funerals. Just because you have to get that plus-2 sword of awesome wickedness. Sure you pay a monthly fee, but you're not buying games, it's a good trade off in terms of money.

Luckily I for one have avoided the MMO bug. I'm just too flighty; I like to spread my gaming affections around. Never got into Everquest, and I spent a lot of time avoiding World of Warcraft by convincing myself I didn't need another bill—the monthly bill thing was also unattractive. I didn't want to power level, and killing rats just sounded boring.

Guild Wars seemed to be something different though, a game that was sort of Diablo and sort of World of Warcraft, and with no monthly fee. The early screenshots were amazing, and it was all I was hearing about from friends. So I took the plunge. While it isn't exactly an MMORPG, it's close enough to make me a little scared of the clichés. Instead, it turned out to be something else, something new. You don't need me to tell you that's rare in this industry, and should always be rewarded.

The question remains though, is the game good? Why, let's see.

This land was green and good, until the crystal cracked

I was lucky enough to nab one of the preorder codes so I got to start the game a day early. This is of course after I spent two hours trying to get my CD key to work. You see, they printed the numbers and didn't really tell you where the key began and ended so of course, I put in the whole thing, including the other random number below it. After a few angry calls to tech support a friend showed me my mistake, and red-faced, I put in the right key and got it to work. It was a pleasant surprise, the servers were full and the game was stable. I didn't have to wait to log in and there were no major crashes. Well done.

There are really two games here, a quest based quasi-MMO with a surprisingly robust story, and a combat mode that's pure PVP. We'll tackle them one at a time, starting with the quest.

The way the multiplayer is handled is rather elegant. The only true MMO areas are the towns, where characters trade items, get quests, hang out and well, take their clothes off and dance. I have no clue why, but people love to get naked and dance in towns.

It's easy to find a party in town, or to get rid of items. If you'd rather not party with a real person, every town has computer controller players you can take out with you in the great wide world. The computer's pathfinding is pretty good—your NPC characters will rarely get stuck—but they don't exactly work well together. You'll often find yourself dead because your healer wasn't the most efficient at his job.

So it's best to hook up with real people, which isn't hard to do. A lot of people are playing, and it's simple to set up a guild with your friends so you can find them in the game quickly and painlessly.

System requirements