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Is it for everyone? Probably not! But...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I just want to say that this game is not an expansion pack, it is far better, actually. Factions is probably the better version of the first Guild Wars, and anyone who is starting out should probably play this first. Why? Because it starts out with a campaign that introduces common buttons, methods and gameplay information that is imparative to know, and you aren't supplied with this information in the original.

The graphics in this game are by far better than the original. But I will warn you now, if you don't care for the asian scene, don't purchase this. You are trapped in the asian scene, which is incredibly realistic, untill you get off of the island. In the original, you weren't put in the asian scene. The lands that you travel will take you by suprise, and you will enjoy what you see.

The gameplay is amazing, you are challenged in ways that you aren't normally challanged in mmorpgs! You have to choose from the list of skills that you have in order to make a build, you can change your attributes (What makes you powerful in what) at any time to better fit your chosen skills, and you can be different from the rest by choosing different skills and making your own combos. The pvp action in this game is simply amazing, and the pve is incredible. PvE also supplies you with different cpu party choices, which gives you a wider range to choose from when questing for levels and skills.

It's not the average MMORPG, but if you enjoy interaction with people, then this is probably the game you are looking for.

Awesome Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought Guild Wars Factions the day it was out and wow it was a blast. Although there are some few glitches here and there, but ArenaNet is fixing them up pretty fast.

If you have played the first Guild Wars (Guild Wars Prophecies), you'll love Factions. Not only is the PvE storyline bigger but it also packs in whole new level of difficulty. You on longer will beat missions on your first try anymore.

Also, leveling up is so much faster when you start on Cantha. The rewards of the new quests always have a huge chunk of XP points. You'll be at level 20 in no time at all.

Lastly, the graphics/scenery/sounds are stupdendous. ArenaNet definitly did a great job captivating the players with their beautiful rendering of the Asian culture.

Game of the Year

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Buy this game! Guild wars has amazing graphics and a intresting combat engine. I have not played the PvP section of the game, yet, only the role-playing section. Guild wars is an fun and interesting game. Amazing graphics. You can see every detail in your players body. I im a hardcore gamer and belive me this game has amazing graphics. The game is a solid built MMORPG destined to be on of the greatest games of the year. Some of the monsters can be overwelming though. I usually travel with some henchmen. You can also get help from friends on quests. Buy this game.

Good game. Better than World of Warcraft

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: November 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The comparisons to World of Warcraft (WoW) abound because the games are similar genres -- fantasty-styled mmorpg (massively multiplayer online role playing game). But this game has some cool differences

Pluses:
+ You only pay for it once and have unlimited online play (unlike WoW's $15 per month subscription).

+ It is great for solo play. Unlike WoW, if you don't have a party, you can bring along 1 to 5 AI characters of varying classes to suit your game style.

+ Gameplay is very well done. It is easily on par with Blizzard in terms of graphic quality, controls, depth of character development, etc.

+ I think the options created by dual class character is more fun than WoW's "professions."

+ Guild Wars doesn't have lame cartoony gimmicky characters (there are no cutesy engineering gnomes that ride robotic birds ruining an otherwise believable fantasy storyline).

Minuses:
- WoW has better sound design. (Guild Wars could benefit from better ambient sound design, but GW is not horrible and not obnoxious, it's just not on par with Fable or WoW on this front.)

- Guild Wars is not available for Mac, unless you're using Apple's Boot Camp with an Intel-Mac (duo core or duo core 2). (Note: It doesn't yet run with Parallels because Parallels doesn't support DirectX.) It runs very well on my Duo Core 2, MacBook with ATI video card.

the most beautiful game ever made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: July 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Ever so slightly more stunning than Shadow of the Colossus. Art direction on a level with Colossus, Anarchy Online, and Eve. Graphics almost equal with Half-Life 2. Character, costume, and weapon design about as good to Anarchy Online's. Jeremy Soule's best music since Icewind Dale. Subtle and dark and just lovely.

Sweet area design. A real sense of grandeur, with none of the depressing dustbowl imagery of the original Prophecies release, but far more vertical than its pre-Searing segment. Vistas, man! Vistas! Did I mention grandeur? Lush scenery recalling the best of Asheron's Call 2 or (again) Anarchy Online. Mountain views. Lots of sunflowers.

Sound effects are better than average, and better than Prophecies, especially the ambient sounds. Nothing too special, but you also won't have to hear the over-familiar stock effects every few seconds that most RPGs seem to resort to here than there.

The counter-intuitive geometry bugaboos are gone. You don't feel like you're having a nightmare about Final Fantasy X. If it looks like you can get someplace, you can. You can't jump around. Whether this is a good or bad thing I'll leave to gentle reader.

The same fun-but-not-quite-perfect combat you may know from Prophecies, but there's a greater feeling of violence owing to contrast with the serene setting. And with this game Guild Wars takes a step nearer to true MMO status, as not quite all of the content is personalized and instanced to the point of being meaningless. Things happen in town from time to time, and there's a shared global conflict underway.

For those on the fence who haven't played Prophecies, know that the instancing actually in some way increases the sense of one world with many players, as there's no sharding and the sense of isolation seems to encourage socialization within the not-so-instanced towns. However, as in Prophecies, you will never unexpectedly cross paths with other players while adventuring. The Diablo-style "adventure created just for you" stuff is still the order of the day - but then that's apparently how they avoid charging a subscription fee.

Overall, the best purchase I've made since Shadow of the Colossus, and the most visually impressive game I've seen in several years.

A rather lacklustre MMORPG

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: November 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I actually bought Factions about the same time I bought WoW, thinking I'd like to get into this MMORPG thing; and WoW and GW being the biggest MMORPGs it seemed like a fair deal.

I will admit that for a time I did enjoy playing Factions but I really strain to say anything very good about it. My biggest gripe is the economy. If you're going to try and accumulate any amount of gold prepare to sell almost exclusively to other players, as quests and vendors give a paltry sum of money. The sense of reward versus the difficulty of the quest or mission really does feel horribly disproportionate.
Now, this wouldn't be too bad save for the fact that most skills (and in particular the higher level skills) are purchased. So...I need to purchase skills. And yet the quests don't give near enough to allow me to purchase them. Right.

I also get the feeling that there is a very strong leaning towards the PvP side of things, which is something that really doesn't interest me. Unless you've played for countless hundreds of hours you're likely to be styled as a 'noob'.
Again, this wouldn't be so bad if the PvE experience was, well, a little more entertaining. Henchmen (AI controlled allies) can very often be of little use, running off to dispatch with the nearest monster, unless specifically dictated, and even then this is rather limited.
Other players can be useful, but again these tend to be people who put a lot of time in and expect those they accompany to be of equal profeciency.

I've played most of the way through the main quest, but the frustratingly difficult missions and now the impossibility of actually getting to the next area have lead me to abandon it. Eight people in a group just does not cut it.
And, as another reviewer pointed out, aside from the PvP element there isn't much replayability.

Maybe I come off as being a little harsh, and perhaps I am, but I really do feel cheated of a decent gameplay experience. I don't have hundreds of hours to spend looking for rare item drops and then trying to hawk them off on other players, to get the gold to get the skills, to kill the enemies to do it all over again.
I suppose the only good thing, in this light, that the whole Guild Wars series has going for it is the lack of a monthly fee. Which, for me, doesn't make up for the lack of gameplay.

Excellent game - STAY AWAY FROM USED COPIES!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Overall, Guild Wars is an excellent on-line Diablo-type game. It's not like WOW, but unlike other MMOG games, the on-line access for Guild Wars is free!

GW Factions adds the Assassin and Ritualist classes and improved storage, as well as accelerated leveling to get you into some of the later missions a lot quicker. For veterans of the original GW, you'll also notice that this game will teach you the basics of combat and how important it is to build a diverse skill set that can be deadly. You'll also go from 4 character slots to 6!

This game, unlike the first GW, is set in an Oriental themed country called Cantha. It starts out in the Shing Jea Monastery. Also, the competitive missions take place in different areas. There are 4 new Guild vs. Guild maps with this edition of GW and many other new things. You don't have to have the original GW to play this game, but to have both will give you a much larger world to play in. Any characters created in either continent (Tyria or Cantha) can travel by boat to the other land as long as you own both campaigns. Characters created in one campaign can interact and play with players from the other campaign. For example, if you own both GWs and you want to play with your buddy who only has the first GW, you can still use a character created in Factions to play in the original GW campaigns with your buddy! However, he will not be able to join you in any Faction campaigns until he gets Factions.

This is important! STAY AWAY FROM USED COPIES! I've seen some being sold with NO key! Without the key, you cannot play the game, period. If you buy it used with a key, that key has already been registered and tied to a particular user's account. You will NOT be able to play the game since the key and that person's account are tied together. Unless the person selling you the used copy gives you their GW username and password, you will be out of luck and will NOT be able to play Guild Wars at all. So, save the headaches and just pay for the game new. It's worth it! Also, find a lot of friends who want to play it as well. The NPC henchmen are alright, but when it's you and your buddies out there questing, it's SO much more fun and a human player will play better than an NPC player.

Simply Great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: May 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is superb. I have listed Pros/Cons Below

Pros:

Invisible Loading times (Doesnt seem to load at all)
Steller Graphics
Great Sound
Lengthy List of Professions
FREE!!!!! NO MONTHLY FEES!
PVP/PVC Areas

Cons:

20 level cap
WAY to addicting :)

Fan from the start

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I know what an MMORPG is supposed to be. I played Diablo II, and WoW. I was an EQ addict. Knowing what I was willing to put up with in a game, and those things which I was willing to part with to get them, I have to say that Guild Wars has achieved the best balance so far. I stopped playing EQ when the monthly fee outweighed my desire to play. That said, the allure of a game with no monthly fee was definitely high.
I enjoy MMORPGs for a few reasons: Social environment, ease of use, interest in the plot/story/purpose, and the ability of that game to hold my interest.
Socially, any game which I can play with friends is a winner. But I also enjoy making friends with people I play online with. Basically, a win-win situation with GW.
Ease of Use... OK, not the most intuitive control system. However, a few hours into play, I pretty much had it- and everyone does it differently from what I've found. Spells don't require a great use of mastery in order to do well, and the ability to change your character as often as you wish allows for an easier learning process. Not doing well with a character does not necessarily mean a re-roll. It could mean a secondary change, or simply an attribute change, neither of which are irreversable. Also, the new character areas make it simple to learn the controls without constantly dying in between. Leveling is fast, and capped at 20, making the game one of learning the art of spell combinations- much harder than having all of your spells available at once, however, only necessary once you have conquered the basics.
The story is interesting, but it isn't the only reason to play. Guild v. Guild battles, Player v. Player battles, Personal Titles, Team v. Team battles, mini-games, dungeon crawls, holiday events, and a miriad other reasons exist as reasons to play. And while you cannot take characters specifically designed for PvP into PvE, you CAN go the other way. The purpose of WoW seems to be guilds doing guild things. GW's purpose seems to be, "Do what you like to do." Sure, it may not do everything as well as a specific game might, but the selection is done well enough for most people to enjoy what they do.
This game holds my interest. It wouldn't have if I had jumped in with Factions. It may have if I had started with Nightfall. It continues to hold me into Eye of the North. I will most likely pick up GWII. I recommend anyone interested start with Prophesies. Then, if you like it, go to Nightfall. If you still like it, buy Factions. And if you make it through Factions, reward yourself with Eye. I know that's not the order they came out in, but it's the best order for learning the system. Starting with Nightfall is a BAD idea. While it is probably the best game, it isn't the best learning curve for new players. Start with the basics. You're more likely to enjoy it.
There are a few other things which differentiate GW from its major competitor WoW, but I think it hits the best balance of any game so far.

U might like if

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: June 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. free on line playing and its just great. take on role character to new levels. its always hard to follow up on a great game with a sequal but they did great job. I am at the end of game, but best part is it does not end u can do so much more. love it.

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