SiD the Turtle » Guild Wars Prophecies

Exploring Guild Wars: Prophecies – Part One

Kieran — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:03:37 +0000

Welcome to Ascalon City

The original Guild Wars campaign is known as Prophecies. Starting this campaign takes your newly created character to Ascalon City, the largest city in the Kingdom of Ascalon:

Ascalon City is not the capital of the Kingdom, that title goes to the city of Rin, which lies on the other side of The Great Northern Wall.

Ascalon City is the main hub of activity for players new to the game. Home to merchants, armourers and smiths new players often return here after adventuring to buy better equipment, pick up quests, or participate in an impromptu dance.

Views of the city are dominated by The Great Northern Wall. This vast stone structure was built over a period of hundreds of years to defend the Kingdom from the Charr: a race of upright-walking beasts that appear to worship the flame as if it were a god, who have fought a long war against the human peoples of Ascalon. The Great Northern Wall is the main defence against the Charr onslaught which can be seen in near-perpetual war with the Ascalonian army from many of the Wall’s ramparts. Visitors to the Kingdom are strongly advised against going north of the Wall, if they must they should go in force and avoid contact with the Charr hordes.

Gallery

Guild Wars Trial Keys

Kieran — Sun, 20 May 2007 22:40:46 +0000

Apparently the next issues of PC Zone, PC Gamer and PC Format will each have a free trial for Guild Wars. PC Gamer gets Prophecies, PC Format gets Factions and PC Zone gets the newest campaign, Nightfall:

http://www.gamershell.com/news/38613.html

How Guild Wars works

Kieran — Sun, 20 May 2007 22:27:30 +0000

This post started off as a reply to NokkonWud, but as I went into so much detail I thought it might as well come in handy to others considering getting the game.

Guild Wars is broken down into three core games:

Prophecies: the original game which is the closest to a traditional western RPG in theme of the three. Despite being the oldest of the campaigns it is not a deserted realm by any means.
Factions: the second add-on which takes an oriental theme. I can’t comment much on this one as Gameplay are being slow with the package, but it is apparently the smallest of the three and PvP oriented. Again I am not sure yet but this campaign is apparently popular for Alliance Battles, a form of PvP.
Nightfall: the third campaign, which has a African and Arabian feel. As this is the newest the guild I am in, the Godless (an offshoot of OcUK) seem to exist here the most.

Each campaign can be bought individually but if you have more than one your characters can move between them. The key difference between Guild Wars and traditional MMOs are that the level cap is a low 20, which can be reached very quickly, making it a game more about skill than grind. It also means that some people can get bored of it as there is no urge to level up as you can’t, most people migrate to the PvP side of things, which can be as frantic as an online FPS. Also outside of towns the game is instanced, both a good thing so you don’t have to queue for bosses to spawn, and a bad thing as you won’t wander into anyone else apart from you party. It is definitely entertaining, which I can prove based on that fact I am approaching 400 hours of game time, though I’d say it’s an MMO you’ll either love or hate.

There are two reasons I’d say to give it a go. Firstly there are no monthly fees which means you can pick it up and put it down at your leisure (I stopped playing in 2005, my characters still exist since I started playing again). Secondly the newest campaign, Nightfall can be picked up – in collector’s edition form no less – for a bargain £18.96 on Amazon.co.uk which is cheaper than most places do the standard editions.