“Guild Wars” isn’t a traditional MMO. While navigating the land, fighting monsters, and completing quests, you’ll never see another player unless they’re in your group. The entire world outside of major cities or particular points of interest act as instanced zones (for you “World of Warcraft” players, think of the world as one big dungeon). This sort of gameplay allows players to continue on their merry way uninterrupted by having to compete with other players for enemy spawns or falling victim to player-killing shenanigans. Yet, instanced zoning also means players won’t see other characters simply traveling the landscape, making the multiplier experience feel surprisingly like a solo one.

Similar to “Diablo 2” (which is no coincidence since many of “Guild Wars’” developers worked on Blizzard’s masterpiece), players can hire mercenaries to assist in the vanquishing of nefarious NPCs. So if rounding up a bunch of other real people to complete quests doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, there’s always that option. But be warned, these hired hands are almost never as powerful, or as sociable, as another player. This is a massively multiplayer game after all.

In many online MMOs, players are required to know exactly when and where to use up to a few dozen spells and abilities to fully utilize their character’s potential. In “Guild Wars,” each of the six classes has over 150 skills available, but there’s a catch; only eight may be taken into battle. Since they’re all easily swapped in and out, the system encourages players to experiment with different builds depending on what they are doing. Someone who plans to engage in PVP will more often than not have an entirely different set of skills than someone who battles NPCs and completes quests.

Ask around, and many gamers might say the best part about “Guild Wars” is its lack of any kind of monthly fee. Once you purchase the retail copy, that’s it. You never need to spend money on the game again. Of course, developer ArenaNet and publisher NCsoft need to make money, so they’ve released three stand-alone expansion packs to the game: “Eye of the North,” “Factions,” and “Nightfall.”

Each adds a smörgåsbord of new content such as character classes, additional skills, and fancy new lands to explore. Players aren’t required to purchase them, but we highly recommend picking them up since most of the community already has. The last thing you want is to join a guild and find yourself unable to participate in your group’s social affairs because for all intents and purposes the areas they inhabit don’t exist in your character’s world.

Review Trevor DeRiza
October 9, 2009