Guild Wars
A highly anticipated project from the creators of Diablo 2, everyone hoped this would be Diablo meets MMORPG, but looks can be decieving. One of
the biggest features of this series is that it has no monthly fees like your standard MMO, but does this make it worth owning? Billed as a "Cooperative RPG" for
"casual gamers", not all is good in the world of Tyria...
It all started with Guild Wars: Prophecies, which when I first read about I nearly creamed my pants in joy, the thought of a dialup friendly mmo that's
free to play?!? Sign my ass up! But once I started playing I stumbled upon one glaring problem, and I do mean glaring. Holy fucking glow Batman! Talk about overuse
of the bloom effect, you can't hardly see your damn characters sometimes. Anywho, Prophecies introduces you to the world of Tyria, where you must fight generic
enemies and become a generic hero, which is strangely lacking in rewards when you do save the world countless times. You're presented with many a landscape
in this game, but every one of them has some annoying ass pop-up enemies that show up about every 5 steps. You'll be exploring icy mountains, fiery volcanos, vast
deserts, and everything inbetween, though it gets tedious rather quickly.
A year after Prophecies, a different team blessed (or cursed) us with Factions, a new game in the series which gives us an asian-themed land, but without
the dog eating, shitting on schoolgirls, or buying used panties from merchants. Factions introduces two new professions, the Assassin, which is more ninja than backstabby
rogue; and the Ritualist, which is like a WoW Shaman but without the IWIN button. You'll be exploring new landscapes, and by that I mean I hope you like dingy sewers
and overcrowded cities, though to be fair, later on you get to choose between visiting a frozen solid sea which is pretty awesome, and a dank petrified gothy forest, where I
halfass expected to hear My Chemical Romance playing in the background. The real complaint with this title is they somehow found something worse than pop-up enemies;
this time we get enemies that fucking explode when you kill them, and can be resurrected so they can explode again.....didn't these guys learn their lesson with Diablo 2's
Act 3, the act everyone dreaded and tried to rush through because of the fucking exploding midgets?!?
Six months later the original team behind Prophecies returns to us with the third title in this series, Nightfall. Have you ever wanted to explore the Guild Wars
version of Africa? Yeah me neither, I'd rather not get AIDS, but surprisingly this one turned out better than I would have hoped, though a bit bland in the landscape department.
Yet again we get 2 new professions; The Paragon, your standard high and mighty religious nutjob leader, or paladin as rpg fans would call them; and the Dervish, yet another
melee class that for some reason has shitty armor, but more health than other classes. At least with a Dervish you can look badass wielding a scythe, but don't expect to be
doing much tanking with this class. Arenanet gets back to the standard fair of annoying monsters and does away with exploding assholes thankfully, and this time they put in
some truly terrifying and huge beasts to fight. The first time I ran into a Shambling Mesa I nearly lost bowel control.
In August 2007, just intime for the birthday of yours truly, Arenanet releases the first and only expansion pack for the Guild Wars series, titled Guild Wars: Eye
of The North. Now this is what I'm talking about, an expansion for max level character content, new badass enemies, awesome environments to explore, and fun new races
to interact with. First up is the Norn, these guys are pretty much the most badass thing to exist in Guild Wars next to me, they're 9 foot tall nordic asskicking machines that
can turn into bears to beat even larger amounts of ass. Oddly enough the other new race is the opposite in a way, the Asura. These are the Guild Wars equivilent of Goblins
or Gremlins; you know, smartass midgets with large egos who are generally neutral and always trying to make a profit....my kind of scum. The expansion lacks PvP content
but that's ok because PvP in this game is generally for fucktards anyways. I nearly forgot to mention the minigames in EotN. We get 3 new "minigames" for pve; Dwarven Boxing,
which automatically wins because Dwarves and boxing are awesome and manly; Norn Fighting Tournament, which is kinda like playing a fighting game with Guild Wars characters,
a really bad fighting game; and lastly Polymock, for everyone that wanted to be a Pokemon master/dork/pedophile and not have to go out in public to buy actual Pokemon gear.
Overall this series has it's ups and downs, I'm a big fan of it and look forward to the future, but the entire series is plagued by a retarded community, a broken
economy, and most recently, alot of grind being added to an anti-grind game, which kinda makes Arenanet go back on their promise. What a bunch of assholes. If you're
interested in Guild Wars, my recommendation is to pick up Nightfall if you only get one, and Eye of The North for added PvE fun, and if you're looking for PvP, get yourself
Factions, or just play something better. Overall it's not a bad purchase if you got the cash to spare, the free to play part ensures your accounts arent at risk if you stop playing
for awhile, which is the biggest drawing point for most players, if you like co-op, you'd love Guild Wars....if you could find people to actually play it with.