Guild Wars

[A Black Falcon]

This post's best friend is the Attach Images Thread. :)

I played essentially all the time with one character. Maybe I should have tried out the other four classes as well (there are six classes and you choose a primary and secondary class), but I didn't... was having too much fun. Oh well. I was a Ranger-Elementalist. That means my only weapon was a bow and my skills were all ranged... makes for weak hand-to-hand combat and a tough single player game versus melee enemies. Oh well, it was fun...

There are six classes. Fighter (guess), Ranger (archer really; stealth not implemented yet. And pets not fully implemented), Necromancer (summon dead not implemented, so mostly for stat downs of enemies), Elementalist (battle magic -- wind, fire, ice, earth...), Mesmer (stat-affecting magics), and Monk (healing!). Only Humans are available -- the only nonhumans are monsters. And it's very limited in changing your look. All you can do is choose between three hair styles, four faces, four skin colors, and a few hair colors... can't change clothing (each class of the same gender will thus look almost all the same until people get Dyes from monsters, which let you dye your armor various colors.). So in the alpha, everyone looks very similar. Oh well, the game is early...

The way the game works in this version is that everyone is locked at level 15. So everyone's on par as far as health goes -- all classes have similar amounts of health. Armor varies greatly, though, so weaker classes will still die a lot faster. The game is built around a selection of eight skills. You start with just eight, but as you play you'll get gems as loot from enemies. If you bring these gems to trainers in the town, and the gem is for one of your two classes, you can add that skill to your list (it uses a Skill Point to do this. You get a skill point every time you level up. And though you can't level up in the demo, you can get skill points -- you "level up", but only get a skill point for doing so.). Then, in any noncombat area, you can switch skills to choose which eight you want to go with. Once in the mission, you're stuck with them. They cost mana, but it replenishes fast so you can cast often. But choosing which skills are best can be tricky, if you have several that you like... it adds a layer of strategy to the game.

The Main Menu


Character Select


I have shots here from all six classes, both genders, but I'll only post those if someone wants them.

Character Creation - Female Elementalist


Character Creation - Female Necromancer (second coolest looking after Ranger, IMO)


Character Creation - Male Necromancer. He looks very ... odd.


Character Creation - Male Fighter. Most common class probably, with helmet on.


The Ascalon Wilds. Where you start. Single player area only. It's got three main enemy types, scorpions, elementals, and gargoyles...


Most of the alpha was in wastelands like the Wilds. There are a few parts in other areas, though, including dungeon-caves and a jungle fortress. But the only single-player area that was populated with enemies was this Wilds. You get missions from a few people. Simple stuff, mostly 'kill enemies of type X and return items they might drop', or 'bring me items X and Y'. But the enemies don't drop stuff very often so it could take a while to succeed at the missions. But anyway, multiplayer is most of the game... and when you're an archer, it gets frusterating fighting some enemy types because of how hard it is to kill people at melee range.

Combat is simple, as are controls. WASD or the arrow keys move directly (and QE for sidestepping), or you can use the mouse and click where you want to go. Click on an enemy to attack with your weapon. But it's not quite that simple, because of the skills. You have to activate those yourself, by clicking on the icons (then a target if you don't have one selected). Waiting for mana to replenish (it does so fast, but you will wait for the higher-cost 15 mana spells) or for a skill to be ready again (they have cooldown times that vary depending on which skill it is; the better, the slower), and then using them, is what you do. As well as changing targets (such as when one dies); you don't auto-attack anything. But you use skills a lot, so you do plenty while in combat. It's a fun and action-oriented RPG system that also manages to have good strategic depth.

Nice graphics


Combat - Elemental


Combat - Gargoyles


Burn!


Your friend the loading screen. Unlike most MMORPGs you can warp to any zone by going to the world map and then selecting that zone. And then waiting on this screen.


Entrance to a zone. You can travel this way if you want, but the map button is much quicker... :)


Anyway, the multiplayer part where you talk to people not in your party is divided into the non-combat town, an empty area for just talking, and the lobbies outside of each area that you need a party to enter. Some of those involve random teams, though. There is the town (Khylo), where you can buy and sell stuff from the merchants and set up trades (since in this alpha trading isn't enabled and you can't drop things in town, so you have to go to one of the areas outside a mission and trade there). There is also the Arena, where you fight random team 4v4 battles. If your team win you fight another battle with the same team and if you lose you go to the Arena lobby.

The town of Khylo


The Crafter. Combine specific collections of items you collect out in your adventures and make some nicer items. With a crowd of people.


The Arena lobby. In the last few hours I found a purple dye (pickups that change the color of your character) and used it on the lower part of the armor. These shots are all from the last couple of days so my top armor has been dyed red in all of them -- but like with the lower armor, only the non-leather parts dye -- the undershirt part for the top, the pants for the bottom...


I'm on the blue team. The side is red (not shown).


The other PvP game types are a fortress defence where one random team of eight defends a special NPC while the other team of 8 tries to kill him. The defence has a fort with just two entrances and some NPC guards helping, while the offence respawns more often. 8 minuites. It's fun, but I only played it a few times...

The other one is the dungeon. It's got two parts. First, in the lobby you form teams (chosen, this time, not random). In this one they are also teams of eight. One is when you fight a defence mission against attacking monsters. You've got to protect a NPC character for several minuites from many enemies. The other is a much longer one. In this, three (or maybe as many as five?) teams of eight people duke it out. You win by killing the NPCs for the other teams -- otherwise their Monk NPC will just keep resurrecting them all every minuite. This can take a very long time, with many teams and eight-player squads...

And finally, the co-op missions. Teams of four players form and do a series of missions. I heard there are five, but never got through the fourth one, despite at least 10 tries... this mission is hard... they aren't very complex missions. Basically you just are given a goal and you go forward along the path (not always blatantly obvious, but you can figure it out given enough time) and kill all the monsters. There are NPCs who talk and some story, but it's easily ignored... and most people seem to. It's more about doing the mission than following the story, and I'd say the mission design makes that more likely. It's simple. Kill stuff. Then move forward in the scripted mission. But since you're working with a team, it works well and can be quite challenging. Oh, and you can't attack eachother. :)

These are from one of the many attempts on that long and very hard mission four




Front gate of the fortress


Still more ruins




So, what am I missing?

Oh, some skills. The ones I have on the bottom there are Resurrection Signet (start game with it. Once-per-mission-resurrect someone else.), Heal Signet (heal 50 health. Quick cooldown.), (forget exact names here) Poison Arrow, Targetted attack (do more damage, fairly quick cooldown), dual arrow (shoot two weaker arrows at target), cripple (not too good skill that slows down the target, supposedly), Rain of Fire (target enemy. Watch stuff burn all around it.), and Shock (walk up to enemy; it'll do lightning damage and stun them). I have many other skills too, but those were chosen at the time... I'd have changed a few, but didn't bother. The others aren't that much better.