So over the last few months, I've been dabbling in Guild Wars. Now, I first tried the game close to 3 years ago, and wasn't too impressed. But recently, I decided to dust off the CDs and see how things had changed.
Wow.
ArenaNet has done a superb job of ironing out many of the flaws in the original game, leaving an awesome hybrid of single player, story-driven RPGs and MMOs.
Of course, given the MMO element, there is the inevitable question: How does it stack up to WoW?
The answer, is, of course, the predictable "it's complicated". In fact, several posts complicated.
This, the first part, will address the general mechanics: basic gameplay, leveling, character customization, and UI. Other posts will address PvP, PvE, endgame, and the combat system.
Basic Gameplay
Guild Wars (GW) will instantly feel familiar to most WoW players. You create a character by chosing a class, cutomizing your appearance, and then picking a name. The UI and combat system are very similar. Your character advances in power both by earning XP and gaining new gear. Each character must eventually chose a certain specialization to pursue (which can be changed, of course).
But there, the similarity ends. Guild Wars is a much faster paced game than WoW. A really slow melee weapon has a 1.75 second swing speed, and a really big nuke generally takes 2 seconds to cast. There is no GCD to contend with.
GW is also a much simpler game. There is an aggro radius drawn on your minimap (which automatically tracks all enemies) Armor reduces all damage with a linear formula (60 armor = normal damage, +/- 40 armor = half/double damage taken). Melee crits simply do max weapon damage times the square root of 2. Spells never crit. There are only 4 stats to keep track of: Armor, HP, Energy, and Energy Regen. Only Projectile attacks have to worry about LOS. Aggro is mostly based off proximity to a mob, and blocking the path to a mob's current target is generally all that's needed to grab hate. Essentially, GW is more about playing the game, and less about understanding arcane mechanics.
Another nice thing is a much lower amount of mandatory gold/time sinks. Respeccing is free, travel between cities/quest hubs is instant, there are no repair bills, and there are no consumables. The only things you need to pay for are salvage and identification kits, new armor as you level, plus a one-time fee for any inscriptions/runes (the equivalent of enchantments) that you are unable to find and salvage yourself. But there are plenty of optional sinks: "Prestige" armor that looks awesome without conferring extra benefits, armor dyes, weapons with unique graphics, hundreds of titles, etc.
Also, GW is very group-based. Luckily, the game provides AI "henchmen" and "heroes" that can fill in for human players (though not as effectively, of course) in exchange for an equal share of the gold and XP. The result is that players can learn how to function in a group, even if they never play with other humans.
The other big difference is that the entire game is played on one "server", with cities being divided into sub-instances to keep lag manageable, and the actual game world consisting of a private instance for each party. This means no waiting for rare spawns or getting mobs stolen, but it also means no world PvP or randomly meeting people to do quests with.
Leveling
There are very few RPG that don't involve levels of some sort. It is the bread and butter of character advancement, and GW is no different. Characters advance from levels 1-20 by killing monsters and completing quests (shocker).
However, like most single-player RPGS, and unlike most MMOs, leveling is not a repetitive grind, but a reasonably entertaining romp through a good storyline. There are a lot of "kill X beast", "Save person Y", and "Find item Z" quests that take place out in the world, but the bread and butter of the game is the Missions. Missions are like a combination quest/dungeon, with scripted events (even including voiceovers and cinematics) that immerse you in the storyline of GW. I felt involved with the world of Ascalon, an honest to god hero fighting against the forces of evil (there's really no option for players who want to be evil themselves, which will suck for some people). The missions really tie the game together, weaving a story that keeps the leveling process fun and exciting.
WoW, on the other hand, has a leveling process that can only be described as "repetitive grind". Some of the quests are interesting, but there's really no soul in the 1-70 game. You move through a static world that makes almost no note of your presence. There is a story, but you have to really seek it out, and the extra work of reading all the quest text while doing every quest, and then piecing everything together for yourself is almost not worth the tedium, and the story never really advances. I can go back to the crossroads and see that the quillboars are still a menace and Manrik still hasn't found his wife (or he's still in denial).
Character Customization
This is another area where GW simply blows WoW out of the water. Because all endgame gear has the same stats, players are free to chose the armor and weapons that they like the best. Armor and weapons can then be further customized with dyes. Each class also has a distinct appearance, with numerous options for faces, hair styles, etc. The result is that it is very rare to find a character that looks like you.
But beyond the superficial, there are a whole bunch of meaningful ways to customize a character. Each character has attributes that affect skills tied to them, as well as having effects themselves. Each profession has a primary attribute as well as 3-4 secondary attributes. For example, the Dervish has the Mysticism primary attribute, which both increases the power of mysticism skills (Notably the various Avatar skills which transform the dervish into the avatar of a god for a period of time), as well as restoring some HP and energy whenever an enchantment (Magical buff) expires. The dervish also has 3 secondary attributes: Scythe Mastery (increases scythe skills and scythe crit chance), Earth Prayers (increases skills related to survivability), and wind prayers (increases skills related speed or damage-dealing). Attributes are increased with attribute points (gained through leveling), runes, and head armor. However, there is a limit on these increases which forces a character to either specialize in 2-3 attributes, or suck at them all.
In addidion to a primary profession, each character can chose a secondary profession, which unlocks all skills and secondary attributes for that profession. This secondary profession can be changed, though it is tough to do so until you are well into the PvE game. The net result is 7-9 attributes, and something like 150 skills to pick from.
And speaking of skills, these are an important choice. You see, you can only have 8 skills on your bar at a time. Skill choice is probably the most important choice you can make for a character, and while there are plenty of "cookie-cutter" skill templates (literally templates that can be loaded into your game. You can also make your own, for both personal convenience and to share with others) out there, it is very possible to roll your own "build" of skills and attributes and still kick ass. In fact, even in the highest levels of play, you still see players tweaking builds slightly to fit their own preferences.
UI
Here's one category where WoW is the clear winner. The GW UI sucks, it is very icon based (forcing a lot of unnecessary memorization), and has extremely limited customization. In addition, it displays far less information that WoW, and completely lacks a macro system.
This isn't to say that the GW UI is terrible, but it could certainly learn a lot from even the default WoW UI.
That's all for now, part deux on the combat system will be coming soon.
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