Guild Wars (PC)

Guild play

With a game like Guild Wars there have to be Guilds, these cost a fee to set up and allow large groups of people to form comradely clans with a chosen logo, there are limited customising options available for the guild’s cape (which costs 2000 gold to get) but it does make you feel a little more special than the lone wolves out there.

As of this writing we have our own Guild in the game: Obiviata Wolf (Owlf) so if you see us, stop by and say HI!

The Guilds can also purchase (eventually) a Guild Hall which is their own gathering place and adds a little more personalisation to the game, where members can meet and interact with their friends and in some cases, depending on the relationship, family members (yes some folks mom’s and dad’s play games like this).

Each Guild has a ranking and depending on the various competitive events you participate in, will see the rise to fame or fall from grace of your Guild. This is why the game’s called: Guild Wars, because the Guilds will be battling each other for the favour of the gods.

There are numerous Guild PVP style tournaments that range from CTF gameplay to King of the Hill style and will decide who rules the roost in the world of Ascalon and things become more fragmented as the story progresses.

One last thing to mention about play in general is that regardless of where you are in the world, it’s possible to play with a friend. If you’re in the right district, you can access the districts from the top left of the screen while in Ascalon or any other non-quest map area. I was able to play from England with a friend from the US by selecting the international district and finding her on the server, easy as that.

You even have a highly functional friends list and the chat

To Stream or not to Stream?

You won’t find a long wait for a Guild Wars patch or fix, if there’s an exploit it can be plugged in the time it takes me to write the words:

There is a new version of Guild Wars available please log out and restart your client – log back in again.

I also note that this has happened just once so far and it’s still preferable to waiting weeks or months for a patch/update.

Guild Wars is built on ‘Streaming’ technology and it works behind the scenes to send constant updates to your copy of the game, if the developers find a bug or fix something you won’t really know about it until you find a loading screen, wondering why there are a couple of new files to download (on today’s connections, even the slowest, this can take only seconds).

This means that the developers can add new content while you’re playing and you won’t have to worry about waiting a month or so for. With plans to release yearly expansions to the world itself, Guild Wars has an evolving and ever-changing world.

The connection speed to Guild Wars and its stability is excellent, so far I haven’t run into any problems on my connection (1.5) and it’s been lagging only very slightly.

Loading screens?

The areas in Guild Wars are split up into:

Non Combat Zones: The City of Ascalon or Ashford Abbey, these are places to find key NPCs and interact with your fellow players to form teams/parties and go questing.

PVE: These are your personal copy of the Guild Wars quest areas, where you and your friends can fight monsters, find other quests and gain more skills/experience in the world.

Travel between these areas allows the game to load in any new files and a quick loading screen pops up, these loading screens are not something I originally expected and they took me a while to get used to. But they are quick on my connection and they allow you to take a breather and collect your thoughts, but only for a while.

You will also go through one of these if your party member enters a new area, this keeps everyone nicely together.

They don’t detract from the game and did not spoil the gameplay experience for me.

Final gameplay thoughts

Guild Wars is packed to the brim with things to do and places to explore, with a massive new-player area to experience which leads on to an even bigger surprise, but we won’t say anything about that at all for the moment, you should be able to find out for yourself. There’s plenty to keep the errant adventurer occupied and the skill/experience system takes the grinding out of the game and puts the fun back in.

Graphics

When you have a roleplaying game and one that offers a rich, diverse fantasy world, you require something to bring that world to life. You can either have a good quality combat system and game mechanics but lack somewhat with cartoonish graphics and lack-lustre design or you can have the best graphics and lousy gameplay.

Well Guild Wars doesn’t just play well, it looks absolutely stunning and the only way I can describe it is to steal from Gabby. It’s like walking into a vibrant living painting, a masterpiece of colours, light and contrast that transforms the models and design into something one can only say is: otherworldly.

The artistic flair in Guild Wars is very rarely represented in anything but the works of the fantasy masters like, Larry Elmore, Frank Frazetta and Clyde Caldwell, smooth transitional lighting and bloom effects combine to draw the eye into a living world that looks as though it could come bursting out of your monitor at any second.

Every ounce of the PCs power and graphics card is pushed into creating one of the most unique looking games to date, yet Guild Wars will still run on a pretty low spec PC. However you really want the best out of the game make sure you have a decent graphics card with which to enjoy the world of Ascalon, because half the fun for me in the game was exploring and looking at the different vistas.