Even a couple of years after launch, Guild Wars remains unique in the pantheon of online RPGs. No monthly fees. No perpetual level grind. No integrated PvP. No races. No open communal adventure areas. No jump button.
For these and many other reasons, Guild Wars is mocked and often dismissed as a minor player and not 'real', perpetually overlooking the fact that it's also the only online RPG launched in the last couple of years without a licence or lineage that's managed to sell some serious copies.
But there are enough new and oddball things to talk about here without reiterating why, exactly, Guild Wars is mechanistically so far above everything else and (Yeah, Gillen, stop it already - Ed). For a start, this is actually Guild Wars' first expansion pack. While you could freely move characters between all three previous games - Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall - they were standalone, allowing you to start from level 1. Not this time. You'll need a maxed-out character to begin North's quest. Of course, being Guild Wars, the level cap is a highly achievable 20.
Eye of the North is set in Tyria, while the original Guild Wars was set, in - as the title implies - the far north, where the players have retreated, trying to find a solution to the problem of the creatures who've emerged from beneath the earth and are trying to destroy everything. With a typical flair for nomenclature, these have been named by the powers-that-be as 'The Destroyers'. Cue lots of overground, underground, wombling free adventures.
Multi-leveled dungeons, new equipment, new heroes (the controllable, playable henchmen introduced by Nightfall, who remain great fun) and so forth. It's an expansion pack. Y'know.
It's also trying to fulfil a secondary purpose by providing more adventuring content for Guild Wars veterans. Guild Wars 2 has been announced, and Eye of the North is a bridge between the two. As well as adding open communal areas, races and jumping - while wisely keeping the no-monthly-fees, apparently - Guild Wars 2 will also be set in a future where the world has changed considerably.
Eye of the North links the past with that future. Firstly, it's introducing some of the characters you'll become familiar with later. For example, two of the GW2 playable races: the Asura and the Norn. The latter are your barbarian-archetype sort, twice as big as normal humans, with the ability to assume the form of bears and spout unconvincing philosophy. They're actually quite fun.
The Asura are your (abstractly) hyper-smart magical race thing, looking like how someone who'd never seen a koala bear might draw one, given a brief description of what one may look like after being irradiated. While their Incan-style architecture is impressive, the Asura are, frankly, a bit annoying, and make you hunger for a chance to PvP the smug gits.
The second bridge between the two games is a more mechanistic one. When you reach the Eye of the North, you gain access to the Hall of Monuments. As you complete quests, you acquire the ability to decorate it with tapestries and to immortalise your achievements.
For example, lob up the Tapestry of Fellowship and you can add statues of any of your team-mates who've earned Hero armour upgrades. Then when Guild Wars 2 arrives your descendants will receive unique bonuses. Apparently. We're taking it on faith this will happen - and if it doesn't, there are enough Guild Wars players to raze Arenanet's Seattle headquarters.
Ah, expansion packs. So easy to damn with faint praise, so hard to damn. The content counts and here - at least mostly - Guild Wars excels. Based around instanced private areas as it is, more scripting can come into play, and with three packs' experience, there's some genuinely imaginative stuff to get stuck into, from the serious (enormous Charr migrations) to the experimental (gaining different powers when taking beast avatars) to the ludicrous (herding pigs while drunk out of your tiny little mind).
In short, not bad for a game where you still can't jump. And you don't need to. So there.
Guild Wars is a great game. Not as immediately in-depth as other MMOs with there crafting proffessions and huge lvl caps, but with GW the devil is in the detail. It's all about what's on your skill bar, and being restricted to only 8 at a time is genius, making you constantly want to experiment with different builds. The graphics are fantastic throughout and GW:EN takes it up a notch further with some fantastic looking scenery and cut scenes. The gameplay is also fantastic and PvP is 2nd to none in my opinion.
I'm just about getting used to not jumping having come back to GW from WoW, and I only run into something about once an hour now!
I was really quite let down (as were a lot of people) by the length of the story in the expansion, it seems horridly rushed, with the factions other than norn barely getting a look in of more than a few tiny quests (the ones that replaced the mission system). The Ebon Vanguard in particular are frankly embaressingly under developed.
This is a huge shame as the content that is there is extremely high quality (bar the occasionaly dodgy/badly cut/buggy cut scene). I am annoyed I bought it through the store for £25 (wanting to do them a favour) and got a rushed and understaffed product, which is seemingly made up of some left overs from a cancelled full campaign (albeit beuatiful ones) and a cramped storyline.
I was even more annoyed that Gaile, their lovely community relations manager, had the nerve to say that there was a lot more content than most any other expansion out there (in reply to the complaints). This is just blatantly untrue.
Ah well, I hope the release other expansions anyway, as GW2 doesn't sound nearly as interesting (dropping some of my favourite features from the original, for example - the over arching single player style storylines, the totally instanced gameplay areas, henchmen/hero system).
I love this expansion, it's a great way to round of the series. So there's no new character classes and the main story is a bit short. But there's loads of great PvE skills to pick up and all my characters will be completing GW:EN as soon as they hit lvl20 (if they haven't already) before continuing onto the main campaigns, just for those extra useful skills.
There's still plenty of content after the main story is finished, and some real challenges too. So once my main character (necro/mesmer) that was created on day on of GW has finished all the dungeons etc... then I've got 8 more characters to concentrate on. Some of them have finished one or two campaigns, some are still in the opening stages.
There's enough content (and the game plays differently enough with a different character class) to keep me going until GW2 appears.
The best MMO so far on the PC. Shame it's overshadowed by the more popular and shallow WoW. Actually, that's not a bad thing sometimes
Best thing about GW:EN. They could have screwed up with the Asura, yet they've managed to make them amusing, entertaining, down right rude as most importantly, as believable as any other fantasy 'race'. I think they're ace
I guess I must be one of those fanboi things that I hear about...
PS: Love reading the review on the website before my sub copy of PCG arrives
I'm just off out to the shops to buy GW for the first time. Heard some good things about it and have decided to have a look.
I've been a WoW player for a couple of years, and I'm just bored with it. I do take my hat off to it though. Any game that can hold my interest for such a long time must be doing something right.
I'm really waiting for warhammer to emerge. Looks like they will be taking an idea from GW too.
With being able to equip skills onto your hotbar from a huge pool. I like this idea a lot. It allows your character to try out new abilities and skills without being tied to them forever.
I also like the pvp right form the start (if you want to) against opponents of a similar level. No more being ganked by some uber git who is bored and wants everyone to know it.
Well, I'm editing this post one day after buying GW. And I am not impressed by it at all. Infact it has now been deleted from my system.
Great graphics, but not much else. I suppose I have been spoilt by nearly three years of playing WoW. I don't have the time to list all Guild Wars shortcomings, but if you have not played an mmo before, then try it. If you have played a good mmo (like WoW etc) then leave well alone.
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