Welcome to this week’s MMOries of a Gamer, today featuring Guild Wars; the original and different online game Arenanet got to the top. The story of me and this game is quite curious and, thinking about it, taught me something so important in the life of a gamer. Come along with me, after the jump, and read how things can change drastically when you change the way you play.
Guild Wars launched in 2005 and I was so involved with World of Warcraft by then, so I didn’t play it. Two years later, my wife wanted to play an MMO, but she didn’t like the ones my friends and I were playing, so I thought of GW as a valid game for her. It was free-to-play once you bought your copy of the game and the eastern-like appeal of the classes (I don’t know exactly why) made me think it was a good one for her to play.
She played for some time, but she didn’t get deep on it. She told me the game was good, so I tried too, but just as a test, to know how the game was. I made a character and played for two weeks, I liked the game, but I ended up alone in Tyria, wandering ever-full-of-monsters areas, out of quests and having a very bad feeling of endless fighting and grinding for level and progress. I was totally wrong, so much that I feel ashamed for it; as I was an expert MMO gamer and I couldn’t get to see how wonderful GW is. I left the game.
This year, I played a lot of different games, including several single-player RPGs that I liked a lot, but I was always missing the MMO experience. I’m a huge fan of the upcoming Guild Wars 2 and thought that playing GW would be a great way to learn about Tyria (GW2 is set on a future Tyria) and the devs stated that they would use GW as a bridge to GW2. I begun my second try at the game, but this time I decided to play it seriously. From the three campaigns available, I chose the first, Prophecies.
The first thing that I found very useful was the official wiki of the game, where you can read everything you need to know about Tyria, missions, quests, etc. I don’t like to read everything I need to do on a game on the Internet, I like the mystery and I like to find out what to do myself, but I recommend the official wiki to read all about the storyline of the game and get a clear idea of where your steps are heading to. So, after reading about GW and its features and possiblilites I played in a very efficient way.
In this game, you start playing an introduction phase, featuring past deeds. That is what the GW community calls “pre-searing”. The timeline between the introduction (played in the past) and the present day of the game is a disaster called “The Searing”, a catastrophic invasion by the savage race called the Charr. It destroyed the beautiful lands of Ascalon, the place where you start in GW. In pre-searing you play as much as you want and you decide when to “jump” to the real start of the game. This is the Arenanet approach to the played-introduction concept that other games have featured as well. There are many things you can do in pre-searing and I really recommend you play there a good long time, till you understand what you have in your hands. If you rush for post-searing you’ll end up playing a game you don’t understand. There is a “pre-searing” community, with its own website; have a look at it and you’ll learn a lot of useful things about the game.
I played a lot in pre-searing and did all quests. Then the time came to step forward and face the post-searing days. Ascalon is where you start it all and I quickly made new armor so I could explore the lands and face the new post-searing monsters. Anyway, the main thing to do is the missions. Missions take you through the main story of the game and, as you advance, you get involved in really epic deeds; so fun and awesome you’ll be amazed. I enjoyed it a lot, advancing and doing more missions, while exploring and doing all quests available.
After a lot of adventures and a few difficult episodes, I’m now enjoying one of the things that I truly adore on every MMO: desert areas. I love deserts in games. I don’t know why, but I think the most inspiring and mysterious areas in every MMO are deserts. In Guild Wars you can explore and suffer the arid lands of the Crystal Desert, an awesome place where you have to do an awesome mission: Ascension. I’m right there now, I haven’t even finished Prophecies yet, but hope to do it soon, because I want to enjoy the lands of Cantha, Elona and the Eye of the North content. What my future gaming life will bring, I don’t know. I just hope to have fun, playing all the awesome games that 2011 will bring.
This was the last chapter of MMOries of a Gamer, as a column featuring my “mmories” of some of the games I’ve played. From next week on, this column will change a lot, as I plan to tell you of my thoughts about different aspects of the gaming hobby in general, rather than focusing on specific games.
See you all next week in MMOries of a Gamer: Need-Before-Greed.
I played guild wars for 2 years, this is my absolute favorite mmorpg. I still play it off and on and now I’m waiting for GW2 to come out. Great Article Pedro
I’m playing GW now, is my main, in fact, I can’t believe how cool this game is :)
After 4 years, I reinstalled the game again yesterday. Nothing much has changed in-game but it’s still a beautiful game to play.