I know I’m a little behind the current trends, when I’m reviewing a game that just recently turned two years old; but I only just purchased this game on the recommendation of a few friends.

They have been playing this game for a while a seemed to give the impression that it was in fact a good game and not the levelling up dirge that I had become accustomed to in RPGs.

I was told that it had a great story, I would be fun to follow and That I didn’t have to level up unnecessarily to play this game properly.

Well; they lied!

The plot:  Some army is trying to attack the kingdom of Tyria and the king needs as many people to fight for him.  That’s about it so far. 

The game:  This game is not unique in so far as to not charging for the online service.  In places like Korea; there are many games that charge nothing to play their games but charge for all upgrades.  This way the player gets to play the game but can decide to spend their money to advance in the game.  It has been said that the west is roughly five years behind the trends of places like Korea and Japan.  So; don’t be surprised to see these types of games becoming more and more popular.

At the moment World of Warcraft has over 8.5 million subscribers that regularly play the game and is too big a monster for any new MMO to take on head to head.  So you will see more games of the ilk.

When play properly; I.E. a group of players working together; this game can be fun.  After you have installed it.  It took me about ten minutes to pick a name that hadn’t been used before. I finally found a name that no one else used.  I must point out that you have to have two separate words and you can not use numbers which suck in my opinion.  So I picked my player and started the game and this I what I saw for the next thirty minutes.

So after a long time where I was able to cook dinner and eat it, the game finally starts and I get to play this beast (cough cough).

I found myself In a place called Ascalon and the usual king type guy was recruiting me as well as many other individuals.  A lot of people were just standing around not really doing anything and having played these types of games before; decided to go it alone and believe me when I tell you this.  There is a reason why this game is called Guild Wars and not Solo Wars. When you play as a group; all the experience, gold, etc are shared and this game is major tight with these elements of the game and would take forever and a day to level up.  So the only way to level up is to grind.  Once you get to a certain level, you will find that you also have to do the same for gold.

I am aware that the amount of gold that I posses is tiny compared to some players but for someone who has only play the game a week or so; 6000 gold is very good and this how I did it.  Go back to an old part of the map and just kill as much as possible.  Get yourself the extra bags and double them up and just pick as much as possible.  Once you have done this; just go back to the city and sell it all and then go back out and do this all over again.  At the same time you are gaining experience as well.  You will need to get as high as possible, otherwise; this game will chew you up and spit you out.

The problem starts here.  I asked to my friend;  “This isn’t like WOW, where you have to kill 5 of this or 10 of that; collect 5 of this and 10 of that is it?”  Oh no he replied.  You are a big liar.   This game is exactly that.  You have to do every quest to have any chance what-so-ever of surviving later on in the game.  There are collectors that seemed to desire the most annoying items that pretty much requires you to harvest gold.  You see; in the process of collecting these items to trade with the collector, you end up gathering many other items anyway.

The reasons that you’re skills are required to assist the person on the quest is poor at best and at worst totally lame.   I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the None Player Characters is called Little Bow Peep, whose lost his sheep and doesn’t know where to find them; you get the general idea.

The graphics in this game are gorgeous but graphics does not make a good and this is an example of that philosophy.  This has great potential and I’m sure that in future expansion packs; at the moment there are two or three expansion packs and next you sees the release of Guild Wars 2; will be a great game but based on the first game; I wouldn’t recommend it over World of  Warcraft.