Nice to the eye,lots of grind and a very immature community... I'd rather play this in solo.

Well, if you can opt for going solo, and you weren't going in there to find RP anyways, you might as well give it a try, right?

Even if you don't have to play with others, they can still bother you though. I don't know if the game is PvP heavy, but if the community is very bad there might be a lot of gankers.

I didnt played it and I dont think I could, especially on french server. Sellers are spamming the cities, RP is inexisting, insults...
For what I heard if you are willing to play on a french server, you better find a good guild. Therefore, I have no clue for english server and besides the community my friends founded the game quite pleasant.

So? How's the game, Oluf? I was tempted to buy it on more than few occasions, but every time  I backed out. The graphics looked nice, and the no-monthly-fee is quite nice, but didn't convince me, yet
Some input would be nice!

Sooo... I finaly got it and played it for a good while now. I am lvl 9 (max lvl is 20) and got a warrior/monk ... which is basicly your typical paladin i guess
For those who dont know anything about guild wars:
You get to choose up to two classes, and really there is no reason not to choose two classes. Your primary class got one specific attribute that you cant get without having the class as your primarry. So for example my chars extra attribute is strengt, and no other class is able to get that - even if they choose warrior as their secondary class.

The game isnt as much about gaining lvls many other games. You are able to equip almost any weapon and use any skill you got no matter your level. What you do gain by going up in levels are health and some more attribute point. I should explain these attribute points a bit more in detail I think.
As said, you gain them on lvl up, 5 per level (at least thats what i have been getting so far). Your two classes decide which attributes you got and as you increase your attributes with the attribute points your skills become more powerful if they are assinged to the attribute you increased. Now, the *real* beauty of this system is that you are free to decrease and increase your attributes as you want. Say I already put 5 points into strength but I join a party with an other guy who will be doing all the tanking i can simply remove points from strength and put into one of my healing attributes instead - without loosing *any* points. So basicly you are free to try out all combos you want without having to grind afterwards to get your points back.

As said, its not as much about gainning levels. Actually it almost seems like its more about gaining new skills! You unlock new skills for your char as you do quests, or you can buy new skills at a vendor. You can unlock all skills for your two classes but can only 'equip' 8 at a time. So basicly you have to consider what you are going to be fighting, which weapons you will be brining, and who is in your party before making up your mind on which skills to equip. (skills can only be removed and added while in a town)

The weapons (and other equipment you find) are *very* 'weak'. With that I mean that at lvl 1 you start out with a weapon that does 3-6 in damge, the max damage that same weapon can do while you are later in the game is around 24. So it is not really a game where hunting for new weapons all the time is required either (as it is in DDO for example)

There seems to be a pretty solid story in the game as well that progress as you complete specific missions. There are quests and missions in the game. Quests are simply..well...a quest. Go to location x and retrive item Y. Missions are a bit harder to do and takes more time as well but they progress the story and open up a chance for you to get new skills and equipment ect....

Now... that is the short explanation of the game. For the good and bad things:
good:
- As I already said, i simply love the attribute point system! Its great..  you can adjust your char whenever you want without being punished for it! More mmo's should consider a system like this!
- The level design is also pretty awesom imo. The world does seem alive..well...to be honest the citys are a bit borring but the landscape while out hunting for badguys are pretty impressive
- Plenty of skills and you are able to combine the 6 core classes in whatever way you want. For example you could create a monk/necromancer, a ranger/elemnetalist and so on....
- I quite like the controls. Actually you can play the game only with the mouse if you wish. It also got point and click movement which is always nice.

bad things:
- I guess you could claim this game is nothing more then 3d diablo...
- In the end the quests are a 'grind'. They are nothing more then ' go here and do that then come back for reward' but to be honest it doesnt feel as much as grind as you are not required to do every quest(i guess you could actually skip them all and only go for the missions...) to be able to progress the story and gain new skills
- Apart from the citys everything is instanced - this also means that no matter how many bad guys you slay it wont affect the world...just like in every other mmo...sigh
- I had a bit of lag sometimes...nothing major but I did notice it a few times so it should be mentioned

Now for the... 'hm, what about?'
- What about making a new char and going through the same quests and missions...will it be borring? I dont know...yet. I could imagine some of it would actually be borring..but then again you will have access to new skills to make things more interestings.
- What about PvP ? I dont know... I havent tried it yet I guess I should mention that upon char creation you are able to choose between 2 types of chars. A roleplaying char (hehe..yes that is what they call it ) and a PvP char. The roleplaying char is what I have made and that is the type of char who gets to experince the story and unlock new skills etc. A pvp char got access to ALL skills you have unlocked on your account with a roleplaying char.

And now... What about roleplaying?? I would say that unless you play the game with a perma group from A-Z it would be close to imposible to do any meaningfull roleplaying in this game. You would have done different missions and thus, the story wouldnt have progressed equally for everyone. Of couse I guess you could simply create your own story however becuase everyhing is an instance you would have to be in the same party and in the same location at all times...

As a game? My first impression is that I want to contiune playing. The gameplay is still simple however the extra twist of the many skills and ways you can adjust your char at all times make it more interestings. I cant really judge if the story in the game is any good yet... So far it does seem decent but no way near close to the storylines of Baldurs gate, fallout ect.

I will be happy to answer questions about the game if i can

Thanks for the linky And... I guess you could claim I am having fun (fun in an mmo! unheard of!) otherwise I guess i would have stopped playing by now!

So I finally got to what seems like a 'part 2' in guild wars... this basicly seems to mean I get to fight a new type of bad guys. In my opinion it took a wee bit to long for this to happen.
Its very easy to forget about the story and just run towards to the quest marker on your map - but I would strongly advice against it. Not because the story itself is that interestings (not saying its 'bad', just...you know..) but it does seem to distract you just enough not to realise that their quests is absolutely mindless.

I doubt that the new expansion will make the quests less restrictive... I mean doesnt *every* mmo developer say this? To me it just sounds like you get to choose which of the mindless missions you want to play first

I did a bit of PvP. Basicly you just go into a specific location and you get to join a team (the number of members on each team seems to be depend on how far ahead in the story you have gotten) and then its simply a matter of killing the other team. I havent tried making a pvp char (see above post) so I dont know if its any different if you do choose to make one of those..but i think it may be.