Preview: Guild Wars Preview17th April 2005The saturation of broadband internet is at an all time high, and with so many people able to download a great amount of content within seconds, it’s undoubtedly the reason why Massively Multiplayer Online games are so popular. The latest game to hit the MMO scene is Guild Wars, which is currently nearing the end stages of development (including the finer points of the game and the game world). Guild Wars spans a great world where players have a huge array of customizable features within the game. This is a preview journey noting some of the features you might find appealing during the game. First up, to get Guild Wars onto the testing computer we needed to download and install the Client Installer. This installer is a matter of Kilobytes and installed the program within seconds. Moments later we could login to the game and get creating a character. There are six races to choose from, each with their own individual specialist skills and abilities. Monk, Ranger, Warrior, Mesmer, Mage and Necromancer are essentially the different professions for the character associated with them. Later on a player may choose to learn a secondary profession from any of the other five characters giving a total possible character combination of thirty! The base profession of your character will affect things like their primary magical abilities, health, costumes available and appearance, with the secondary profession having little effect on appearance but opening up a wide range of extra magical abilities. The two professions combined will also affect the dancing moves and emotes during gameplay! Once a character profession has been chosen, we then progress to selecting a name and developing the character’s personal appearance. Clothes are restricted by choice at this stage purely to keep it basic and give something to progress to at a later stage. You can, however, choose the hair cut, body shape, skin tone and facial features of your character at this point. All of this only takes a matter of a few minutes and then you’re ready to blast into a realm and start progressing through a few challenges! The in game world starts you off in Old Ascelon, with a small available world and plenty of quests to keep you entertained. This world is also where you can learn more about your primary profession and also choose your secondary professions by talking to specific masters located throughout the world. This level of learning works well and Old Ascelon acts as a kind of training area before the real game starts. Many of the profession masters will allow you to try out some of the magical abilities before you indulge and want to change your mind! The graphical display of this virtual world is extremely beautiful. The skies are always teaming with rays of golden beauty and the environment has a magnificent tranquillity to it, surpassing all of the real world’s imperfections. It is quickly apparent that it is easy to get lost within the world’s vast open space in search of the next task on your quest! The in game map is quite clever, whereby the map is slightly blurred until you have visited that region. The map also remains nameless and city-less until you have been to a particular city, at which point it will show up on the map as a named location, to which you can travel at any point. These cities are the social interaction hubs and local trading points with a huge array of people from all over the globe visiting at any one point, there are multiple districts to keep the numbers down, and the crowd’s not too dense! There is a great difference between the cities and the rest of the in-game world. In the cities you are surrounded by fellow gamers, AI traders, and a few quest characters with the open option to talk to anyone and trade to anyone! In the quest world there is a limit on the number of people you can travel out with and fight along side. This is dependant on the section of the game, and limited to 2, 4 or 6. If you don’t have any friends or want to practice on your own there are AI characters to recruit into your team and play along side. Each quest you successfully complete will earn you experience, and this experience is the best way to level up your character and progress to higher levels. There are twenty levels as a maximum for each character. You might think this is pretty low, but the limit is this way in order to accommodate the Player verses Player gaming (more about this later), which requires a level playing field for gamers to enjoy it the most. The aim is for player skill to be far more important than how much time a player has spent playing the game. From the first quest to the last trading moment, this game is one of the easiest to get into and out of we have ever played. Picking the game up is second nature and with the fully customisable interface players can display as much or as little on screen at once, using shortcut keys to their best advantage. Strikingly this game contains a massive event which separates players from the small beginning from the rest of the story. The beginning is, in essence, a training level and character building exercise. Unlike most huge online games there is a storyline and a set of primary quests which do change the game and the landscape within which you play too! One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars is the trading system. Every item that you find throughout the world can be broken down with a Salvage kit into a compound material. These compound materials are the basic trading materials and when you take them to a Crafter you can buy brand new weapons and clothes dependant on your professions and your level and location! So, for example, if you find a Sword but you already have a better one, you can salvage the Iron from the Sword and then use the iron to make a new item which might suit your needs better. Customisation is the key. Trading isn’t just limited to compound materials though, you can trade specialist weapons easily and sell them for Gold or trade them for other items, its totally up to you. There are also dyes for sale. These dyes are simply colourings which can be used to customise your clothes or weapons, simply apply the specific colour dye to your items for that special look. How about a green Sword or a nice pair of Silver boots? The in-game currency is Gold and Platinum, but as stated above you can trade with almost anything, including the raw materials, weapons and clothing. The competitive side of Guild Wars with Player and Guild competitions are one of the most exciting parts of the game. Once characters have reached level twenty this is where the fun starts and it’s up to a players individual skill and ability instead of the characters level within the game. Player verses Player (PvP) gaming within Guild Wars is quite interesting and you can start to take part in this once you reach the ruined part of the game (at level 3) with a Role Playing Character and you can start PvP gaming straight away if you create a PvP character which automatically starts at level 20! To commence into a PvP game, players congregate within the arena entrance on the map and select that they are ready to start the mission. Once there are enough players, these players are then divided up into two teams of four and automatically drawn into the game. PvP gaming is based on two teams of between four and eight players and quite simply the winning team is the one left alive at the end of the match! The losing team then is returned to the arena entrance and the winning team stays in for another round. Guild verses Guild (GvG) competition is only slightly different to the PvP, in the fact that it is a competition and score based game. Match results count, so it’s up to the team to develop gaming tactics and perfect their strategic alliance. Guilds are easy to create, for a nominal fee you can register with a Guild Master and start selecting players to join your trust worthy group. After you have created a Guild you can design a cape, which all Guild members are brandished, but this costs a little extra! Further on from the cape and at some cost, Guilds can buy a Guild Hall. Guild halls have the main benefit of a location from which you can challenge other Guilds and be challenged too! The location to create a Guild Hall is located further into the story and the very large playing area! The GvG competitions are similar to the PvP competitions, however they are official. Guilds fight with between four and eight players, with a minimum of two Guilds fighting each other at once. Guilds may also take part in wars with up to six Guilds playing against each other at once! Don’t worry if you’re not into the PvP or GvG side of the Guild Wars experience because there is plenty of Player verses Enemy (PvE) and Quests to be had by all players. Multiple quests can be accepted at once and then pursued at will! Quests are ultimately the way forward in terms of progressing through the map in large leaps and bounds. Major missions take you from the great cities to the other great cities and when teaming up with other players it is a great way to tackle a game. Guild Wars will have an expansion pack released before the end of the year and most likely future chapters at 6-9 month intervals after that, each chapter will include a further storyline around the same size as the games original storyline but based upon an entirely new map! If you’re a fan of MMO’s then this should definitely be on your shopping list or even your pre-order list. There is so much to do and see that it will keep you busy for hours upon end. You can be as involved with the game as you like, play on the surface or delve deeper into the trading world and join guilds too! This is a game for all seasons and all players, and if strategic gameplay is your bag, then this is your game. Thanks to all the players who took part any games in which we played, they were all thoroughly enjoyable, and also a big thanks to the NCSoft Staff for such great help throughout the beta! |
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