Guild Wars provides the ultimate "free" mmorpg experience with a different gameplay style from all the others!
Guild Wars is a pure classic game and is amazing in one word. Especially if you're friends have the game you can have a right blast levelling up together.
The layout and structure of the game is one the best things that the Ncsoft team managed to do. You start off at level one and basically as you level up you move through different areas doing co-operative quests and standalone quests in those areas. But you know what, you actually have a real purpose to progessing through the game. This area system (or path) actually lets you know how much you have progressed and gives you a real sense of achievement. The ultimate aim however is to get the mountains and make your way to Droknor's which is the ultimate city of the game. Soonce you've got there, you've basically reached your target. And you know what, that will take you a hell of a long time to do!
The different types of environment are amazing. At first you start off in a picturesque forest area where everything's happy then within the next 5 levels or so, the whole that you know is being wrecked and destroyed and you skip into the future; From there on you have a wrecked barren landscape, shortly after having gone through that you're in a mountain setting, after that you're in a jungle, following that you're in the desert, then back in the mountains in a totally different perspective. The progression through these landscapes really give you a great feeling of going through the game. So much so, that people actually get "ran" to different areas of the game and they pay money for this, so to put it bluntly the variety of environments and areas are amazing.
Now let's talk about the graphics, if you've got a nice internet connection and graphics card and RAM then you can have one beautiful game on your hand. Yes, it may not be good as some other games out there but they really are quite beautiful, especially when you go in areas such as the mountains as just mentioned. That's all there is to say.
Now the sound, this contributes to what guild wars is. The sound has been beautifully created and fits in perfectly with each different environment that you're in and it really makes you feel like you're in that area and adds to the ambience which is brilliant. It really contributes to the universe that you're in.
The gameplay is something else, you basically have 8 skills on the bottom of your HUD (Of course you have more) but this is what you can have at anyone time, or 7 and one elite spell which is one the high-ranking spells at the end of the game. You go round killing monsters in instanced areas with groups perhaps and you go into towns where it isn't instanced. This may sound weird but it works really well, especially in co-operative where you can work up to 7 other players in one long mission which can prove to be a lot of fun; and this is what allows you to go from one area to another.
The co-op missions of the games are necessary (you can go with computers but its not as fun and towards the end of the game they're so rubbish they'll prove to be useless). Apart from that you have some generic quests to gain you more xp, and there is absolutely no grinding in the game. The majority of the levels you gain are through co-operative missions anyway and during that time you've having fun and progressing through the game. Towards the end you have several dungeons to get some nice loot such as Sorrow's Furnace, but this is what the game is really lacking in my opinion.
So what else can you expect from a free mmorpg? A great experience that surpasses so many other mmorpg's out there in its own right.