Guild Wars is an immense accomplishment that can appeal to practically anyone.
Cons: No voice support out of the box; some people quit midmission.
Guild Wars is a very innovative game that's different from pretty much any other online RPG out there. To start off, we'll get the obvious out of the way: there are no monthly fees in this game. None. That said, this game is not a traditional MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) in any manner. Guild Wars combines a lot of the best aspects of those games and innovates in a lot of ways, though, and it's a game that it is strongly advised you try out, even if you're not looking for an MMORPG or if you're looking for a more traditional one like World of Warcraft.
Guild Wars distances itself from other MMORPG's in a lot of ways, but the biggest one is that almost all of the gameworld is instanced. What does this mean? Well, once you get out into the world, the game creates a separate world for you, so you won't encounter any other players - just enemies and NPC's, computer controlled players already in the gameworld. Instanced quests have their drawbacks and advantages. It does make the game seem a little less seamless and less immersive as well, an attribute that MMO's like World of Warcraft don't suffer from. That said, instanced quests has its advantages as well, whether it's the refreshing lack of respawning monsters that kill you from behind or the new ability to warp into previously explored cities.
Cities are essentially where the "online" component of Guild Wars comes into play. They are neutral zones, the only place where players can meet and group up, as well as where a lot of merchants and skill trainers and the like can be found (although some are also found scattered out in the wild). As previously mentioned, you can warp to any city you've previously explored. This may take out of the immersiveness of Guild Wars, but that's not the point anyway, as it really helps facilitate short gameplay sessions and dramatically cuts down on the time you spend aimlessly walking around. Plus, you still need to do some minimal amount of exploration, especially if you want to find all the cities and quests. Luckily, this time is easily invested, as the world of Guild Wars is beautiful and littered with spectacular sights.
Guild Wars eases you in pretty easily. You start as a pretty typical level 1 grunt of one of the six classes: ranger, a bow and arrow guy who has a pet; necromancer, a poison/life-sucker guy who can also raise the dead; warrior, a strong melee class with serious combat skills; elementalist, a ranged combat class who calls on the "elemental" powers such as air, fire, and water; mesmer, a manipulator who does illusions and deception; and monk, an extremely potent healer that is typically the most wanted class in Guild Wars. Once you choose your class, name, and appearance, you're introduced to the stunning Guild Wars world, where virtually everything is happy and nice, although there is a foreboding element in the air...
You will pick up a couple of your class skills pretty quickly, but pretty soon you'll be allowed to pick a secondary class. Secondary classes are one of the many ways Guild Wars distinguishes itself from the competitions. Essentially, you get to have all the skills of the secondary class as well as your own, although you retain the appearance of your primary class, and you do not get access to the primary attribute of that class. Attributes can be improved each time you level, and they range from improving your damage with a bow or a sword (ranger and warrior attributes, respectively), to improving your fire magic or blood magic (elementalist and necromancer), which will then improve your skills that are under that category. Guild Wars is a forgiving game in most aspects, and it won't punish you for screwing up early because you weren't in the know, you can rearrange all your attributes for free any time you're in a city (a change from the original attribute refund system that the game launched with, which has been patched out now). This lets you experiment with your attributes, giving Guild Wars a versatility other games lack. Each class has a primary attribute that only people of that primary profession have access to. For example, if someone created a Ranger/Mesmer (primary Ranger with Mesmer as their second class), they wouldn't have access to the primary Mesmer attribute, which speeds up the casting time of all spells. Guild Wars' secondary professions system has 36 different combinations, lending all characters unique capabilities in the world, and pretty much all of them are good, even if some are underused (Warrior/Ranger's are not seen very often).
However, even if there were no secondary professions, everybody would still be different. Why? Well, once you go out into the game world, you are only allowed to take eight skills (spells) with you - out of a pool of hundreds, once you get most of them. This is difficult enough as it is, but they also need to complement each other, as well as play to the strength of your attributes - a number of spells that have very high mana cost may be very powerful but you probably won't be able to use them all the time, rendering most of them ineffectual. This lends the game even more versatility, as their are various ways you can play each class. For example, there are "Protection Monks", who use their protection skills to prevent damage, "Healing Monks", who can heal already inflicted damage, and even "Smiting Monks", who use their powers to strike down their enemies. This much versatility all in one class - but these people also have secondary professions, which lend them even more distinction - you can have a Monk/Necromancer that uses protection skills and raises the dead, a Warrior/Monk that wields an axe and uses his monk skills to heal himself, a Ranger/Mesmer who lays traps and uses Illusion magic to confuse his enemies, and so forth. The possibilities are pretty much limitless, and since your attributes can always be switched on, you can pretty much switch between play styles whenever you want - with one character. This does lead to one of the few quibbles I have with the game, that being that there are only four possible characters per account.
Once you get past the training area and you have learned all the skills, you'll take on a quest which sets all hell loose in the world, dramatically changing how everything looks, forwarding time by two years, and opening the world map up to about one hundred times its previous size, although it will be a while before you have access to all of it. The main storyline of Guild Wars is advanced by missions; big, exhilarating set-pieces which you play online with a party you form before you leave. Missions are the best way to gain experience fast, as you get substantial experience from completing it, plus you get experience on all the enemies you kill, and you get even more experience for completing special bonus objectives in each mission. Missions are incredibly fun and sufficiently challenging, so it's important that you make a group that has complementary characters. The scale of the battles in Guild Wars just keeps getting bigger as you explore bigger and better breathtaking environments, with bigger battles, bigger groups, and better enemies. The most and generally only irritating thing about Guild Wars' missions is that it's sometimes difficult to find a good group, thus impeding your progress in the game.
There are a lot of missions in Guild Wars, but that's not all it has to offer in the form of PvE (Player versus Environment). There are a ton of quests in Guild Wars, and they're a lot better than the quests in other online games, which are invariably of two different types: the FedEx quest, in which you fetch an item that the character is apparently two lazy to get; and the monster-killing quest, in which you kill a bunch of monsters. This lazy way of doing things clearly didn't interest the tremendously talented guys at ArenaNet, who crafted much more imaginative quests that are on the whole better than most quests in other games. Quests can be found in your neutral cities, but there are also a plethora of other ones scattered around the gameworld as well, and if you want to complete all of them, you'll need to do a considerable amount of exploration. Quests, after missions, are the best way to advance your character, and they're generally also the best way to pick up new skills for your character, particularly in the early game.
Ironically, all this terrific PvE stuff may not be the main attraction of the game for Guild Wars players these days. The game, as the title implies, has a high focus on PvP (Player versus Player) action, and uses a robust system that allows matches that range from four on four to eight on eight guild battles. For people that inexplicably want to skip all the roleplaying and get to the PvP action, Guild Wars allows that option - you can create a level 20 PvP player right from the start that is a potent and very good character, and jump straight into the action. This doesn't seem to be the option ArenaNet wants you to take, though, as the majority of skills are unusable until you unlock them in the roleplaying portion, but the option is there anyway, and even better, there are preset PvP characters that Guild Wars does allow you to pick that have been built by experts of the game and utilize the best abilities.
But what's the PvP actually like? In a word, awesome. The action in PvP is very fast-paced, even more so than the already breakneck pace of the roleplaying portion of the game, but it just serves to make it all the more exhilarating. Teamwork is just as important, or even moreso, than in PvE, and once again, it's smart to pick people that complement each other. The PvP is one of the many aspects that make Guild Wars just that much better than almost everything else, and it's easily not only the best RPG versus action you can find, but some of the best versus multiplayer out there, period.
The graphics in Guild Wars, as has been previously intimated, are absolutely terrific. They look stunning, retain their own look without feeling overdone or too realistic, and will consistently leave you in awe, especially with the beautiful art direction, which makes it so that you'll see a lot of spectacular sights. Best of all, these graphics scale extremely well onto older machines, as I can play it at a glorious 1280 x 960 resolution on high on my fairly outdated computer (by gaming standards) and it looks absolutely incredible. Guild Wars is one of the best looking games of 2005.
Not to undermine the graphics engine, but Guild Wars' other technological achievements are just as stunning, in different ways. Technologically speaking, this game is a wonder, as it boots up and quits nearly instantly, has loading times that go faster than you can count to three, and uses a fantastic streaming technology that allows the Guild Wars guys to send you patches with lightning fast speed. Even better is how often they use it, not only do they send patches out with astonishing frequency with balancing and bugfixing (admirable actions by themselves), but they send content updates and gameplay updates frequently as well, adding new quests and new gameplay functions. Whether it's the massive Sorrow's Furnace update, or gameplay overhauls such as the dumped attribute refund system or the new ability to warp to cities with teammates (one of the few nitpicks in the launch that has been fixed). In fact, as the game gets older, it just gets better - the guys at ArenaNet really listen to any criticisms and implement preventing measures, and they're constantly trying to make the game better.
The sound may be the weakest link in the game, but that's not to imply that it's not great. All the skills sound great and the music in particular is gorgeous and memorable. Nevertheless, the sound does take a backseat to the visuals. Helpfully, to lessen the repititon of the same music, the original composer has since released a free downloadable pack of music that apparently doubles the available music content that the game plays, which is a helpful addition once you tire of the game.
Overall, this game is just a stunning and many-layered achievement. It stuns you technologically with terrific graphics, virtually nonexistent loading times, and streaming updates. There's practically always new content and new gameplay updates coming in to make the game even better. The game is limitlessly replayable due to all the variations not only with secondary professions but within each professions, making all your characters distinct and different. Best of all, the gameplay is just an absolute blast. Guild Wars is one of the best games of 2005, and it's a game that with it's lack of monthly fees, and terrific cooperative and versus play, can appeal to practically anybody, and is a game that will continue to be played for a very, very long time.