welcome to Cantha...its not too bad, just wish it wasn't so small.
Guild Wars: factions is the second in the series and bring to the table a whole new continent to explore, the sad part about it is that the game is terribly linear in that you cannot freely explore it all without running into doors and gates that refuse to open till your done more of the story. the game divides itself into four main regions: the island of Shing Jea where characters start, Keaning city a vastly crowded ghetto crawling with gangs, plagues, and people, finally u have the luxon territories which are vast areas of never ending jade water, and the wooded kurzick side which has become one with nature.
when you begin this campaign with a new character u can choose one of two new professions (the assassin and the ritualist). each of them has there own unique methods of attack and defense. the ritualist is primarily a support character buffing and healing as he goes. while the assassin acts in a off-tank role supplying much needed assistance to overworked warriors. but lack the armor or damage to fully replace the warriors (and dervishes if u have nightfall).
this title is relatively short in comparison to prophecies, nightfall, or eye of the north. but makes up for it with a quicker pace of leveling than prophecies or nightfall.
it adds to an existing account many new skills for every profession (excluding dervishes and paragons because nightfall was released after factions).
the story is fairly simple you the hero are chosen by master Togo (your teacher) to help him defeat shiro tagachi an evil swordsman who once killed the emperor in cantha and has now come back from the dead to do so again. as you go along u encounter strange and bizaar sights and the enemies slowly grow more and more mutated. in the end shiro is defeated at the loss of master togo, and is locked away forever in the underworld. But, as i have said above u cannot complete the story in pieces here and there you have to go through it in order.
after you have completed the campaign u gain access to one of two large scale dungeon equivalent to a raid in more popular games like World of Warcraft, or Warhammer online. they allow for a 16 person team and can take two or more hours to complete.they are accessible via the kurzick and luxon capital
From a pvp point of view this game brings a 2 new methods of taking down opponents. first of all you have the alliance battles. these are a large scale conquest pvp area consisting of five, 4 man teams. when u win u obtain faction exchangeable for skills, weapon upgrades, and materials for armor.
second of all you have access to another alliance based fight called a competitive mission. this is a game in which a team must gather a resource while defending their base. and the other must deny the other team that resource while laying siege to their defenses. The defending side wins if they gather enough of the resource before their base is taken over. The other team wins if they take over the other teams base before they gather enough of the resource.
finally i will discuss community. this campaign allows multiple guilds (or "clans" for you other folk). can ban together to make an alliance which has free chat between all alliance guild members and the ability to gain from their successes. If your alliance fight enough alliance battles you can own a kurzick or luxon town and receive exclusive access to locked parts of the town that offer discount price merchants and other fun stuff like that.
In the end this campaign brings many new features to the table but is kept from greatness by barriers to limit exploration and a campaign of about 13 instanced quests which range from very easy to very difficult. An experience online rpg player could probably finish the storyline in about a month of consistent play.
(p.s. i don't care about rants and hate over spelling and grammar, its a review in my opinion not a book about it)