Guild Wars: Factions began as an extremely promising adventure. I absolutely LOVED the original and was enthralled to try out anet's new offering. The new professions seemed great, the assassin looked very neat and the ritualist had some unique skills and gamestyles, but the further i got in the game, the more I realized that the game simply wasn't as much fun as prophecies. The original had a great story and above-average voice acting. But I was very surprised to find a completely dull story in this one, complete with some of the WORST voice-over work in any videogame I've seen. The characters' animations in the cutscenes were horrible, and some of the voices used were unintentionally comical. The game's named Factions then came into play, and suddenly I gained a little more interest and started to have some fun with the faction-specific quests. The Kurzicks and the Luxons, as the two factions are called, have a great deal of personality and artistic design into their respective home areas, but there was always a feeling that Anet never really tapped into the potential of this Factions system. The Border line for example, moved a bit when one of the factions won a specific battle, but it never really meant anything to the population in the game. Faction points (the game's resource for some of the rare armor and other guild abilities) were gained through very uninteresting missions and a few interesting battles, but quickly became another reason for farming and grinding, something Anet supposedly attempted to eliminate with the franchise. The game's setting was rather interesting at least. Inspired by ancient China, Anet designed an artistically beautiful world, highlighted by the faction specific areas. The Kurzick forest was always atmospheric and interesting, and the Luxon Jade Sea was very well implemented, with some nice shading effects to boot. The game's environment is HUGE, but reaching a maximum level in a character was far too easy. One of the most appealing aspects of an MMORPG is gradually leveling up as the story progresses and being thrilled of finally reaching that final level after doing so many missions and grinding through the hardest areas in the game. But Factions takes that aspect of an RPG away and makes it FAR too easy to reach the pinnacle of the game's leveling system. There's never a chance to laugh at poor level 3 nooblets in the game, because there's barely any... they all literally maxed out in the first few missions. The game still has some of the problems encountered in Prophecies. A lack of a better selling system leads to countless people spamming the chatbox with WTS: Flaming Butterknife of Juiciness, 50K!!!!!.... it gets annoying after a while. I was also dissapointed with some of the spell effects in the game. They could have placed really nice effects for some of the spells, but a meteor shower in guild wars feels like some weird brown pellet crap just started falling. You would never think that a meteor shower in the game was a powerful nuke from the look of it. And that's one of the few ones that actually displays a special effect. Most of the spells actually don't even have animations, outside of the little damage number popping out of the bad guy to tell you how much damage your dull spell dished out. Perhaps the biggest problem with the game, however, is it's tendency to aim its best content at the elite few who are involed in the top guilds. The secret areas with the best drops are secluded to guilds with enough factions points to "own" a town, but that leaves several hundred thousands out of the whole affair. Thankfully there are several nice guildmates in the area who lend people rides to the elite areas, but there is always some douche German guild that will control the town for a while and seclude the entire populace from entering the best areas in the game.
The game does have a quite a few strong points however. The skill system is always fun, and PvP was very polished, if a bit elitist. Booting on was always very smooth and seamless; Anet's downloading system is amazing: no need for patches and all that nonsense that continues to bog WoW players. The game engine, while aged, still cranks out some nice graphics and detail in some areas is very admirable. So it comes down to this: If you've played Guildwars Prophecies, loved it, and are involved in an ACTIVE ranked guild with plenty of friends and such, you will love Factions. But for most of us, people who enjoyed the original but aren't members of a top 100 guild or are simply expecting a balanced pve/pvp experience like the original, don't expect the best from this title. Factions takes guildwars in a pvp-heavy direction, and while many will rejoice at this, most of us will agree that the original simply was a lot more polished, inspiring, and downright fun than the sequel.
When the original Guild Wars launched in 2005, no one truly anticipated the impact it would have on the online gaming industry. While not as substantial as World of Warcraft, it stood alone as a remarkable gaming master... Read Full Review
While I loved the original Guild Wars, the drab, destroyed and dreary world post sundering was just depressing to me to play in. The Asian-inspired game world of Cantha in Factions is infinitely more appealing to me and... Read Full Review
