Is Guild Wars: Factions worth playing?

[kukyfrope]

Interview: Guild Wars Factions (http://pc.gamedaily.com/game/features/?gameid=4992&id=996&rp=49)
"The first free MMO has been a huge success. GameDaily sat down with Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet to discuss all things Guild Wars."

I hadn't really played Guild Wars before and after reading this interview I'm kind of intrigued to try it. How is it compared to WoW or Oblivion? Should I really invest time in a new character

[brahmabull754]

Played Guild Wars for a while between when I quit SWG and when I started playing WoW. It was pretty cool for a while, but the only thing to do at end-game is either PvP arenas or massive, massive amounts of farming.

[White Runner]

Just a matter of time before a wedding/funeral gets crashed in Factions... I've been thinking about picking it up...

[Janus67]

well sense it isn't super-massive that is pretty much impossible, and also there isn't any pvp in areas that are not directly pvp (arenas). So it is pretty much impossible to crash something of that sort, besides the point that I haven't heard of any funerals/weddings either.

I played GW for about 300 hours and kinda got burnt out on it. I plan to go back and play it maybe this summer, but right now I am getting back into BF2. I would play through the first one preferably, although either would be fine.

[Amarkarian]

well, personally i dont think mmo's are worth the time. but i like to switch between guild wars and bf2

[brahmabull754]

While GW is multiplayer and online, it hardly counts as an MMO by current standards (think SWG, WoW, L2, EQ, Eve). The character advancement and player community are just not there. If you don't want the time-sink of a true MMO, Guild Wars might be worth looking into. That's why I played it, to take a break from the hardcore MMOs like SWG and WoW.

[John G]

Guild Wars is something in between traditional single player RPG's and traditional MMO's. It has good story-line like single-player RPG's, and similar time consumption. You have the option of playing it along with other people, and also PvPing with them. Classes, skills, and abilities are much more balanced than is typically found in either of the other two traditional forms of the genre. Graphical quality is quite good with modest system requirements. However, there's a depth of detail and interactivity that can go much deeper in games like oblivion. It also doesn't really provide that opportunity for an alternate life like a lot of people find in games like WoW.

Factions is basically a new installment...another game of all new content. You can play it seperately or link it to the first chapter so that your characters can play through both. If you like one, you'll probably like the other about the same.

[crash013]

Just wondering, is Factions an expansion to Guild Wars or does it include the new content AND the previous content?

[John G]

Well...seperate game or expansion kinda depends on how you look at it.

If you buy the second game individually, you cannot play through the content of Chapter 1. But, you do have access to the classes, skills, etc. If you do have the first one and choose to link them, it is more like an expansion where you add a few character slots, new classes, and new content. The nice thing is that it's a whole game's worth of content that gets added.