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Guild Wars Impressions by Arogan

MMORPG with NO monthly fee.

- I haven't touched a MMORPG since the original Everquest and that only lasted 2 weeks. I got so bored killing bats and rats. There's none of that here.
- I'm only about 6 hrs into it so this is a very early impression. Finishing all the quests can take anywhere from 50-100hrs.
- I started with a ranger/elementalist (level 3) but I enjoyed the elementalist stuff more so I started a new character:
elementalist/mesmer (level 5)
- the engine is pretty amazing. 1600x1200 rock solid 60fps (almost never budges). Graphics/art direction is great. This game loads up FAST, almost no load times between areas (almost everything is streamed), exit is fast too.
- no patches to install ever. all updates are streamed in real time.
- no monthly fee. just buy the game and play all you want.
- I soloed most of the time, I paired up once to complete a few quests that required it.
- lots of interesting emotes with nice animations. Dancing in your underwear in public places is all the rage.
- so far the early parts of the game are actually pretty fun.
- emphasis is suppose to be on player skill instead of how many hours you've played. I haven't played enough to have an opinion. This game is really easy to pickup and play but there is a lot of depth here to master.
- You can play short periods of time. Everything is stored on their server. There are only THREE files on your hard drive (about 900meg total). Really amazing tech.
- no online issues. everything ran smoothly.
- developed by X Blizzard guys.
- You only see masses of online people in towns and outposts. This is where you can form your party. Once you venture off on your quest you party gets spawned its own instance of the mission (so you won't see any other online players except who is in your party during missions). This eliminates a lot problems like spawn camping, quest queues, etc.
- I haven't touched guilds or pvp stuff yet.
- little penalty for death. In pre-searing there is none. You just respawn at the nearest resurrection temple. Post-searing you take a 15% hit to max health and mana up to 60%. The penalty is removed once you enter a town.
- Encourages build experimentation because you can reallocate your attribute points with little to no penalty.
- Quick travel system. Just open the map and double click on any town/outpost you've previously visited and you warp there.
- great camera. Zoom in all the way into first person or pan all the way back out.
- flexible gui. you can pop open as many info windows as you want and arrange them any way you like.
- combat is strategic yet fast action paced.
- there's none of that your character lives only one one server. you can chat with anybody online no matter where they are or what district they're in. There's a drop down in the upper left that you can just select the district and that's it. No starting a new character sillyness.

I highly recommend it. If you always wanted to try a MMORPG but didn't like the idea of a monthly fee, then this game is for you. [Discuss]