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95-472: Factions introduced a new PvE campaign, two new professions in addition to the original six, new skills and armor for existing professions, new gameplay modes for both PvE and PvP , and gameplay modifications in response to criticism of the earlier Prophecies campaign. Most of the PvP content from Prophecies is available to Factions -only accounts. Factions is a standalone version of Guild Wars that shares

190-507: A certain number of NPCs alive until the end). Gold, experience and a skill point are given at each reward tier. Several new concepts for co-operative missions have been introduced, such as missions with two teams of eight and missions specifically for killing a single boss . The time taken for a new character to reach the maximum level of twenty is reduced and most of the areas are designed for level twenty characters. Experience, and therefore skill points, are easy to acquire once level twenty

285-471: A class's proficiency in order to perform a customized role that is determined by the player. The Warrior profession, for example, has access to the primary Strength attribute that increases their armor penetration with martial weapons, and is able to wear heavy armor providing the highest protection against physical damage of all professions. Elementalists, on the other hand, wear less protective armor, but can use their primary Energy Storage attribute to give them

380-406: A co-operative role-playing portion and a competitive Player versus Player (PvP) portion. In PvP, players may use either their co-operative characters or PvP-exclusive characters who are inherently maximum level and have account-based access to unlocked content. Players use a 3D avatar to interact with the world around them. The game predominantly features a third-person perspective but also has

475-426: A cost of $ 20 million to $ 30 million. In addition to the standard edition, there are many other editions of Guild Wars: Prophecies available on the market. All of them contain the basic Account Creation Code and Manuscript Book, as well as other added features listed below, Guild Wars debuted on The NPD Group 's computer game sales charts at #1 for the month of April 2005. NPD ultimately ranked Guild Wars as

570-561: A faction, competing in Alliance battles, in Competitive Missions or in some Challenge Missions. If the player does not wish to donate faction to the alliance, or if they play for the faction which the guild isn't allied with, they can trade their faction points for armor crafting materials or skills that can be used in the PvE portion of the game. A player is considered Luxon or Kurzick by having

665-530: A free player-versus-player preview event in January 20-22 to introduce the Assassin and Ritualist professions. Between 24-26 March 2006, a two-day public beta preview event was launched for the game for European players who had pre-ordered Factions and up to three referred players, with over 500,000 players participating in the event over the weekend, making it one of the largest public beta events of its time. A 'Day of

760-551: A full team automatically forfeit their round. Success in daily automated tournaments qualifies that particular guild for play in the monthly automated tournament, and the final victors of this tournament earn a number of real and in-game rewards. Players who do not participate in the automated tournament were allowed to place bets on the results of these tournaments for a number of in-game rewards prior to February 2010. Many competitive matches may be observed by players by means of an observer mode. Important PvP matches such as matches in

855-539: A game where this is not the case is Eve Online , where players can be, and often are, ambushed by other human players player versus player while attempting to complete a quest. Some games, such as World of Warcraft , offer the player the choice of participating in open-world PvP combat or doing quests without PvP interruption, by offering players the ability to join servers where PvP is enabled by default, or allowing them to activate temporary "flags" which allow them to attack and be attacked by other "flagged" players for

950-513: A guild hall that serves as the guild headquarters and may be furnished with merchants, traders, and storage NPCs. Each guild hall is an individual instanced outpost located at the same spot on the Battle Isles, but they are not physically accessible to non-allied members as the only way to enter a guild hall is by "map travel". The guild leader recruits new players to the guild and can promote a number of them to guild officers , who can then help with

1045-462: A limited time. Guild Wars (video game) Guild Wars is a multiplayer online action role-playing game developed by ArenaNet , a subsidiary of South Korean game publisher NCSOFT , and released in 2005. As the original installment of the Guild Wars series , its campaign was retroactively titled Prophecies to differentiate it from the content of subsequent releases. The game contains

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1140-413: A linear story with which they interact by performing a series of primary quests and replayable missions. Quests are given to a player by NPCs via text dialog. As quests and missions are completed, new areas, new quests, and new missions are unlocked for the player's character to access. Missions allow the player character to participate in the major events of the storyline, such as significant battles against

1235-526: A main mission and an optional bonus mission. Cooperative missions are easy to avoid in Prophecies as most areas are accessible without completing missions. Factions makes all missions compulsory for accessing new areas and completing the game. The bonus mission has been removed and replaced with a three-tiered reward system. Some missions' tiers are based on the time taken to complete the mission, others are based on completion of extra objectives (such as keeping

1330-478: A majority of unspent faction points for the faction they support. To change faction a player needs to acquire a majority of factions points for their new faction. Factions provides PvE players access to two competitive missions, a new game type for the Factions campaign. In these missions, two random teams of eight compete to reach specific objectives. If a player dies they respawn in the base and are able to rejoin

1425-408: A much greater pool of energy than other professions. Guild Wars also introduces the ability to choose a secondary profession, expanding the selection of attributes and skills. A character does not, however, have access to the primary attribute of its secondary profession. Many, but not all, skills become more powerful with more points in a class's primary attribute. A Warrior/Elementalist, therefore,

1520-471: A plague spreading over Cantha. In attempting to find its source, the players discover the mark of an ancient evil from Cantha's history, the disgraced imperial bodyguard Shiro Tagachi. Two hundred years before the events of the story, Shiro murdered the emperor he was sworn to protect, and was himself promptly slain for his evil act. Shiro's death wail triggered a calamitous event, the Jade Wind , that swept across

1615-566: A refugee settlement. Soon, they become involved in the war brimming between the White Mantle who govern Kryta and an army of undead, led by an Undead Lich, who are laying waste to the Krytan countryside. During a sequence of missions, the players help the Mantle hold back the undead, for which they are rewarded by being allowed to participate in a Choosing ceremony. During the ceremony, it is revealed that

1710-462: A score of 89.67% on GameRankings and 89/100 on Metacritic . In 2005, it won several prestigious awards including IGN 's Best PC RPG and GameSpy 's MMORPG of the Year awards. The editors of Computer Games Magazine presented Guild Wars with their 2005 awards for "Best Technology" and "Best MMO Debut", and named it the year's fourth-best computer game. They wrote, "With almost every element of

1805-420: Is a sharp blow, but it makes the battle against Shiro immensely personal for Mhenlo, who vows to avenge his former master. In the final battle, the players assault the now-mortal Shiro Tagachi and kill him for a second time, after which his mortal form is sealed in jade and his spirit is captured by the other envoys. Unlike the final mission in the earlier Prophecies campaign, this final mission consists solely of

1900-413: Is a term used for both single player and online games , particularly MMORPGs , CORPGs, MUDs , other online role-playing video games and survival games to refer to fighting computer-controlled enemies - in contrast to PvP ( player versus player ) which is fighting other players in the game. In survival games a large part may be fighting the elements, controlling hunger and thirst, learning to adapt to

1995-460: Is a warrior who may use spells in combat, although the Elementalist spells used will generally not have as much power as those of a primary Elementalist. This is increased by the fact that runes, which among other things increase attribute levels, can only increase the attribute levels associated with a player's primary profession. There are over a thousand skills in the game that can be acquired by

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2090-400: Is advisable to prepare a build to meet the challenges of each type: Guilds are a core element of Guild Wars , manifesting not only as social units but also being closely linked with the game mechanics. Although a player is not required to join a guild, it adds value to the gaming time and increases camaraderie. Often, joining a guild is a good way to get help from more experienced players as

2185-522: Is capped at 20 - by this point, the character will also have reached 170 attribute points. Players may also choose to do certain quests to gain another 30 attribute points, making the maximum points available 200. Experience can still be gained and is used to learn more skills or buy consumable items throughout the game. A profession is a type of class, central to the gameplay in Guild Wars . Each profession has an array of attributes and skills that help narrow

2280-649: Is considered to be inherently 'good' or 'evil'. Factions also introduces the concept of multi-guild Alliances. An alliance is a group of up to ten guilds aligned with the same faction who agree to join in an alliance under the name of a single lead guild. Each faction has a number of towns which they own; the control of these towns is given to alliances with the highest standing with their faction. Alliances may earn this faction by means of donations from that alliance's member players. A player may earn account-based Kurzick or Luxon faction points while they are playing Factions . Faction points are earned doing PvE quests for

2375-401: Is only loosely connected to that of the earlier Prophecies campaign. The primary link is with the monk Mhenlo, who is revealed to have spent his youth in the Factions -specific fictional continent of Cantha . Players who add Factions to their account can bring their role-playing characters from other campaigns by accompanying Mhenlo; characters that begin in Factions meet Mhenlo later in

2470-474: Is reached. This means that the time taken to unlock skills through PvE play is reduced from Prophecies . Skill acquisition is modified also, most skills must be purchased from Skill Traders, rather than received by completing quests. Boss enemies now do double damage and take half the time to use spells and skills instead of having shortened hex and condition durations. Factions introduces two factions which players and guilds may side with; Neither faction

2565-422: Is represented by a team of twelve, split into three squads of four. Players form squads of four which are randomly teamed with two other squads for the match. The objective of the battle is to be the first team to reach 500 points. Points are rewarded for capturing and holding strategic map locations and player kills. If one team holds all map locations for a minute, the team automatically receives 500 points and

2660-399: Is the wave of the future, but Guild Wars is definitely a trendsetter." During the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards , Guild Wars tied with City of Villains for " Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year ". Some contemporary published criticism of Prophecies was heavily informed by the then-dominant World of Warcraft MMORPG formula. For instance, IGN's Tom Mcnamara considered

2755-573: The Guild Wars series. For the first public appearance of Guild Wars in April 2004, that occurred in conjunction with E3 2004, people were encouraged to download the client and play an online demo of the game to test its networking capabilities. This was followed by a preview event and several beta test weekend events. In addition to the public beta events, ArenaNet used continuously running closed alpha test servers throughout development; some alpha testers were ArenaNet employees but most were volunteers from

2850-510: The Hall of Heroes or between highly rated guilds may be observed (after a delay of fifteen minutes) by others in order to see the tactics used by successful teams and attempt to learn or counter them. Guilds may additionally observe their own Guild Battles for a fixed period of time. Player versus Environment (PvE) missions of Guild Wars use several standard tropes of the MMORPG genre. Players explore

2945-598: The Kurzicks or the Luxons, the two Canthan factions (from Guild Wars Factions ) locked in perpetual conflict. Players can accumulate faction (reputation) with either the Kurzicks or the Luxons, which can either be "donated" to the alliance or redeemed for certain in-game rewards. The alliances with the highest total amount of donated faction are given control of certain in-game outposts on the Canthan continent; controlling an outpost gives

Guild Wars Factions - Misplaced Pages Continue

3040-499: The Luxons, through neutral to strong advantage to the Kurzick. The map played on depends on the land held by the faction. For example, if the Luxon are holding a lot of land, the maps played on give advantage to the Kurzick. Teams that are playing on maps where the opposition has an advantage receive a bonus to the number of Alliance faction points accrued during the match. The Factions story

3135-606: The Mantle are actually murderers who worship obscure beings and use the souls of the slain Chosen villagers to power arcane magical devices. The protagonists quickly decide to join a resistance organisation known as the Shining Blade and put an end to the Mantle. This plot twist also introduces the vizier Khilbron of the destroyed divine kingdom of Orr . However the White Mantle are more powerful than expected, and after some successes by

3230-564: The North releases. Prophecies introduced two high-end dungeons that have been present in every subsequent Guild Wars release: the Fissure of Woe and the Underworld . These areas are accessible by the avatars of the in-game gods (for a small game-currency fee), and contain some of the most prestigious weapons and armor in the game series. It is, therefore, one of the most intensively farmed areas of

3325-703: The Tengu' pre-release event was held for pre-order players on 27 April 2006. Factions was released on 28 April 2006. To coincide with the release, ArenaNet and NCsoft announced a Guild Wars Factions Championship event at the Leipzig Games Convention in August 2006. Upon release, Factions reached the top of the Chart-Track weekly sales for computer games in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America. Shortly after

3420-535: The Titans back in their prison. And so the prophecy is fully fulfilled. The Mursaat have been destroyed by the player and the Titans. The Lich's life energy is enough to keep the Titans imprisoned for millennia, removing the need to sacrifice Chosen to maintain the seal. Prophecies introduced, half a year after the campaign, the free Sorrow's Furnace expansion returned players to the Shiverpeak mountains, specifically to

3515-737: The United Kingdom; and a "Gold" award from the Asociación Española de Distribuidores y Editores de Software de Entretenimiento , for more than 40,000 sales in Spain during its first 12 months. By September 2005, Guild Wars had sold 1 million units. France accounted for 100,000 copies of this figure As of August 2007; Prophecies and the two subsequent campaigns Guild Wars Factions and Guild Wars Nightfall have together sold more than 5 million copies. The game had sold 6.5 million copies by August 2010. Guild Wars has been well received by critics, especially for its character designs. It received

3610-461: The advice of the envoys, the players then choose a side; going with Mhenlo to convince the Kurzicks that Shiro returning is more important than their ongoing war with the Luxons, or with Master Togo to convince the Luxons to stop fighting the Kurzicks. This causes a momentary fork in the story; the earlier Prophecies campaign was criticized for its linearity, so both Factions and the subsequent Nightfall campaigns have included non-linear elements in

3705-470: The afflicted from Vizunah Square . At the end, they learn more about the history of Shiro. When he was slain for his murder, he became an envoy of Grenth, the god of death, and was given the task of shepherding the newly dead to the underworld. However, Shiro was not content with this fate, and wished to become mortal again, which he hoped to accomplish by slaying the emperor to complete an arcane ritual. To accomplish this, Shiro uses his envoy powers to spread

3800-502: The affliction, and uses the souls of the dead as soldiers in his army. The other envoys are not happy with Shiro's actions and decide to help the players to put an end to him. The first step in the envoys' plan is for the players to become closer to the stars to gain the ability to hurt Shiro in his envoy form. Subsequently, they pay a visit to the spirit of the former assassin Vizu , who was instrumental in defeating Shiro previously. From Vizu,

3895-599: The aforementioned core professions. The Paragon and Dervish professions are exclusive to Guild Wars: Nightfall , and can also be played with the core professions. Unlike the campaigns, Guild Wars: Eye of the North does not offer any new playable professions. The Guild Wars universe consists of persistent staging zones known as towns and outposts. These areas normally contain non-player characters that provide services such as merchandising or storage. Other NPC's provide quests and present rewards to adventurers. These areas are also used when forming groups of people to go out into

Guild Wars Factions - Misplaced Pages Continue

3990-424: The aims of the new release were to improve on the campaign of the original game, offering improved graphics and new co-operative play mechanics through the introduction of alliances, factions and player-versus-player modes. The soundtrack of Factions was created by video game composer Jeremy Soule , who had composed the music for the original game. Factions was announced on 10 January 2006, with ArenaNet launching

4085-404: The alliance members access to restricted areas of the outposts, containing, among other things, merchants who sell at a discount. In addition to membership in guilds, a player may be a guest of any number of other guilds. Guest privileges are limited to visiting the guild hall and participating in guild or alliance battles. An accepted invitation expires after 24 hours. Player characters begin

4180-545: The ancient dragon Glint, the author of the Flameseeker Prophecy. She aids them in a sequence of missions against the Mantle and the Mursaat, leading eventually to the volcano where "the power to destroy Good and Evil" is kept sealed. At the urging of Khilbron, the players storm the Mursaat stronghold built around the volcano and release the seals on the door, releasing the Titans, an army of powerful beings of fire from beneath

4275-420: The battle against Shiro, allowing players to modify their tactics, skills and team setup before a climactic final battle; this innovation was also used against the end bosses of the subsequent Nightfall and Eye of the North releases. Factions was developed by ArenaNet as a standalone release over twelve months immediately following the release of Guild Wars in 2005. Executive producer Jeff Strain described

4370-586: The builds of other characters in the party. A player's ability to help the party is based on the way a player's "build" works. If the skills combine well, such as a hex spell that makes an enemy attack faster and then another one that makes him miss 75% of the time and take damage for each miss, then the build will work effectively. In PvE , monsters that are slain will generate gold and loot which can be traded or sold to players or NPCs. Unique or rare weapon designs are often found from defeating powerful monsters, or by opening treasure chests. In PvP , reputation in

4465-522: The caverns underneath it. There, they participate in a sequence of quests with the final goal of defeating the Iron Forgeman , an immense automaton used by the Stone Summit dwarves to drive their war effort. Sorrow's Furnace introduced "unique items" to Guild Wars : these are items of set stats dropped by bosses. This model was repeated and expanded in the following Factions , Nightfall and Eye of

4560-450: The character over time, but players may only use and equip up to 8 of them at any one time. This introduces levels of strategy, in which one must have a careful selection of skills that work well with one another and with teammates in order to survive. The core professions are Warrior, Monk, Elementalist, Ranger, Necromancer and Mesmer. The Assassin and Ritualist professions are exclusive to Guild Wars: Factions, which can be played along with

4655-469: The competitive modes in Guild Wars : Guild Wars has a continuously running automated tournament system. Players or guilds elect to participate in the tournament by buying in-game tokens using their PvP faction points. The participants are divided randomly into groups of 32 that participate daily in up to six Swiss rounds held on a fixed schedule, and the top eight guilds continue on to a single-elimination tournament . Participants who are unable to field

4750-572: The continent of Cantha, turning the sea into solid jade and the Echovald Forest in southern Cantha to stone. (This back story was featured in a full-motion cinematic trailer for Factions .) Togo recognizes the mark of Shiro and rushes to inform the emperor; the player characters, under his direction, head to the seat of the Canthan empire, the sprawling Kaineng Center . In the mainland, Factions characters are united with characters from other campaigns when they join forces to eject Shiro's army of

4845-475: The damage that they can deal and cause different side effects (such as knocking people to the ground with a hammer, causing bleeding wounds that deal additional damage over time with a sword, or striking multiple foes with an axe). Most skills have a governing attribute that determines its power and effect. These attributes are assigned using a number of attribute points. Guild Wars is similar to collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering because of

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4940-462: The design, ArenaNet carefully thumbs its nose at the model introduced by Ultima Online , codified by EverQuest , and perfected by World of WarCraft ." It won PC Gamer US ' s "Best Massively Multiplayer Game 2005" and "Best Value 2005" awards, and was a finalist in the "Best Roleplaying Game 2005" category, which ultimately went to Dungeon Siege II . The magazine's Chuck Osborn wrote, "It's too early to say whether fee-less online gaming

5035-516: The earth. Khilbron then reveals himself as the evil Lich Lord who was leading the undead in Kryta and who has been manipulating the player since they arrived from Ascalon. He reveals that he is the Flameseeker in the prophecy, not the player, and takes command of the titans and orders them to attack all of Tyria. The players then defeat him in the final mission of the campaign, using his life force to seal

5130-618: The environment and exploration. Usually a PvE mode can be played alone, with human companions or with AI companions. The PvE mode may contain a storyline that is narrated as the player progresses through missions. It may also contain missions that may be done in any order. Guild Wars narrates its story by displaying in-game cut scenes and dialogue with non-playable characters (NPCs). To enhance replayability, missions can often be completed many times. Characters playing in this mode are often protected against being killed by other players and/or having their possessions stolen. An example of

5225-466: The existing client automatically downloads a new version which examines a manifest of files to determine which files have been modified and therefore need to be downloaded to the client machine. This manifest is prioritized so that core assets are downloaded prior to the player being able to start the game, and the rest can be downloaded in the background during gameplay. ArenaNet uses this rapid update technology to make changes on demand and close exploits in

5320-565: The fight to meet the objectives. When the match finishes the players are returned to a waiting area to start the next battle. These missions are a new gameplay type introduced in Factions . They set specific scoring objectives for a team to meet, offering rewards of gold, experience or faction points dependent on the team's performance in the mission. The best teams over each quarter, each month and each day are recorded for players to view online. There are five different missions each with different objectives. For example, Dragon's Throat requires

5415-409: The form of "faction" is gained based on how well a player performs. "Balthazar faction" is gained by the number of wins that you and your team achieve, and for each unique kill. Most PvP in Guild Wars is fast-paced, while the transition period between games may take longer. Player versus Player (PvP) combat in Guild Wars is consensual and team-based. Such combat is restricted to special PvP areas,

5510-543: The fourth-best-selling computer game of 2005. In the United States, it sold 540,000 copies and earned $ 26.1 million by August 2006. At the time, this led Edge to declare Guild Wars the country's 23rd-highest computer game seller released since January 2000. It also received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in

5605-524: The game in the fictional idyllic kingdom of Ascalon , which serves as the tutorial content for new characters. The setting is friendly, with few aggressive monsters and a number of easily completed quests. New characters are introduced to the main protagonists of the multi-campaign Guild Wars story: the monk Mhenlo, the warrior Devona, the elementalist Cynn and the ranger Aidan. Player characters also interact with Prince Rurik (voiced by Robin Atkin Downes ),

5700-603: The game-world to be static and timeless. In the post-Searing world, the initial portion of the non-tutorial plot sees the protagonists and player characters try to recover their footing against the Charr in the ruined kingdom of Ascalon. In a climactic event, Prince Rurik realizes the battle is lost, and beseeches the king to give the kingdom up and escape alive to the neighboring human kingdom of Kryta . The stalwart King Adelbern—his father—sees no merit in Rurik's plea, and banishes

5795-413: The game-world, kill monsters, perform quests and complete missions to earn rewards and advance the story. Rewards include experience points , skill points, skills, gold, faction, reputation and items for the player character. Some of these rewards not only advance the particular character being played at the time, but also unlock features of the game account-wide. In each campaign the player is involved in

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5890-406: The game. Guild Wars is the first game created by developer ArenaNet . Senior developers from Blizzard Entertainment , some involved in the early development of World of Warcraft , left to create ArenaNet to develop a game which took risks with game design and business model. Guild Wars development was first announced in April 2003. Guild Wars development began in an environment following

5985-481: The heir apparent of the kingdom. After completing a number of initial quests and selecting a secondary profession , the character is then inducted into the Ascalon Vanguard , an elite force led by the prince himself who are fighting the armies of the Charr beasts who are planning an invasion of Ascalon. During the final quest in this tutorial world, the Charr complete a ritual to unleash a rain of fire and stone upon

6080-420: The in-game guild interface allows communication between guild members. A guild leader creates the guild by registering a guild name and a tag (between two and four characters long) with a Guild Registrar, found in some major towns. The guild tag is displayed in brackets after the names of guild members. The leader also designs the guild's cape (from a large palette of shapes, patterns and emblems), and purchases

6175-507: The main antagonist. Both quests and missions can feature in-game cut scenes which advance the story and provide context to the actions which follow. Cut scenes are in the third-person, often featuring the party leader's character and revealing elements of the game that the character would not normally be aware of, such as the actions of an antagonist. Players are given the option of skipping the cut scenes if all party members agree upon it. There are different types of PvE in Guild Wars , and it

6270-492: The majority of combat interaction. Each skill has a different effect when used, and fall under many different categories. They can range from offensive skills such as setting foes on fire and defensive skills which include resurrection and healing allies. Enchantments that include giving players extra health points or Hexes that drain the enemy's life and add it to your own make up part of the skill selection in Guild Wars . Attack skills are used in conjunction with weapons to augment

6365-589: The majority of which are located on the core area known as The Battle Isles. Individual campaigns also have certain campaign-specific PvP arenas. Players may participate in PvP combat with either their role-playing characters or with characters created specifically for PvP. Characters are rewarded with experience points for victories in competitive battle and the player account also acquires faction points redeemable for in-game rewards. In addition to this victory may also award points which contribute towards completion of character or account based titles . The following are

6460-458: The maximum level before leaving the tutorial content. The continuing problem of the Guild Wars user interface lacking advanced team-forming and trading functions was also criticized, but the subsequent Nightfall release partially addressed these criticisms by adding a unified party-search utility with limited trading functions. Justin Olivetti of Engadget critiqued the game's soundtrack, stating

6555-494: The music was "technically sufficient" but lacked the "grandeur" and "catchiness" of its predecessor. Factions was nominated for a British Academy Video Games Award in the 'Multiplayer' category, and won the Best Multiplayer Game award from DEMMX. Player versus environment Player versus environment ( PvE , also known as player versus monster ( PvM ) and commonly misinterpreted as player versus entity )

6650-400: The number and placement of creatures encountered in the PvE world overwhelming, particularly since the party size and number of skills are both limited to eight. He further found combat repetitive, for "[a]s fun as combat is, and as pretty as it looks .... [mobs] don't give much (if any) experience points and will be dropping items that are virtually useless to you." GameSpot's Greg Kasavin, on

6745-462: The option of first-person . These characters are able to walk/run and interact with other characters through chat. They can also perform actions such as fighting and picking up objects, as well as interacting with special objects. Players can choose from a range of up to ten different professions. When creating a character, players can select their hair style, face, skin tone, height and avatar name—the selection depending upon that profession chosen. As

6840-418: The other hand, hailed Guild Wars its decision to limit active skills to eight as "a resouding success", noting that "[w]hich eight skills you bring to battle and which skills you discover during your adventure is really at the heart of what makes Guild Wars such a compelling experience." Similarly, Eurogamer's Kieron Gillen praised the flexibility of Guild Wars its profession and skill-swap systems for "turn[ing]

6935-476: The palace and has kidnapped the Emperor. The players rush to save the emperor by cutting a path through Shiro's army of fearsome Shiro'ken constructs. Just as Shiro is about to slay the Emperor, Master Togo throws himself in the way, saving the Emperor. He pays a steep price, as Shiro focuses instead on Togo for his ritual; it appears that he merely needs to spill royal blood, not necessarily the emperor's. Togo's death

7030-405: The player community who signed a non-disclosure agreement with ArenaNet . To support their fee-free approach to online gaming the server architecture developed for the game was core to minimizing the bandwidth costs associated with maintaining game servers. Infrastructure design was influenced by the developers' experiences with Battle.net development. Each time there is an update to the game

7125-449: The player progresses through the game, they can unlock different armor and weapons to alter the visual appearance of that avatar. They can also decide whether they want their avatar to start in a Player vs. Environment world (the RPG aspect of the game), or get right into the competitive Player vs. Player and fight live against other players in the game. The maximum level for character development

7220-642: The player they call upon their masters, a powerful race of beings known as the Mursaat , to destroy the Shining Blade and drive the players out of Kryta. Prophecies introduced Vizier Khilbron, who helps the players escape to the Crystal Desert to partake in the ritual of Ascension . This is the first step to them fulfilling the Flameseeker Prophecies . After ascension, the players have an audience with

7315-611: The players learn of the artifacts of two other Canthan heroes responsible for Shiro's death: the urn carrying the ashes of Saint Viktor , the patron saint of the Kurzicks , and the spear of Archemorus , the legendary hero of the Luxons . The players retrieve the artifacts, and assault Shiro at the center of his power, in the Sunjiang District , destroying his constructs and closing spirit rifts he has opened. Shiro himself, however, escapes. At

7410-414: The players to kill as many enemies as possible over a period of time and Amatz Basin (named by ArenaNet after the player community of The Amazon Basin, which also contributed to the official Guild Wars strategy guide) requires the players to save as many NPC refugees as possible in a set time. Alliance Battles are where the Luxon and Kurzick factions battle for control of towns on the game map. Each faction

7505-475: The plot. Like Prophecies , Factions begins with a tutorial section, called the Shing Jea Island , with easy quests and non-threatening monsters. The Factions tutorial areas are not separated from the rest of the game like in Prophecies , but are instead accessible at all times like any other outpost. In the tutorial, Canthan characters are introduced to one of the main characters of the Factions story,

7600-401: The plot. Once the players convince their chosen side, players from the Luxon and Kurzick factions meet again to seek advice from the ancient dragon, Kuunavang. They find that Kuunavang has been corrupted by Shiro, but they defeat Shiro's corruption and Kuunavang aids the players subsequently in their fight against Shiro by granting them devastatingly powerful skills. Meanwhile, Shiro has raided

7695-583: The prince for daring to suggest abandoning his country. A few refugees, including the protagonists and player characters, follow the now-exiled Rurik to Kryta; during the trip, Rurik is trapped and slain by the Stone Summit dwarves, a xenophobic faction who seek to control the passes through the Shiverpeak Mountains and are waging civil-war against the other human-allied Deldrimor Dwarves . The protagonists arrive in Kryta leaderless and attempt to set up

7790-513: The recruitment and further promotion of officers. All player characters on the same Guild Wars account belong to the same guild. Players may leave their guild whenever they please, but only the leader and officers can dismiss non-officer players from the guild; the leader has the additional power to dismiss officers and disband the guild. Guilds have a membership limit of 100 members; player communities with more than that many members generally create allied sister guilds, often named similarly and using

7885-400: The release of EverQuest when a number of new MMORPGs were announced. ArenaNet positioned Guild Wars in a niche in this landscape, offering unlimited gametime without subscription fees. ArenaNet believed that players would not pay subscription fees for every online game they play and that paying a fee would cause players to make a "lifestyle commitment" to a particular game, rather than

7980-541: The release of Factions , the number of sales of Guild Wars titles passed the two million mark milestone. According to review aggregator Metacritic , Factions received "generally favorable" reviews from critics. Reviewers were impressed by the addition of the new Kurzick and Luxon factions that players could ally with and claim territory on the game map for their alliance, but criticized its weak storyline (compared to Prophecies ), poorer voice-acting, and its accelerated character level curve that let characters reach

8075-526: The ritualist Master Togo. Togo is a half-brother to the emperor of Cantha, and the head of the Shing Jea Monastery where new Factions characters receive their preliminary training. It is revealed that Togo was a former mentor of Mhenlo. The Factions tutorial quests are directed towards specific tactical and strategic gameplay features such as kiting , snaring , and countering melee fighters. The initial tutorial missions also introduce new players to

8170-572: The same gameplay mechanics and features a unique area and storyline. Like all Guild Wars campaigns, Factions contains the core character classes introduced in Prophecies ; it also adds two new classes to the game: Dervishes and Paragons can get to Cantha via Kamadan, the port city of Istan, but they cannot be created in Cantha. Cooperative missions in Factions are different from their equivalent in Prophecies . In Prophecies , players complete

8265-426: The same tag and cape. Up to ten individual guilds may ally together to form an alliance . Members of an alliance may communicate over a shared chat channel, and visit the guild halls of the other guilds of the alliance. Each alliance has a leader guild that initiates the alliance, the leader of which is also the alliance leader, who may admit or dismiss guilds from the alliance. Each alliance must be devoted to either

8360-485: The single-player game into something where you're experimenting, thinking and re-evaluating constantly (since it's easy to rejig your abilities)." Tyler Nagata from GamesRadar+ agreed, finding Guild Wars to provide "lots of incentive to experiment with various character builds until you find the one that fits your play style best" and " never let[ting] you feel that you’ve been trapped in a certain character build". Second, both players and published reviews have commented on

8455-626: The system. Sorrow's Furnace added further playable content in September 2005. In 2010, the Prophecies campaign received a major content addition in the form of the War in Kryta , the Tyrian component of the Guild Wars Beyond initiative. This new content was designed to help bridge the 250-year story gap between the end of first game and the start of Guild Wars 2 . The game took five years to develop at

8550-566: The unnatural coupling of cooperative and competitive matches, which require very different playing styles. At the game's release, PvP focused players were required to "unlock" their skills and items by playing through the cooperative game, even though a PvP player may have no interest in cooperative gaming. This issue, however, has been addressed by ArenaNet, firstly by introducing Balthazar Faction in June 2005 which enabled unlocking through playing PvP and further in August 2006 by making skill unlocks for

8645-401: The usual behaviour of playing many different games and switching between them. Jeff Strain , a founder of ArenaNet, said, "It is our opinion that the free online gaming model combined with frequent content updates is the optimum online paradigm for interfacing with consumers and creating a significant, enduring gaming franchise." ArenaNet used open beta testing throughout the development of

8740-423: The victory. Players do not get a penalty for dying (as they would in most other parts of the game) and are automatically resurrected. Players on both the winning and losing side are rewarded with Kurzick or Luxon faction according to the number of points their side gathered, with bonus points being given to the winning side. The battles are fought on a series of five maps which are weighted from strong advantage to

8835-440: The way the different skills interact. While in a town or staging area, a character's skill and attribute selection can be freely modified to construct a "build". Once in a combat zone (such as an explorable area or a PvP arena), the build becomes immutable until the character exits the combat zone and returns to a staging area. Players generally either choose a specific build for a given area or role, or use builds that synergize with

8930-497: The world and play cooperatively. Players that venture out from the staging area and into an explorable area are then able to use their weapons and skills to defeat monsters and interact with other objects in the game. As players progress through the game, they gain access to additional staging zones. Players can then transport their characters instantly from one staging area to another using a process commonly referred to as 'map traveling'. Apart from fighting with weapons, skills make up

9025-570: The world, breaching Ascalon's defensive Great Wall , and reducing most of its cities to ruins. This in-game event, referred to as the Searing , transports the characters into a post-apocalyptic world of constant strife, with no way of returning to the pre-Searing areas. The mechanic employed in the Searing is often cited by ArenaNet as a primary benefit of the instanced design of Guild Wars , which allows world-changing and time-advancing stories to be told individually to player characters instead of requiring

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