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The other day I am out looking for something to spend the Christmas Windfall on, and I come across Guild Wars. It sounds like a good game, so I was going to get it... until I noticed it had two expansions, Factions and Nightfall, both costing as much as the original itself.

Are these expansions needed? They are, obviously, not required in the literal sense, but I have found that many games suck hard without the expansions, and everyone is always flaunting their awesome lewts and such at you. To be honest I don't know if I can stomach $100 for a couple measly game expansions, and am wondering what options are avalible here. Info and advice from players will, of course, be greatly appreciated.

Dude.

I recently got a Nightfall trial key, and ended up buying Nightfall.

Do NOT get Guild Wars, the 'Prophecies' campaign. Go straight to Nightfall.

You get all the features anyway, due to the nature of GW, but the Prophecies campaign was their first attempt at a story, character progression, character control, etc, and it's nowhere near as smooth and open as Nightfall.

In Nightfall, the missions pay more xp (levelling is faster), you don't need to do shitball missions for skills (all skills are bought), the map areas are much larger and often have half a dozen exits (players aren't controlled by narrow passes of danger like in Prophecies, rather by quest progression and rank), and armour bonus has been totally divorced from armour appearance (any bonus can be given to any armour art). The only reason to get Prophecies (IMHO) is to get the armour art, because some of it is neat.

Oh, and after 8~ hours of play, you can change your secondary in Nightfall as much as you want, instead of it being WAY lategame like in Prophecies and needing to do a quest every time. Basically, Nightfall has struck me as a smoother, less bothersome, more enjoyable experience - but it's still exactly the same game.

To address your actual post, no. Guild Wars does not have phat lewt, there is no functional difference between equipment types (beyond customisation etc) and the most expensive, exclusive armour type is core and thus all campaigns get it. However, remember that the GW expansions aren't 'measly game expansions', they're full games like the first one - simply a new, full-length campaign, a pair of new classes, and new skills for all classes. They're not an extra level and a spooky boss like Diablo-type expansions.

Buying them online from NCSoft only cost me about AU$75/thirty pounds, cheaper than in a store. If you're curious about how the core/prophecies/factions/nightfall thing breaks down, have a read of Guild Wiki.

EDIT - oh, and if you do get it, let me know: I've got piles of shit lying around you can use, and having someone to cover you through the hard levels is always a plus. Oh wait! Guild Wars now has fully-customisable 'heroes' (super-henchmen), that you can edit, equip, reskill etc, which makes solo play much easier. All campaigns have this capability, but there is only ONE hero in the Prophecies and Faction campaigns. If you want to solo, that's another BIG reason to get Nightfall instead. I've got a character that's been using heroes the whole time, and it actually works.

Nightfalls is terrific. The only reason I could say to get Prophecies is to get all the skills, which would take ridiculously long and which you can simply pick up from skill merchants in Nightfall. Guild Wars is pretty much designed so that when you do decide to PVP, it's now the gear and loot you have, but how you have your skill bar setup and the synergy with your team mates. If your skills don't mesh well, or you don't mesh at all with your team, you're dead in the water.

The core skills are the basic/workhorse skills for the classes, though: by not having all the campaigns you're only missing out on specialty skills and a few skills key to certain builds. It doesn't bother me that I don't have the factions skills... except ONE fucking skill.

Depending on how the next expansion is, I'll probably spring for Factions once I beat nightfall.

Well, I had to run out for tomorrow's breakfast ingredients anyway, so I am now the proud owner of Nightfall and Factions. Rawr. Who plays besides Stark and Tasoth?

Also, I think I'll be creating a Mesmer.

Yo. One of my characters is named "Autumn Petal", which may help you look me up. Used to be part of the SDN guild, but it kinda died for a while, so I joined a different one.

I actually have a guild, with hall, but it's just me. It's aptly name 'The Army of One'. Look up either 'Ian Tayzuv Ghergniy', 'Nai R Surur' or 'Mnemosyn Host'. First is my Warrior primary, Second is my Nightfall primary, and third is my Ranger/Monk skill gatherer.

No no no, start with prophecies (its got the best pve), then go to nightfall. Miss out factions, its apparently shit.

Isana Kadeb wrote:No no no, start with prophecies (its got the best pve), then go to nightfall. Miss out factions, its apparently shit.

I haven't played Factions (it didn't interest me), but the Prophecies campaign sucks ass compared to Nightfall's. I don't want to grind, sorry... and it's much harder to solo without heroes, etc, insigniae and inscriptions rule... the list goes on.

Mesmers are fun. Apparently they're 'difficult to play' (remember, most MMO players are retards) but using a shutdown mesmer to mess up a whole team's plan in PvP is awesome. My first char was a Mesmer, and I took ranger secondary for tanking.

AA, I'd recommend starting in Nightfall. You can cart your characters between campaigns easily, but Nightfall gets you heroes fastest and gets you 'boat travel' (ie, changing campaigns) the fastest. If you start in Prophecies it might be a week before you can change campaigns.

EDIT - and look up Cik Adrazur. Late-Prophecies Warrior laughing his way through the Nightfall campaign.

Holy crap theres a big update out...I haven't gotten to play since november, but damned if the Dervish doesn't kick major ass. Too bad I like monk secondary to really experiment...

Elysia Sandstorm.

I started playing again with one of my friends a couple days ago. I have all three games, though so far I find the Factions areas to be the coolest (it's also extremely fast to 20). The character I'm currently using is Zalaeriyan Sonosuke.

I have an 15 Assassin/Mesmer somewhere in certainly-not-Japan and an 18 Ranger/Mesmer ... also in non-Japan, I think.

Regardless of all other options, I just love having some of the Mesmer skills available. Backfire: Killing the stupid since '04.

If I can actually be bothered to hack my way to wherever the port is, I'll see if I can't sail over to certainly-not-africa, as it seems interesting. Can't remember any names now, haven't played in months.

Yeah, Mesmers are awesome just for all the ways you can kill people who aren't paying attention. Even cheap shit like Spirit Shackles and Empathy can quickly kill/shutdown people who never notice you put them on... and Me/N with all the N condition-spreading skills is awesome.

I was actually thinking of going Necromancer as my secondary, with my second choice being Elementalist. As much as I like the idea of throwing lots of damage spells really fast, I think the lure of making someone's life a living hell with debuffs will get me.

You need a big energy pool as an E, alot of the spells are 15-25 energy a pop plus fatigue for the truly hard core shit like Meteor Shower and Earthquake. Necros can horde, drop status effects and snap the shit out of someone's life quick as hell.

Ar-Adunakhor wrote:I was actually thinking of going Necromancer as my secondary, with my second choice being Elementalist. As much as I like the idea of throwing lots of damage spells really fast, I think the lure of making someone's life a living hell with debuffs will get me.

The skills for exploiting corpses for health, defence and travel are really useful for spellcasters too. I actually don't often use than many skills from my secondary, and I'm not sure if that's usual: often when PvE'ing I don't use any. I initially used Ranger because the utility of an extra body is obvious, and this was pre-heroes so NPC henchies were pretty useless.

I find N gets good synergy with all kinds of classes: it's always useful to explode corpses, or spread conditions, and whatnot. Self-blinding then spreading that to every man and their dog is hilariously amusing.

We should really get another guild together. It kinda sucks that I have to use henchmen all the time.

After reading through this thread and some consideration, I'm thinking of shelling out the 58 bucks and getting Nightfall . Depends if my friend wants to do it... if she does, I'm getting it.

Can you get it direct2drive? If not I'm going to look for it local, somewhere has to be having a sale. It's completely standalone from the original Guild Wars right? Good. Also an SDN guild is essential. I call dibs on the good room.

Brian, if you've been playing GW, you've *already got* Nightfall. They push all the client updates in the background: once you get a Nightfall key you can instantly make Nightfall characters and play. I bought mine from the GW store, so I'm uber information superhighway guy!

And I wouldn't mind playing with people who aren't complete retards. It'd be a new experience for me.

I gave my GW key away, and good riddance too. My characters were getting too fucking annoying.

Found the buy online option. Good shit. I'll think about it a little more before shelling out. It's cheaper without the box right? Better fucking be if I don't get the box.

I don't understand what you just said.

Stark wrote:I don't understand what you just said.

LOL!

I don't have Prophecies anymore, gave it away. So if I do get Nightfall, it'll be standalone. Also there's a "buy directly online" option under the buy the box option on the plaync site. I'm assuming it's cheaper to simply buy the key and download the client than buy the boxed version and have it shipped to me. I can't tell because it doesn't list the price for the online version until I register, and I'm too lazy to do so right now.

EDIT:



The third option, how much does it cost to get Nightfall that way, it doesn't tell me unless I register and I don't want to blow an e-mail doing it, too lazy right now.

it's ~29 pounds, AU$75ish, which is about 75% of full price. I got Prophecies in the bargain bin for AU$40, but the new ones haven't dropped in price. So I guess... yes, have some?

The download would be more than a gig, though.

Stark wrote:Yeah, Mesmers are awesome just for all the ways you can kill people who aren't paying attention. Even cheap shit like Spirit Shackles and Empathy can quickly kill/shutdown people who never notice you put them on... and Me/N with all the N condition-spreading skills is awesome.

Probably my favorite pairing with the assassin. Backfire and Empathy were my best friends and let me go toe to toe with enemies a not so built up assassin typically can't go toe to toe with.