[Hi BOb]

"Tis the season for MMORPG fans and we now take a look at one from some of the talents behind Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft

Guild Wars has some noticeable differences from other MMOGs. First of all, it’s being referred to as a CORPG; or a Competitive Online Role-playing Game. Just what does that mean? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, right? I haven’t found any clear-cut reason for the new acronym from the developer (ArenaNet) other than pointing out some variations on the typical MMORPG theme. However after playing it, this does make sense because Guildwars is not a typical MMORPG but rather a hybrid of a MMORPG and a Multiplayer FPS like Counterstrike. Yes folks, the PvP part of Guildwars is Counterstrike in an RPG setting. Incidentally you can see a similar development within World of Warcraft which has just released the Honor System where players compete for kill points and soon to be followed by Battlegrounds which is a PvP area.

The key selling point is that you don’t pay a monthly fee; you just buy the retail version and play it online for an unlimited time. How will ArenaNet keep this going then? The plan is to release an expansion every 6-9 months but supposedly it will not be necessary to buy them in order to stay competitive. The level cap is planned to be the same throughout so even if you take a break for a few months you can always jump back in and be the same level as your friends (but they may have slightly better equipment than you of course)."

" Getting started is simple and straightforward and with a painless installation. The first choice you get is either starting a PvP (Player versus Player) character who is already at the level cap (20 is the current max level) or a PvE (Player versus Environment) character at level 1. The key difference, apart from the obvious, is that a PvP character can not experience all of the PvE content (but he can go through the main storyline called missions) and chances are that a PvE character will grab more skills and better items along his progression. "

Guildwars is almost entirely instanced; everything apart from the cities and outposts is instanced. Instancing is of course nothing new but here it means that almost all of the times you play you have your own map. It’s easy to see the advantages of this, you don’t have to worry about camping, training, loot-stealing or griefing at all but the on the other side of the coin it can feel like playing a single-player game like Icewind Dale through the internet; you don’t see other players apart from your own team at all when adventuring. Personally, I think this approach works with this type of game.

" Partially because of this Guildwars is not split into servers, it’s on a single server but the meeting areas (cities and outposts) are split into Districts (which are instances that get copied as soon as there are too many players in one district). Regardless of where your friends live, you can meet them because Guildwars is split into Home and International Districts. If you are in Europe you have your Home Districts but you can meet your, say, American friends on an International District. "

" Since Guildwars has a Diablo like structure it’s surprising that items are not really that big of a factor, skill and selecting the right well...skills, is more important at this stage. They can however give you that slight edge in close situations. Each main profession has their own sets of armour that they need to collect the materials for and then pay an NPC to craft it for them. What this means is that there are no player tradeskills, you use salvage kits on armour and items dropped from creatures to make materials (and some are rarer than others). So the “cool” things you will find won’t be Sleeves of Doom or Legplates of the Destroyer; that is reserved for the wieldable items. You can however upgrade your items if you find Runes on your journeys (or buy them). "