Guild Wars is a unique medieval-style role-playing game for the PC. It is a self-proclaimed 'Cooperative/Competitive Online Role Playing Game' (or CORPG), a term coined by its creators ArenaNet in order to imply a more team-oriented feel than the typical Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (or MMORPG) - which tends to be more focussed on the strength of the individual's character. Guild Wars is now run and owned by NCSoft, known primarily as the makers of City of Heroes and City of Villains. Unlike these two games, and most other games of its kind, there is no monthly fee; you do not pay past the original purchase of the game itself.

Missions and Guilds

In the normal MMORPG players tend to go to a place where they can 'level up' the fastest, whether alone or with a group. Guild Wars places a heavy insistence upon co-operating with a party to get through plot-advancing missions and side quests, which give substantially more experience points than 'bashing'¹. It is nigh impossible to complete a mission meant for your level without cooperating with other players, as is simply travelling through the world².

Unlike MMORPGs, you can only interact with other player characters not in your party when in the cities. When you leave the city to go to a mission, or to travel, you and your party are given your own private copy of the world to run amok in.

The henchmen in Guild Wars are an alternative to going through the trouble of finding that one healer or tank or spellcaster that you need to do the mission, but they too appear to emphasise going and finding humans to play with in that they are far inferior to their human player counterparts³. Even more encouragement of party play is evident in the guilds, which the game is named after. Guilds are groups of players who rally under one emblem, which can be customised to the leader's tastes. Guilds compete with each other, earning points in an attempt to rise in the ranks. The top 1000 guilds are tracked by the Guild Wars website. Each guild can eventually buy a guild hall - a meeting place for the guild members, only accessible by those members.

Skills

The traditional idea of this genre is to gain levels and build strength and statistics thus placing an emphasis on level and the player's ability to gain levels and maximise their stats. Guild Wars emphasises the skills of the character, and the ability of the player to arrange and employ these skills in an effective manner. In fact, the level cap for this game is 20 - remarkably low in comparison to, say, Ragnarok Online, an MMORPG in which the maximum level is 99 like most others.

Due to this emphasis, the 'skill system' itself is a bit more complex than is customary. As you gain experience and progress in the game, you earn attribute points and skill points - a sort of money to 'buy' skills with. The easiest way to get those skills is to find a skill trainer. One skill point lets you learn one skill.

The effectiveness of each skill is determined by the level the user has in the attribute associated with it. To increase these levels, one must spend attribute points. To gain one level, you must spend your current level plus one more point.

There are 10 basic skill types: Attacks, Spells, Enchantments, Hexes, Signets, Preparations, Traps, Shouts, Stances, Glyphs, Rituals, and Skills (those that do not fit in other categories).

Classes

In order to have attributes and skills, you must have the class associated with them. Each class has its own set of attributes, one of which is a 'primary' attribute, and each character can have two classes - a primary and a secondary. A primary attribute is only accessible by a character with the corresponding class as their primary class. There are six classes, and five unique attributes to each, as well as armours, weapons, and looks to each: Warriors, Rangers, Monks, Elementalists, Mesmers, and Necromancers.

Characters Customisability and Death

Players have remarkable control over the appearance of their characters. Gender, size, skin colour, hair colour, hair style, and the shape of his or her face are all variable.

Like in most online RPGs, death is not permanent. Unlike others, though, rather than evoking a penalty in experience, forcing you to earn it back, you get a death penalty. While this may sound like your character is being executed, it is not. He (or she) simply has her maximum Health and Energy reduced temporarily. This can be worked off by gaining experience (EXP), but the effects go away completely if you go to a city, or town, or complete the mission.

PvP, or Player Vs Player

Player vs Player is something reserved for structured competition, and is team-oriented, like the rest of the game. There are several different games, each of which can gain the guilds participating points if they win. They all feature a Ghostly Hero and Morale boosts for killing enemies, though the prior can serve different purposes.

Annihilation is straightforward. Each team is given and NPC Ghostly Hero and Priest, who resurrects team members regularly. The goal is to be the last team standing. How the teams goes about this is up to them.

Capture the Relic functions like capture the flag: two teams try to collect enemy relics. Teams bring the relics to their Ghostly Heros to score points. A new relic will spawn when it is delivered, and the competition continues until the time runs out. The team with the most relics wins. A team loses if their Ghostly Hero is killed.

King of the Hill too is like the real world. You try to be the one in control of the altar at the end of the given time.

---

¹ Just sitting there and killing monsters for experience.
² Though one can go to some key places (cities, landmarks, etc) that have been visited by clicking on their respective icon on the map, it's getting there the first time that is the problem.
³ If a human character played with the level of intelligence that the computer henchmen do, they would immediately be the recipient of creative and undesirable flames, insults, and ridicule.