Say goodbye to Diablo II, say hello to Guild Wars. Headed by 3 top developers from Blizzard, all having important roles in the development of Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo series, combine in ArenaNet to bring you an action RPG with stunning graphics called Guild Wars. It will be showed on E3, and I mean showed. A demo download is available from
http://www.guildwars.com and during E3, starting 12:00:01 AM PST May 12 until 11:59:59 PM PST May 14 will be a worldwide online demo of Guild Wars. Download, register, and enjoy your experience that won't be experienced again until late 2004, when the game is expected to be released.
A few facts about the demo for those who are so interested:
-Your characters start at level 15 in the demo (but not in the final version) to prevent boring levelling and let you more experience the game.
-Dual Professions will be required in the demo, though not in the final version.
Here's a PDF of a bunch of info about Guild Wars, but some of it will be covered in what I'm saying now.
http://www.photics.com/issue5.zip
In addition, in the demo and in the full version, there is no monthly fee. You buy the game, and then you never have to pay again. Free online gaming. What fun.
There are 6 Professions in Guild Wars. They are the following: Monk, Warrior, Necromancer, Elementalist, Mesmer, Ranger. Here's a short synopsis on each.
Monk
AKA Healer
The Monk is the healer of the group. He or she uses a wide variety of spells to heal and protect him/herself and the party.
Starting Armor Defense: 40 (cloth)
Starting Energy: 30 cap (4 arrows of regeneration)
Warrior
AKA Fighter
The Warrior is the tank of the group. With heavy armor, shields, and large swords and axes, they go to the middle of the fight and bludgeon the enemy. They use Adrenaline in addition to Energy for some of the skills though.
Starting Armor Defense: 80 (Metal)
Starting Energy: 20 cap (2 arrows of regeneration)
Necromancer
AKA Undead
The title may be misleading, as the Necromancer isn't undead, but rather manipulates the dead and the living. Using corpses to deal damage, leeching life, Necromancers are the best at keeping the life gap between you and your opponent high.
Starting Armor Defense: 40
Starting Energy: 30 cap (4 arrows of regeneration)
Elementalist
AKA Sorceress
This is the profession that uses pure energy to deal pure damage. Burning flooding, freezing, the Elementalist does it all. The significant drawback is the tendency to lose life pretty quickly.
Starting Armor Defense: 40
Starting Energy: 30 cap (4 arrows of regeneration)
Mesmer
AKA Mind-Messer
I like this profession a lot. It seems to me to be the kind of profession that just likes to sit back and mess with people. While not doing straight damage, it can cause the opponent to deal damage to him/herself. That's pretty awesome.
Starting Armor Defense: 40
Starting Energy: 30 cap (4 arrows of regeneration)
Ranger
AKA Druid/Archer
Of course, every online RPG has to have an archer. But, unlike games such as Diablo II, it merged the Druid and Archer classes to create Ranger, a person in tune with nature, with ranged weapons as weapon of choice.
Starting Armor Defense: 60
Starting Energy: 25 cap (3 arrows of regeneration)
So those are the 6 professions. There's more info about them as well as their abilities in the link I posted previously.
CUSTOMIZATION
Guild Wars is a very customizable game. Let's walk through the steps to creating a character.
1. Gender: Pretty simple. Male vs. Female.
2. Name: The names must be at least 2 words long, in other words a first and last name. The maximum number of characters, including spaces, is 19.
3. Profession: Here's where you pick your primary profession, and your primary profession only. Choose out of the 6 above.
4. Appearance: This includes hair color and style, skin color, face shape/style, skin color, eye color, and body style and scale.
Now you're done creating your character. Simple, right? But wait, what about the secondary profession?
The secondary profession you find in the game. In the main town there are trainers for the professions. Find the one you want, and learn that profession. Simple again.
Next are the skill slots and attribute points. You have 8 skill slots, meaning you can only have 8 active skills at one time. Choose carefully.
Attribute points is exactly what it sounds like, it's raising attributes, or skills. You begin with 150 points to use on whatever you want. Have fun.
The last thing to tell you is about learning new skills. Each profession has around 25 skills. To learn a new skill, you need a skill point, a skill gem, and 15 gold. Go to the corresponding trainer, and learn the skill. There are 2 different merchants for skill gems. The Gem Merchant, and, for the rich, the Exotic Gem Merchant.
Enjoy Guild Wars while you can for 3 days, because it won't be back for months!
Guild Wars
