i see you have no experience with intances. All instances are run on a separate server and guess what. So many ppl will be trying to get into it that it will crash alot. They still havent figured out how to fix in WoW. It will happen in GW aswell unless they come up with a better solution.

Obviously you havent played guild wars. Guild wars in 1 weekend sustains about 400,000 players. Thats 400,000 current active players logged into the server. not 400,000 subscribers. Since I have been playing in the beta weekends the server have never crashed. Just because WOW sucks and cant figure it out doesnt mean arena net cant.

http://www.guildwars.com/press/pr07-11-04-04.html

This was during e3.
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars/516341p1.html
20,000 simultaneous users
Id like to see wow or SWG have 20,000 simultaneous users in 1 "world".

At most you'll experiance some lag when they do a live streamed update.

1 world 20 different servers. No one machine can handle 400000 users. At that subscription amount you have some 7000ppl online at once. The current record is held by eve online with 9k+ something.

Your so called districts are still maintained by different servers. Because they promise you one big world doesnt mean it runs on one machine.

And Wow outnumbers that by 1,5mil subscribers and 500k simo log ons, if you wanna throw numbers.

And that player event. It very much depends how much content is in the game. I mean its quite possible WoW has three times the stuff you find in GW.

Correction just checked, eve now holds the record with 12k+ ppl in one server.

I know GW has multiple servers. No online game has 1 server.

ok wow has 500,000 player spread across how many different servers(worlds)? 12?20?

Gw has that many in 1 world. Id say that have some pretty kick ass technology to merge all those servers into 1 world.

So in wow, lets say you like to pvp. and your server has shitty pvp. What do you have to do to get some good pvp? Start a new character on a new server.

With GW, you dont. you character works everywhere so there is alway good pvp.

WoW has like 150+ servers. Not sure how big is the player cap per server. Depends what you consider good pvp or bad pvp. If you prefer only skirmishes with no surprises between guilds then yes, a pvp battle in a instance is good choice but it also eliminates alot of strategic things. For instance you cant call backup or stuff like that. In wow the first thing you learn is that you're never safe just when you think you're doing fine you get a backstab and you die

There's been lots of complaining about high lvls killing low lvls but all is forgotten when a counterraid occurs. Two cities, Southshore and Astranaar are always under attack, to see how well a raid group works is a magnificent sight. Nothing lives more than 6 seconds .

So it really depends what kind of combat you like. What you consider a shity pvp perhaps, might offer alot more variety than a confined gvsg pvp combat.

For example Shadowbane has no pvp rules at all. Everytime you log on you dont know whats waiting for you. Your once magnificent city might be in ruins the next day and not by an enemy but your allied guild since your guild pissed em off or betrayed them.

Ok when I say server Im refering to a world like "shadowbane" for example. Not the physical servers. Every world has multiple physical servers running it.

Running around for 1 hour looking for a pvp is not good pvp. Getting ganked by a full group of high levels is not goo pvp. Instant pvp with even teams is good pvp. Owning a high level team because you had a better strat is good pvp.

Actually i think it takes longer for you to organize a g vs g fight than me to find pvp action.

Getting ganked by higher lvl, so what, life's tough.

Even teams, war is never even or fair for that matter

getting a gvg battle takes about 1-5 mins

getting ganked by higher levels is not something I enjoy nor desire and with GW it is no longer the norm.

Did I mention GW has no monthly fee? lol Put that in your Wow pipe and smoke it.

personally i think WoW looks the better game (more in-depth skills more like Ultima Online) but GW has the huge advantage of no monthly fees which i can't afford. Hence the reason I chose it over WoW. But they're both created by offshoots of Blizzard/ex-employees, then they're probably not hugely different anyway. Certainly not from the reviews/previews I've seen.

They are alot different. I played the Wow beta and I thought it just stunk to high heaven. The combat was SO boring. Gw has the fastest action paced combat I have ever seen. The skills you can use are truly amazing. Its very very twitch based rather than " push button, do a skill, get something to eat, come back, push another button." I know you dont think wow is like that but once you play GW youll know what I mean.

actually i do think its like that coz wow to me says Ultima online with cartoon graphics and less depth.

Liar!! I'll have to send you my Van Damme/Seagal collection of B-movies to prove you wrong! Bloodsport pwnz GW!

HAAA|LLLLoooo and welcome to loraine kelly live, can you see my growler?

Anyway, I just spent the good part of three days playing a wonderfull little game called guild wars.

For those of you that don't know, guild wars is a self proclaimed MMORPG, with a vast world to explore, where the skill you posses is MUCH more important than the level. I digress.

I say self proclaimed MMORPG, because you start out in town, where there are many other players running about etc, however, if you leave town into the wilderness you are on your own. You may however, get some one, 1 person, in to you party, to help you along the way. The 2 person party limit increases as you go along, and at the point I reached last night just before the end of the beta, we could have 6 people in my party.

Because of the small groups, I don't yet feel the "MM" side of this RPG, however, when you've been out in the wild for a few hours, and you hit a town with many people in, it's kinda cool feeling because it's like "Oh God, thank you... "

The skill over level thing is incredibly true, or rather, suprisingly true. You do still need to level up, for the basic reason of getting extra health, so you can take hits for longer. But the damage you do barely changes. In fact, for the most part of the game, the highest weapon damage I _found_ was 13 damage, and there is no strength attribute (From what I could see) that modified that. The only way to do it was to use skills.

As a ranger, I had 25 Energy (Read mana) My favourite four skills that I found at this stage in the game, were Ignite Arrow, Power Shot, Peircing attack and Favourable Winds.

Favourable winds - Summons a spirit for (at my skill) 90 which cause arrows to move twice as fast for +3 damage
Power Shot - +16 damage
Peircing Shot - +10 damage
Ignite Arrow - + 5 damage (last about 15 seconds or so)

(all modifiers were at my skill level at the time)

So before a battle, I would buff by casting Favourable winds (which affects rangers in my party too) and Ignite arrow. Imediately, I'm doing
13+5+3= 22 damage. Then with my remaining energy *which I would often wait for it to charge up* I would bounce between power shot and piercing. Hitting the odd enemy with a lucky 50 damage + Ignite Arrow damage but generally doing a total of 35-45 damage (there is the slight randomness there)

With the skills, you can "stack them up" while the charge, basically, so long as you are actually casting one currently, you can hit another skill that will then cast once the current skill is finished casting. This makes for some very quick thinking in battles, you need to be ready.

Another thing I like about the game is the Morale, but I feel it should have been worked diferently.

Basically when you die, you get -15% to you stats (which can drop to 60) because you are weakened by death, this will "raise" again, as you kill monsters. If you, however, kill a boss, you can get above zero, and recive what seemed to be up to +10% (five bosses X 2% each time) I think that is the cap. If you enter a town, this modifier disapears. So if you hit minus sixty, you might as well head back to town and try again (monsters respawn when you leave an area)

The way I feel it should have been done, is modifiers should be available from ALL monsters, not just bosses. It should go to about 50 in each direction and should be hard to attain, but keep the loosing side the same (-15 when you die). As you fight and fight, you should get the odd percentage here and there, and the 2% from boss etc, and It shouldn't dissapear when you enter town. It should remain. However, it should decrease/increase towards 0 with time.

The reason I say this is because that way, when you have just 1 quick kill the boss mission just outside town, you get your + 2, then you end up loosing it straight away when you report back to town. Which sucks. And personally, I'd feel more of an achievement, if I fought my way back to 0 than ran in to town like a baby.

Here's my favourite part about guild wars. THE SALVAGE SYSTEM. In this game, you DO NOT, repeat that DO NOT find, or even "buy" armour. Instead you buy a salvage kit, and pick up the DD (read, Dedicated Drops) that monsters drop, for instance, pieces of there armour, and salvage it, which you then turn the item in to it's base matierial (e.g. Iron ingots, Cloth, Leather hides) and take it to a crafter, and you give him the leather or whatever, and a small fee, and he gives you shiny new armour. It works, and it beats the whole "he look, i just bashed this guys armour for about half an hour with this sword, but it still looks good to me so I'll wear it)

You do however find weapons. You can get these customised (so far, add 20% damage) but I've not seen any craftable weaps yet. Dunno If they exists.

Oh, and by the way, the dedicated Drop system rules. No more noobs pinching all the good drops.

Graphically, It's not outstanding, heck my PC can run it on full specs, but in some areas, the ground texture disapears and turns to white (!?) .but that is easily, if temporarily, fixed by changing the graphics detail slide bar down and back up again, but It does look nice, and there are some pretty damn sweet landscapes, pevil has a few nice shots, I'll get her to post them.

The game thus far runs without lag (the odd bit every like... 3 hours or something) and is optimised for even dial up. And the streaming system is nice, it just pops up here and there to say "hey, look, i'm streaming here buddy" even though it doesn't affect the game speed or anything, then It pops up when you exit to total the amount of streams.

What I am worried about though is that is an obvious security flaw for any one who is crooked in the GW HQ. It streams stuff to your PC with out you really even noticing it. Anyway, I think that's all I have to say, if you read all this, go give your eyes a rest.

I have to say, it's nice to see a game that's a little fresher compared to the rest of the currently stagnating RPG games out there.

Oh, I didn't PVP yet (except once where I think you have to) so I can't comment on it.
I'd give guild wars thus far about 9.3 /10

It sounds more and more interesting.
Nice (p)review Mole.

Yeah mole pretty much summed it up. I'm also an archer but I went down a different route. I have a pet that runs round dealing damage (very useful but if it dies all my skills are disabled for 8 seconds... not nice) and although I still use a bow, thats just for general damage, all my 'good' damage is done using my secondary profession of Mesmer. Basically I cast (weird name, something like Hex Phantasm? *shrugs) that makes the enemy lose health for 5 seconds (like a bleed attack), then i cast 'energy burn' which takes away 8 of the enemies energy, and also does 5 damage for every 1 energy taken (in other words it does 40 damage and stops them casting as many nasty spells at me), by which time my Hex thingy has recharged.

Right now no way would i call this game an MMORPG. Towns ok, there's plenty of people, but you only trade the salvage items/vials of dye. So there's hardly an economy (which i never expected in this game), but also the fact that the entire wilderness is instanced. I sorta like it, but since drops are dedicated, there's no reason for the entire place to be instanced. I'd rather all bosses were in 'special areas', like dungeons, or a little glade, which is the only place in an area that is instanced. Coz its pretty crappy really, just running round in a small group and NEVER seeing anyone else.

E.G theres one mission (i'll try not to make spoilers here ) where basically the place is post-war but there are still attacks, and we're trying to stop the wall being breached. At this point you can have 4 people in a party. Now an offline game, having one person doing the work of an army is normal. But this is (supposedly) an MMORPG... I want to see groups running round me, fighting huge groups of monsters... and the captain? Simple. He should have his little dedicated area that you can't even tell is instanced coz there's no extra loading (im talking about a really small area, couple of scroll screens maybe) that once you head in there, no one can kill him but you... but if they come near they'll get their own instance of the monster.

but hey, apart from that (and a crazy camera when moving with the mouse) this game rules. It's gonna take over my life a lot and its really amazing. I was a huge disbeliever that they could make it so levels didnt matter, but they truly have done it. Finally this is a game where a skilled level 10 could beat an unskilled level 20, unlike most games where lower level would get trashed.