Guild Wars 1

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Played as an assassin/dervish running around with a scythe and critting stuff. Was fun. GW1 Cantha really was quite something. People didn't love Cantha because it was an Asian setting. Tons of games have Asian settings. It's about the atmosphere. In GW1, you weren't exploring Asia. You were exploring a declining, rotting China as it was being wrecked by a zombie plague. You trudged through sewer cities where the people were coughing their guts out as Jeremy's Soule melancholic music played. You told mothers that you had allowed their sons to die for nothing. You were roped into being the pawns of the gods' scheming. I wasn't super into the story and characters, but Factions had a sombre, weighty atmosphere.

Story wise, I thought that Nightfall was more engaging. The campaign starts off with you reenacting a battle from antiquity, as your ships sail up to a coastal city and you begin laying siege to it. Then you begin trekking across a desert kingdom trying to save it from a drought brought about by demons. There is also a sense of urgency as you are being pursued by enemy generals and demon lords. However, the setting and aesthetics of Nightfall were drab. "Oh look! We're going through a desert map! Now we're going through... another desert map! And... yeah that's a desert coming up alright...". It doesn't really feel like I was playing a fantasy game, and half the reason why I play games is so I can explore a fantastical world. Factions had really memorable maps in that regard, with the Kow-loon Walled City zone, or a sea turned into jade, or a petrified forest. I think you do eventually go to the demon realm at the end of Nightfall, but I never finished it. I got stuck on the mission where you infiltrated an upper class party and had to duel a guy (in a game where combat is designed around having a team of 8 characters).

Nightfall had the best battle music, though. I spent like 2 or 3 hours struggling on that mission to kill the Drought, and vividly remember those drums playing as he was tearing into my team one by one while we raced to kill him first.

 

[Alphard]

i think my favorite campaign gameplay wise is NF , because it has a more choerent and engaging story. prophecy story is all over the place without links between segments, but has amazing visuals and maps , faction except sinining monastery and some other map is just ugly. you spend 60% of times in kaineng. i get it, it's decaying metropolitan town , but the consciouness of this doesnt help , especislly playing a fantasy game. also the shortest campaign. speaking about difficulty, NF is obviously the hardest, especially for some post game missions ( and it even had the only quest mission where i needed help to complete, eg GOM) , i think overall faction is harder than prophe but prophe has that quest ( the one with titans and fire imps) that's brutal. any of you ever played the quest after the elementalist buff? Now those fire imps can bishot your whole party

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I remember not liking the nightfall gatekeeping stuff when I played it last year.

By far my favorite area was pre-searing. Not to imply I didn't like the rest of the game, but it felt like that area got extra special attention, probably to a lot of stuff most people skipped. Pre-searing just feels magical.

 

[Kev Inkline]

You're not the only one, and this is corroborated by the fact they introduced a title for those who level maxed in presearing to level 20 - after they realized there were many such cases.

I liked the free Northern Shiverpeaks expansion the most (the one that introduced the green weapons, i think?), becuse imo it had the best music.

 

[what am i doing]

i think my favorite campaign gameplay wise is NF , because it has a more choerent and engaging story. prophecy story is all over the place without links between segments, but has amazing visuals and maps , faction except sinining monastery and some other map is just ugly. you spend 60% of times in kaineng. i get it, it's decaying metropolitan town , but the consciouness of this doesnt help , especislly playing a fantasy game. also the shortest campaign. speaking about difficulty, NF is obviously the hardest, especially for some post game missions ( and it even had the only quest mission where i needed help to complete, eg GOM) , i think overall faction is harder than prophe but prophe has that quest ( the one with titans and fire imps) that's brutal. any of you ever played the quest after the elementalist buff? Now those fire imps can bishot your whole party

Have to agree, as much as Nightfall might be largely desert for huge swathes of the campaign, I still liked it the most. Although as Rusty mentioned, the whole "locking off areas until campaign progression" thing was annoying. I did like how in Prophecies you could get almost everywhere without touching the campaign; I think on my very first character I actually skipped most of post-Searing Ascalon and a bunch of the northern Shiverpeaks; wasn't a fan of the whole post-apocalyptic gray wasteland so I just grabbed a henchman party and pushed my way west towards the green areas on the map.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

actually after the first couple of characters, it was pretty much mandatory to pay a runner to go through the mountains.

 

[what am i doing]

actually the first couple of characters, it was pretty much mandatory to pay a runner to go through the mountains.

Giving up my shekels like that?

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

he merely has a thicc Russian accent,

IT WAS RUSSIAN?! I thought he was Hispanic all this time!

 

[Black]

Either way, not-white accent.

 

[Maxie]

lich huh. dunno lich was clearly the weakest and most cartoony villain in the series and great destroyer is more of a force of nature than an antagonist at all
between shiro and varesh i guess im a simp. i liked her descending into margonite madness over the campaign

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Varesh was the best of the three. Shiro was the worst. His story made no sense until they retconned his motivations in Nightfall. That, and there were so many unintentionally funny scenes because his voice actor was dreadful.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Why da fuk would you pay someone to run to LION'S ARCH of all places.

It was Droknar's Forge that you needed a runner for.

 

[what am i doing]

I just lost the fucking master completion for Gate of Madness because my necro hero's minions killed the Undead Lich while I was only on statue 3.



Minions.

 

[Alphard]

I just lost the fucking master completion for Gate of Madness because my necro hero's minions killed the Undead Lich while I was only on statue 3.



Minions.

did you bait shiro outside and cheesed him? if yes that's the divine punishment falling upon you
( i called a veteran to help me cause couldnt conplete the quest alone, so that's even worse)

 

[what am i doing]

I just lost the fucking master completion for Gate of Madness because my necro hero's minions killed the Undead Lich while I was only on statue 3.



Minions.

did you bait shiro outside and cheesed him? if yes that's the divine punishment falling upon you
( i called a veteran to help me cause couldnt conplete the quest alone, so that's even worse)

Shiro pulls easier so yeah I kill him first. I'm gonna leave the JB hero behind next time.

 

[Alphard]

I just lost the fucking master completion for Gate of Madness because my necro hero's minions killed the Undead Lich while I was only on statue 3.



Minions.

did you bait shiro outside and cheesed him? if yes that's the divine punishment falling upon you
( i called a veteran to help me cause couldnt conplete the quest alone, so that's even worse)

Shiro pulls easier so yeah I kill him first. I'm gonna leave the JB hero behind next time.

i thonk the intended way of doing it is to kill both shiro and lich together, but yeah shiro alone is a very hard fight

 

[FritzedProcess]

Man, I can't believe the servers are still up! I played through the base game and the expansions back when they were first released, except Eye of the North (I had switched to WoW by then). I don't see myself reinstalling anytime soon, though, but I still have the discs somewhere.

 

[what am i doing]

I just lost the fucking master completion for Gate of Madness because my necro hero's minions killed the Undead Lich while I was only on statue 3.



Minions.

did you bait shiro outside and cheesed him? if yes that's the divine punishment falling upon you
( i called a veteran to help me cause couldnt conplete the quest alone, so that's even worse)

Shiro pulls easier so yeah I kill him first. I'm gonna leave the JB hero behind next time.

i thonk the intended way of doing it is to kill both shiro and lich together, but yeah shiro alone is a very hard fight

It's a little easier to do the shrines if you don't have both of them chasing you, I think. The Lich is slow.

Do we know how many people are still playing this game? Are there any rumors about the publisher pulling the plug any time in the near future?

Outposts are dead, but Kamadan is surprisingly alive. No rumours about ArenaNet pulling it. The game requires basically no human oversight at this point, everything is automated, and the resource requirements scale to the number of people who play. So as long as the bots : humans ratio doesn't get really really steep, they'll probably never pull it.

 

[Black]

Almost everything about it is automated and apparently it's so lightweight that running GW1 on ANet servers is equaivalent to running only GW2 chat, that's how state of the art the whole thing is.
As long as GW2 is alive so will be GW1. Which is a problem because GW2 is shit and from what I heard the last expansion was bad and failed to attract many players and revive the game.

 

[Alphard]

Almost everything about it is automated and apparently it's so lightweight that running GW1 on ANet servers is equaivalent to running only GW2 chat, that's how state of the art the whole thing is.
As long as GW2 is alive so will be GW1. Which is a problem because GW2 is shit and from what I heard the last expansion was bad and failed to attract many players and revive the game.

yeah basically this. we need to root for that soulless game gw2 is to thrive , because if they shut down gw2 servers they'll do the same for gw1

 

[Cromwell]

GW2 is shit and from what I heard the last expansion was bad and failed to attract many players and revive the game.

This long-term focus is paying off—we’re seeing incredible growth in the community. In fact, the number of active Guild Wars 2 players has more than doubled over the last three years. This growth has helped Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons outsell our previous expansion

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-the-future-of-guild-wars-2/

 

[Black]

Long live Guild Wars

Spoiler

1

GW2 is shit and from what I heard the last expansion was bad and failed to attract many players and revive the game.

This long-term focus is paying off—we’re seeing incredible growth in the community. In fact, the number of active Guild Wars 2 players has more than doubled over the last three years. This growth has helped Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons outsell our previous expansion

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-the-future-of-guild-wars-2/

I don't appreciate you correcting me when I'm wrong.

 

[Axioms]

GW1 is way better than GW2. GW2 is just a generic WoW clone. GW1 was from the age when MMOs were unique and interesting.

 

[Drakortha]

GW1 is way better than GW2. GW2 is just a generic WoW clone. GW1 was from the age when MMOs were unique and interesting.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

GW1 is way better than GW2. GW2 is just a generic WoW clone. GW1 was from the age when MMOs were unique and interesting.

he's right
I played gw2 first, gw1 was infinitely better