My Guild Wars review so far...
After playing Guild Wars the last couple nights, I feel this little write-up sums up my opinion of the game pretty good. It is still in beta, so take everything I said with a grain of salt cuz it could be improved upon before retail.
Negative Points
1. Everything outdoors is an instance. I absolutely hate this, once you leave town, you will never run into another person until you come back to town, you must find your group of hunting partners before you head out, or you are SoL.
2. Lack of variety in classes. You have 6 classes to choose from for your primary profession, and then you pick from the same pool of professions (minus your primary) for your secondary profession. Pretty bland really IMO, not much variety here.
3. No races. This really disappointed me, all you can be is a male or female human toon, woohoo. They could at least throw some variety in the mix, but apparently they are happy with no race selection because it will be released retail with only they human race.
4. The game is way, way too linear. There is definately a clear path from Point A to Point B with very little exploring allowed. I haven't found any place where you could wander of the beaten path forever doing your own exploring and hunting.
5. Lack of good hunting grounds. I haven't been able to find any good hunting grounds really at all, basically you just follow the road and whatever monsters are in your way you kill them. It seems that once you kill a mob in your outdoor instance, it will not repawn, so basically you have to keep moving and you can't really setup a nice little camp to relax and hunt.
Positive Points
1. No monthly fees. I think thats pretty self explanatory, everyone loves this one (although I do wander if they can keep new content coming out and keep the servers running smoothly with no monthly income from players, only time will tell)
2. Combat is pretty good, comparable to WoW's style of combat. There are some cool spell effects, and the mobs so far have some decent variety. You also run into a good share of range mobs, fire type mobs, melee mobs, magic mobs, etc..and they attack in the type they are specialized in, not like some MMORPG's where every mob in game resorts to melee attacks
3. There seems to be some decent content for crafter types. It has the standard things available, like crafting better gear or improving gear you already have, also has dye for you to customize your look somewhat.
4. The lag is pretty non-existant so far. The servers blew up once last night, but other than that they were stable and lag free for the most part. (I assume this goes back to everything outdoors being instanced, cuts down on the lag)
5. Everything outdoors is an instance . Yeah I know this was in my negatives too, but it can also be a positive at times. You don't have to worry about kill stealing, it cuts down on the lag, and there is no camping of quest mobs. If I had to choose though, I would rather have everything outdoors non-instanced by far, it just doesn't feel like a MMORPG when you leave town and never see anyone else.
Im not sure yet if I will buy this game, the only thing that really might convince me to get it is the no monthly fees. I will be playing WoW as my primary MMORPG when it comes out, but I could see myself playing this game here and there since it doesn't cost anything to leave your account active afterall.
