Guild Wars third year anniversary retrospective: Prophecies and Factions
Filed under: Fantasy, Galleries, Guild Wars, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, Free-to-play
The original Guild Wars, now known as Chapter 1: Prophecies, is where the game's heart and soul lies. The core skills and classes originated here, but over time, we've seen many changes to the primary land of Tyria. Does anyone remember the original campfire log-in screen? Or the non-refundable attribute points? How about life before Sorrow's Furnace? Can you tell us where the first Hall of Heroes was? These were all additions and improvements made to Guild Wars, along with many others throughout the course of the game's life.
For a game with no monthly fee, we're treated to many features, including 6 distinct regions (as you'll see in the gallery), 25 missions, 205 quests, over 450 skills and much more.
ArenaNet's business plan for Guild Wars features no monthly fee, originally relying on selling full-price retail chapters every six months. While they've recently scrapped the chapter plan, they promise to never have a monthly fee, even in the sequel. This is an idea that was met with much resistance from the general gaming community, and no one thought it would work, but here we are three years and five million box sales later!
With the introduction of Chapter 2: Factions exactly one year later on April 28th, 2006, we got our glimpse at the first ever paid content for the game. It introduced us to a few new environments and cultures, as well as two new classes: the Ritualist and the Assassin. We're also treated to 240 new skills, 90 new elite skills, 13 new co-operative missions, 5 new challenge missions, 2 elite missions and over 200 new quests.
Read on to see our retrospective on the first two Guild Wars boxes, and don't miss our second retrospective all about the most recent pair: Nightfall and Eye of the North.
_thumbnail.jpg "Aion Beta: Asmodian Ascension Quest")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mercerfy said on 1:38PM 4-28-2008
Having grown tired of the WoW grind after 70, I just got into the first chapter of Guild Wars (a lil' late I know). The style and feel of the game is amazing and I certainly do not miss those monthly fees. I really wish I would have given it a chance when it first came out because it is extremely fun to play. I have a feeling that GW2 will be the next gen mmo to watch.....
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Dalamos said on 9:04AM 4-29-2008
Thanks for the great articals on Massive so far Shawn. Since I've starting reading your guild wars stuff on here I've since reinstalled the game and gave it another go. So far, so good.
So between this and TR I think your starting to rule my MMO experence. Thanks for the good work and keep it up.
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Basil said on 10:49PM 5-10-2008
I was interested in checking out this game. Can anyone tell me if I should just buy the starting game and try it from there, or should I get all the games combined? If you buy all the games do you get a better leveling experience? Do you get the newer classes and skills with the original or only if you have them all?
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