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Instead, Guild Wars featured to playable options: a PvP-Only server that focused on the competitive aspect of the game, and the Roleplaying server that fostered those individuals concerned with the PvE portions of Guild Wars. However, any characters on the roleplaying servers would share all of their abilities and rewards with the characters on the PvP server, thus making the roleplaying game little more than a run towards PvP-centric items.

At least, that’s what that portion of the game could’ve been. However, ArenaNet did create a fully-fleshed out MMORPG, whether they chose to or not. Many of my close companions in games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot found Guild Wars to be the perfect distraction from the constant grind of their former games. Guild Wars was a game that they could play without another player if they so desired, and allowed them the freedom to do what they want without having to answer to the cries of their guild mates.

On a stroke of innovation, the developers behind Guild Wars made every single location in their game instanced. Any time you leave the major cities, you’re entering a world that’s all your own, unless you choose to bring others along with you. Especially in the early parts of the game, you’ll feel like you’re playing a single player RPG along the lines of the Elder Scrolls or Gothic games rather than a MMOG.

The character that I made (Nordvig was his name) was a roleplaying character, founded simply to play through the story-telling campaigns in Guild Wars. Although almost every section of the initial game is instanced, you still feel like you’re a part of a living breathing world rather than a mere sandbox for you and your friends to play in. The instances lend a bit more weight to the storytelling aspect of the game, as you can play through these areas without being distracted by anyone with a name like “Azzmunkee Eekeek” or “Diririzt Douden”. But the chance for player to player interaction is always viable by merely journeying to a “hub” location.

Traveling in Guild Wars was made fairly simple, with the option to “Travel” (or teleport) to any hub location that you’ve already visited. This is incredibly helpful in completing early quests, because most of the quest givers are in, or near, these centralized hubs. This option, combined with a fairly rapid leveling ladder, made the first few levels of Guild Wars a breeze to complete, and I was soon out of my “training” area and into the full-blown world of Guild Wars.

Lending a Hand

Unlike many MMORPGs, Guild Wars really wanted to take the emphasis off of the need to group. Released a few months after the inception of World of Warcraft, the developers that constructed Guild Wars were still running on the post-EQ notion that groups and huge raiding guilds were the feared enemies of MMORPGs and camping spawns was the common way to get any type of fashionable loot. Wanting to break that trend, ArenaNet built the game entirely on instanced zones.

For those of you unfamiliar with MMOG terminology, an instance is simply a “unique zone” that the computer creates whenever a player enters an area that is not a central hub for transit or the game’s economy. While this can make the game feel lonely to some, it also offers players a release from the constant badgering of other player characters that are in the same zone. If you’re like me, you’ve encountered numerous zone “shouters” that take pleasure in broadcasting their voice for all to hear as often as possible. They’ll use any means necessary to make their voice heard, but the instanced zone destroys that precedent. You can now enter your instance and roleplay in relative peace and quiet.

Instanced zones also eliminate spawn camping. When you enter an instance, everything spawns anew for your avatar. There won’t be any need to wait in the middle of a zone, trying to find a creature that spawns once every week. No, you’ll simply find your spawns exactly where they’re supposed to be without any of the run-around.