Guild Wars Reviews

A trio of new reviews for ArenaNet’s Guild Wars have surfaced on the web, and they’re all fairly positive. The first is at Jolt Online Gaming with an overall score of 9.1/10:

It’s not enough to dissuade us from heartily recommending Guild Wars, though. The question of whether it compares favourably to World of Warcraft is a deceptively tough one, as they are markedly different in so many ways. You just really need to know that it plays brilliantly, like an action-orientated version of more traditional MMORPGs. The scope of the PvE alone would justify the price, but the PvP aspect truly sweetens the deal to the point where you really can’t say no. We say roll-on the add-on packs.

The second is at Lawrence.com with an overall score of 94%:

Guild Wars is a must-have for any RPG fan that plays computer games. It has an enormous campaign that can easily span 100+ hours, a dedicated section that is only player versus player, a vibrant and engaging community right now, no monthly fees, and the promise of more content. So far the developers have essentially nailed everything that makes a role playing game great and any extra content will should only expand on this most solid of foundations (hopefully by raising the ridiculously low level cap of 20). This title is without a doubt, going to be hogging all my free time when I should be doing my own computer work. Thank you, ArenaNet and NCSoft, for giving us old-school RPG fans something to rave about.

And the third is at IGN PC with an overall score of 9.0/10:

Sure, there’s no player-created items, or mounts, or housing, or auction houses. But there’s also no monthly fee, a rapid patching infrastructure, very fast load times, a pretty engine, frantic but fun combat, drastically reduced FedEx and kill quests, and miniscule travel tedium. I still think aggro range is too high, though, and getting attacked by a steady queue of monsters whom it’s virtually pointless to fight stacks on top of the aggro annoyance. I’d like to see cooler loot, more (and less expensive) armor, and more spell slots. As I’ve said before, though, these are annoyances that can be adjusted, rather than being or suggesting fundamental flaws in design. If anything, the core design of GW looks rock-solid. ArenaNet huge team has a royal load of gaming experience–but not a whole lot of persistent online experience, and that could be why a few problems crop up in the game–for me, at least. At this point, though, with their roster and this polished production, I think both ArenaNet and Guild Wars have nowhere to go but up, and I’m already looking forward to whatever they cook up next.