Guild Wars State of the Game

GameSpy has published a “State of the Game” article for Guild Wars, in which they take a closer look at how ArenaNet’s MMORPG has evolved over the past 16 months.

With the launch of Factions, Guild Wars has changed on a very fundamental level, especially for those who’ve been playing since launch, and some would argue that it wasn’t for the best.

At the high end, a typical veteran Guild Wars player’s agenda most likely revolves around the persistent war that’s being waged in Cantha, the continent introduced in Factions. The most organized guilds have long since conglomerated into alliances, which, on behalf of one of two in-game factions (the Luxons and the Kurzicks), vie for territory by engaging in organized PvP battles.

Players can contribute to the success of their alliances in one of two ways: They can form PvP teams and take on rival alliances’ groups, or they can do PvE content to “faction farm” in order to increase their Alliance’s overall standing. Obviously, one of these activities is far more repetitive and much less glamorous than the other, and this only begins to underscore the playerbase’s main concern about Factions: Players whose guilds aren’t prominent enough to be in a respectable alliance can’t partake in the fun. It’s hard to argue that the persistent territory-control features that the campaign introduced aren’t compelling; it’s just a shame that more players can’t enjoy the rewards. Content of this type truly seems to fly in the face of Guild Wars’ casual-friendly, “even battlefield” philosophy.