Review: Guild-wars: Prophecies (Part One of Three)
Guild-wars is an MMORPG, developed by Arena Net, and published by Ncsoft. It’s been given many awards, and for good reason.
So, first let me start off, Guild wars is not free, but it’s not a membership service either. Theres four campaigns, each of which you pay for once, and are able to play forever. Each campaign costs around 20 USD. The three campaigns are : Prophecies, Nightfall, and Factions. (The fourth is eye of the north, and is considered a expansion, which I am not reviewing)
In this installment, I’m going to review Prophecies.
You start off in an area known as Ascalon, pre-searing. This acts as a tutorial world, as nothing can really hurt you that badly, and it lets you get a feel of the game. Once you finish this tutorial, a race known as the Charr summon the magic of the searing, which turns the beautiful fairy tale world of Ascalon into a post apocalyptic wasteland. I’m not going to go any more into the story than that, so no spoilers here.

So, lets get down to game-play.
Guild-wars is different than most MMORPGS, when you leave a town, you enter an instanced variant of the world. You are with your party, which can be filled with Henchmen, players, or hero’s. Theres no kill stealing, or loot stealing. You are separated from the mass of the player base, and you’re on your own to kill, advance the story line, whatever you want.
You can argue that this alienates the player, but I’d have to disagree with you. Yes, lots of the easy story line can be done with NPCs, but this game shines where you’ll actually need seven to fifteen players to complete a mission, and that is incredible for a game this cheap.
When you leave a town into the instanced area, you’ll be put out with the eight skills you picked, and you’ll be free to go kill, explore, or whatever you need.
Over all, this is a great expansion, as guild-wars was meant to tell a story. It’s a one time payment, and you’ll have endless hours of fun, even after the story line is finished, you can play PVP. As a final note, all of the guildwars campaigns, (save eye of the north) can be played standalone, you don’t need any others to have them work.
Features: 10/10
Interface: 9/10
Performance: 9/10
Price: 9/10 ($20.00 USD, 12.5 Pounds.)
Overall: 9/10
http://www.guildwars.com/products/guildwars/default.php










