How I See It - A Game of Skill
Edited and Published by: Magi
One of the best things about Guild Wars, in my opinion, would have to be that it is a game based on skill. It is a game in which the best player wins, and the worst player loses. It is not a game that someone can pretend to know what they are doing when they have never played it before.
IWAY and barrage builds are not all of the skill this game calls for. In fact, some of the best players I've met have never used either of those methods whatsoever. In Guild Wars, the skill of a player is earned from experience. People can read all about it in the manuscripts, and ask all their friends about it, but they will not be able to comprehend exactly what it all means until they have faced it for themselves. For example, when a new player comes across new things; let's say he is a Necromancer who has never used the skill, "Blood Ritual". Eventually he will find a Monk who is looking for a "Necro battery". If he is not too embarrassed to ask, he will find that the Monk is looking for a Necromancer with the skill "Blood Ritual". Later in the game, things like this become common knowledge to players. But it is knowledge that was earned from experience.
So in Guild Wars, once the player has earned skills in a quest, or bought them from an NPC, there is a nice little "skill bar" at the bottom of the screen to help you out in battle. But the kinds of skills I am talking about are not those that you click on to activate. I am talking about the earned skills of the player. A great profession with a great weapon, and great armor, will do the player no good unless he can properly use them. It is simple enough to click on an enemy to fight, but when you start to die fighting this guy what are you supposed to do? Do you run? Keep fighting? Heal yourself perhaps? It depends on the situation. If the enemy is dying faster than you are, you could probably keep fighting, and not waste your energy healing. But there may be more enemies nearby that are also targeting you. In this case, running may be best since you may not be able to heal enough in time, and the enemies will probably just keep lowering your health. Of course, I don't recommend leaving a town or post alone. There should always be those teammates to heal and fight with you.
Guild Wars comes equipped with great ways to keep it a game of skill. One of these ways includes the max level that a player can be. I have heard people say that level 20 sounds too easy and boring. It is true that there are people that have made it to level 20 within a week or so, but there is still so much more to do after you've reached that level. What the makers of Guild Wars wanted to do was keep level 90 players from going around fighting, practically invincible. There is still skill involved at level 20.
Another thing this game helps us with is to not mistake our role in this game for reality. When you have been on for too long, (no one should be on for more than 13 hours, but it happens) the chat bar will tell you that you have been playing too long, and will ask you to log off. That said, it does not kick you off - it simply suggests it. Amazingly, people replace reality with PC games and all manner of video games all too often. But as for us Guild Wars players, we won't let that happen now will we?
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