After Anet's success with their first game in the series, the developers had to do a huge job with Factions to meet the standards they had set. I would love to be able to say that they had exceeded themselves and produced an amazing game, but the game is plagued by several problems which just hold it back from being an outstanding game.
There are two kinds of gamers who Anet try to appeal to with Guild Wars. One is the kind of gamer who is typical of MMO's, who loves advancement, shiny items and "grind". The other, more agressive breed, are those who like competitive PvP, who hate grind and who want a level playing field. It is the fact that they try to appeal to these two seperate groups that is Anets main downfall. When you try to appeal to two such different groups, with such differing needs, you are never going to be able to reach perfection. Factions was Anets attempt to try and combine the two camps of GW fans, and it hasn't really been a success. Anet introduced 3 new PvP modes with Factions: Alliance Battles- 12v12 made by having 3 groups of 4 join up, Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood, random team matches. Now the aim of these was to act as a link between PvE and PvP, because they were set in PvE territory and offered PvE rewards, but were PvP modes. However this never really worked out because PvP players did not have any reward for playing it, and did not want to take PvE characters into PvP. Of course many PvE players didn't want to play them because they were PvP, and so the areas kind of died out until Anet made them available to PvP characters.
So that is PvP covered, and now for PvE. Factions PvE is a different breed to that of Prophecies. Levelling up to lvl 20 takes very little time, with one small training island taking you most of the way to max level. Of course this has the advantage of meaning that most of the missions in the game are designed for characters who are at max level.
Anet tried to revolutionise their PvE missions by introducing a few new types. The highlight of these were the two missions that had two seperate teams working together. I don't highlight these because I think they are amazing, no, quite the opposite. I highlight them because they were one of the biggest mistakes Anet made. Trying to play those missions now is like trying to get water out of rocks. 90% of the time there is nobody on the other side, and then you are put with NPC henchmen who barely ever work in the missions, and even if there IS another team, then you have to hope and pray that they are not complete morons. It takes so much effort to get through those misssions that I'm sure some people just gave up right there.
Now don't get me wrong here, Guild Wars is an absolutely fantastic game, and I would advise anybody to get it, but there is one more gripe that needs to be voiced:
Guild Wars is really not newbie friendly, and that counts for both the community and the game.
The game is not newbie friendly if you are looking for a competitive PvP game, because there hundreds of skills to unlock, weapon upgrades and runes, and you need to unlock a decent amount of them before you can truly compete. It has to be said that the community doesn't help much either. I have found that people can get extremely agitated by people asking questions that to an experienced person are obvious. This intolerance can lead to some aggravation and can make the community seem like asshats, but beyond their gruff exterior the GW community as a whole is very good.
My advice to those who are thinking of getting Guild Wars is to be ready to socialise, because you need to get into a decent guild in order to enjoy the game. I have known many people who have not got into the Guild Wars community and they have very quickly got bored and drifted off, so my main advice to you is to make friends. Friends in the game will get you through the missions and get you PvP ready in much less time than you would normally need.
In General Guild Wars is a fantastic game. It is the most balanced game ever created, has brilliant graphics and is extremely easy to get to grips with control-wise. It is a game that is well worth the cash, but Anet just needs to get a grip on a few fatal flaws in order to create an MMO-killer.
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