Guild Wars Member Review for the PC

It's an interesting game. A very shallow game, equipment wise, yet vivid at huge in terms of skills, and classes.

Each character gets to pick two classes, a primary, and secondary, which dictates the skills you can use, and your stats. Each class has a primary stat, which only the primary class can have. So a warrior has strength as his/hers, so only primary warriors get the strength stat (which is armour penetration)

There are atleast 75 different skills for each class. the expansions boosted these for the older classes, and released two more classes each, for a total of 10 classes to pick from. Weapons are basic, damage is low for each, speed is slow, arrows are free, and wands are useless. And you only have access to eight of your hundred skills at a time. This creates lots of aggravation for newbie players, who have no idea what they are doing, but helps to keep characters balanced. The game is very skill oriented, all characters have the same base health, with difference in what the items have. A lvl 20 warrior has the same life as a lvl 20 elementalist, naked. And only having eight skills at your disposal makes the game very in depth later on, once you start fighting creatures in groups of 6, 6 levels higher than you.

Henchmen are free, but are very dim lit, and often a waste of time unless your trying to find items.

All swords come in a certain range, and the basic swords can have as much damage as the elite weapons.

PvE AI is very dull, often repetative, unless you rush a huge amount of guys at once. The most fun you can have is playing a monk, healing your tank, while your in combat with 16 differnt monsters. You want a crunch? try healing on only 30 energy. Thats right, you always have a low amount of energy, with the exception of ele's, who get a energy storage, increasing to over a hundred. Again, items can increase this.

PvP is very skill, and party oriented. If you group isn't set up to counter the other group, your going to lose, or sit there for an hour. Working together to cover each others weaknessses is the hard part, and only having the 8 skills, while your armou value actually adds damage, is hard on the casters. Warriors are almost useless except as meat shields here.

All in all, it's dull until later in the game. If you don't have a good guild, you can't really pvp well. If you don't know how to play PvP, then your screwed. So you really have to get off on a good foot, and read some guides to understand teh game.