Guild Wars

Guild Wars: Prophecies (renamed after the release of Guild Wars: Factions) sets players in the fantasy world of Tyria.

When creating a character, the player has to choose whether they want to create a Role-Playing character or a PvP-character and what character class they want to play (Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer or Monk).

Role-Playing:

Shortly prior to the game start, the three human kingdoms of Tyria - Ascalon, Kryta and Orr, fought each other in many guild wars. The last guild war abruptly ends when the Charr began to overrun the weakened kingdoms.

The Charr, a violent race from the north (whose homeland can be visited in Guild Wars: Eye of the North) began an invasion of the kingdoms of Tyria. Kryta's expelled Saul D'Alessio and his White Mantle repelled the invasion, Orr was annihilated when Vizier Khilbron cast a forbidden spell to protect the capital city of Arah resulting in the Cataclysm and the sinking of the kingdom to the ground of the Sea of Sorrows, what still stands is the Kingdom of Ascalon protected by their Great Northern Wall.

The player starts at the day of, and just some hours prior to, the "Great Searing", the Charr ritual that turned the green lands of Ascalon into a wasteland. At the beginning of that day, Ascalon looks for heroes help fighting the Charr and here is where the game starts.

In this tutorial area, the player can play alone or with another player, to complete the first quests, acquire the first skills and get in touch with the game world. After choosing a secondary profession, the player can leave the tutorial and start the "real" game.

Note: choosing a secondary profession is a crucial part in the design of Guild Wars, as the player does not play just a monk or a warrior, but a combination of the professions. With the six character classes, Prophecies effectively has 30 different character combinations.

For example, while a Elementalist/Mesmer (E/Me) and a Mesmer/Elementalist (Me/E) might look similar, the differences are that the armor can only be used for the primary profession and each profession has a primary attribute which only this class can use. As an Elementalist, the E/Me has Energy Storage increasing the available energy drastically. While the Me/E has base energy, they can cast spells twice as fast because of their Fast Cast.

The secondary profession is locked for about 75% of the Prophecies game, but can later be changed unlimited times. (With access to Factions and/or Nightfall even much earlier.)

After leaving the tutorial, the player can play many side quests (to gain experience, gold and skills), primary quests (which lead to missions) and missions itself (which advance the story). Prophecies offers 25 missions (with primary and secondary (bonus) objectives) to play and hundreds of quests with many plot twists on various game settings (wasteland, green lands, jungle, dessert, snowy mountains, volcanic islands).

The player also has access to all PvP content while reaching those outposts in the storyline. Each skill acquired, each rune or weapon upgrade identified will be unlocked on the account for use with PvP-only-characters.

The game would is fully instanced, means each player (or a group of players) get their own area/mission "copy" from the server. While no one can join you while the player(s) is/are adventuring, no one will "steal/corrupt" you a boss or missing objective you try to reach. Each enemy slain in an area keep dead (don't respawn) unless they are resurrected per skill like the own group can do it with their own team members.

Furthermore, the game is almost only played in teams, as the game area are balanced for the maximum size of a team (2, 4, 6 or 8 players). Therefore you can either play co-op or with the lack of human players, fill in with NPC henchmen.

The game has a level cap of 20 and easily obtainable max-level armor and weapons with the design of getting "better looking" stuff instead of weapons with ever increasing damage, and increasing the difficulty as the players have to deploy tactics as the enemies aren't capped at level 20 nor are they limited to groups of 8.

For those that "played through the campaign", Prophecies offers four "elite mission" like areas: The Fissure of Woe, The Underworld, Sorrow's Furnace and The Tomb of the Primeval Kings (the last once was a PvP outpost prior to the release of Factions).

Finally, the game offers titles to display achievements the character (or the whole account) has made, like exploring the entire map (Grandmaster Cartographer), capping all elite skills (Skill Hunter), beating the missions in normal and hard difficulty (Protector/Guardian) or even "cleaning" an area of all enemies (Vanquisher), and much more. All these achievements can be displayed in Eye of the North's Hall of Monuments.

PvP-character:

When creating a PvP-character, this character is always at level 20 and has max-level armor and weapons. They can be fully customized with all the skills, runes and weapon upgrades available at the account (unlocked via PvE or PvP itself).

PvP-characters starting at the Isle of the Nameless, a PvP tutorial with all the stuff the player needs (testing weapon ranges, different armor class targets, etc.).

PvP mechanics applying to both character types:

After each enemy kill in an arena or for winning it, the player cumulates Balthazar faction (named after Guild Wars's God of War and Fire), with this skills, runes, upgrades and heroes (the latter one requires an account combination with Nightfall and/or Eye of the North) can be unlocked and therefore used in PvP.

The following "arenas" are present in Prophecies (for PvE and PvP characters):

• Ascalon Arena - 4vs4 Team - PvE-only (level 1 to 10)
• Shiverpeak Arena - 4vs4 Team - PvE-only (level 1 to 15)
• Random Arena - 4vs4 at random
• Team Arena - 4vs4 Team
• Heroes' Ascent - 8vs8 Team Tournament, 8vs8vs8 at final map
• Hero Battles - 1vs1 human players, each with 3 Heroes (requires an account combination with Nightfall and/or Eye of the North)* Guild vs. Guild (GvG) - 8vs8 Team

Similar to pure PvE-achievements, the PvP content also has titles for achievements for winning in PvP. In addition, GvG and Hero Battles also featuring ladder play.

Final note: all the Guild Wars campaigns - including Prophecies - have, despite being a MMORPG, no subscription fees.

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The Game of the Year Edition (also known as 1 Million Edition) provided seven special weapons (Luminescent Scepter, Nevermore Flatbow, Rhino's Charge, Serrated Shield, Soul Shrieker, Tiger's Roar, Wolf's Favor), which can be created as many times as needed, but are bound at the character who created them.

The Guild Wars Prophecies 2008 release adds the Igneous Summoning Stone (which summons a Fire Imp which helps players levelling to level 20) on top of the GOTYE items.