With World Preview Event (WPE) looming Guild Wars Stratics is offering a comprehensive guide for everything you'll need to know to bring your guild into the fray quickly and competitively. WPE starts October 29^th, so get an edge here. Be warned though, once you've seen how amazingly fun and beautiful Guild Wars is you'll be unable to return to your old and busted MMORPGs.

Although the focus of this guide will be on Guild Warfare and PvP, the tips and strategies offered will be useful to all wishing to get the most out of their three days in the World Preview Event (though the rumor-mill suggests this might start early for a full week of play like E3 For Everyone did).

Character Creation

The first choice you'll need to make is your character professions. All characters in WPE will begin at level fifteen with a primary and secondary profession. If you have any history with MMORPG gaming you'll no doubt be accustomed to some classes being more powerful than others, and will often spend hours agonizing over which path to choose for fear of being ‘gimped'. Worry not, for ArenaNet has been focusing on balance testing since day one. There are no wrong answers when choosing your professions. All are equally competitive and fun.

All PvP in Guild Wars is squad based, with squads ranging from two to eight members. It is important to try to balance your character with that of your squad mates. For instance, Monks are wildly useful (and actually fun to play in GW!) but a whole squad of eight Monks is not going to be as effective as a well balanced squad that mixes capable Warriors and Wizards with the healing and protection prayers of Monks.

I have been playing with one of the more effective guilds in Alpha, Lords of the Dead (LotD). We've been exploring many strategies in team building, from the very specialized to the more diverse and have concluded that the more diverse builds are the way to go. Forget your plans for an all Necromancer guild, Necro Obstetricians of Bountiful Sin (NOoBS) will quickly realize they are WTFPWNED. We've been able to go entire nights undefeated when we come prepared for varying circumstances and opponents.

What I am about to impart are the secret to our success, I do this with the permission of LotD and the shared hope that we will see many guilds offering us a challenge using our own tactics against us.

LotD Eight Player Build (Guild Warfare and Tomb of the Primeval Kings)

The Triad
The core of our success has been an unstoppable trio for healing. One Monk focusing solely on healing, one Monk on healing and protection, and lastly a Necromancer utilizing the “Blood Is Power” (this role is dubbed BIPer after this skill) and “Blood Ritual” skills to infuse the monks with a constant and steady supply of Energy (mana).

When you only have eight people in your squad putting three just on healing is a costly investment, but the combination is impressive.

One other team in alpha has found 3 Monks without a BIPer to be similarly effective, though sometimes they seem to be strained a bit; it is definitely a worthwhile alternative to consider.

The Target Caller
Every successful guild in Alpha has a Target Caller. This is one individual dedicated to making sure everyone is hitting who they're supposed to be hitting. The typical scenario here is for the damage dealers to “Focus Fire” on one individual, whom the Target Caller is debuffing with snares, hexes, and anything else that will make the damage dealer's job easier.

The role is easy to play, but requires a leader personality. You have to be confident and capable of making decisions fast. You need to quickly find the best target (when you have eight people to chose from this can be difficult) and then make sure that everyone is on it. You do this by holding down Ctrl and single left clicking on an enemy name. This will send your teammates a message: “I am attacking <TARGET NAME>! Press ‘T' to select my target!” At which point your teammates should be pounding on the T key and then the spacebar (attack) key to focus on the new target. You will find it extremely helpful to call “New Target” over your voice communication software which we will discuss later.

Nuker
Typically fulfilled by an Elementalist, this role requires you to stand back and launch your attacks into the fray. The Nuker trades defense for terrifying offense, so you've got to stay out of reach of your enemies.

There are many ways to be an effective Nuker. Some prefer to go Point Blank Area of Effect (PBAoE), Ranged Area of Effect (RAoE), Damage over Time (DoT), Point Blank Direct Damage (PBDD), and Direct Damage (DD). Since you enter each mission with 8 spells you can mix and match however you feel comfortable. I personally enjoy having some flexibility with a couple of RAOE, one PBAOE and a DD with some supporting spells that help me regenerate energy and/or bungle other casters.

Two Tanks
When you consider how much damage dedicated Nukers can do, you might be tempted to forgo tanks, but from many test builds we have concluded that it is quite advantageous to have a couple of strong warriors mixing things up. This keeps your damage dealers spread out (two Warriors at point blank, one Nuker at range) so a combination of AoEs do not decimate your capacity for inflicting damage.

Think of it as a zero sum game, each team has to try to keep their health as high as possible and you need to trade your damage for your team's health while they're trying to do the same… when you begin to take too much damage your enemy gets the upper hand on you as you try to recover, because when you're recovering (fleeing, resurrecting, etc…) you are not doing damage to your enemies who now can bring their healers to bare upon you. For this reason having some hearty tanks is a vital part of a winning strategy. Warriors can absorb damage because they have access to great armor. It's truly important to have someone on your front lines that can take as good as they give.

Angry Altar Boy
This is a specialty role, suitable to your most clever grunt. The mission here is to get behind enemy lines and muddle the effectiveness of their Monks. While they're trying to heal each other they are not healing the rest of their team.

There are many ways to approach this task so I won't risk limiting your imagination by giving you an example. Just consider this role when designing your team strategy, and give it to the guy wearing the “Clerics are Lame” T-Shirt... he has some aggression to work out.

There are many effective team builds using different combinations, please keep in mine this should be considered only as an example rather than the definitive build.

Team Communication

While it may cost just a few hundred gold to start a guild in Guild Wars, if you want to have a competitive guild you're going to have to invest some real dollars into a Team Speak or Ventrilo server. These are Internet based voice teleconferencing programs that enable you to speak directly to your teammates in real-time. While you may have a very fast Internet connection, most people do not have enough outbound bandwidth (upstream) to support a full team of eight with decent quality audio. There are many companies that offer to rent dedicated servers for these programs, and any reasonably beefy hosting connection should be able to support either program. It is a worthwhile investment for any guild competing online in any game, because you can be assured your opponents are using it.

With voice communication and a standard operating procedure governing behavior your guild will develop into a cohesive unit with close friendships and timely communication.

The people you rely on become more than just words on the screen, and the people giving direction have an expanded ability to convey objectives.

Getting PvP Ready

As stated before: all characters in WPE will start at level fifteen with two professions. It will behoove you to advance all of your teammates to twenty (the level cap). This gives you more attribute points, health and energy. The attribute points will be an important factor in effectiveness. (e.g. more points into Fire gives more damage and duration to your Nuker's fire spells) To really rock in PvP events you're going to want to be operating at maximum efficiency.

Fortunately the level cap is mercifully low, it will not take you very long to reach it. Due to the design of Guild Wars even at level fifteen you'll still be reasonably competitive. The fastest way to cap is playing all the PvE missions. These are long, elaborate and well thought out missions that can be fun to play. For others who do not enjoy PvE it is pretty easy to set up a Macro. The people who actually play the missions though will benefit from loot and special skills only accessible to those who actively play in the PvE missions. At present ArenaNet has not condemned macroing, so the choice is yours to either macro at night while sleeping or the much faster approach of playing the game as intended. Either way, go for level twenty as soon as possible. I don't want to be beating up on defenseless newbies… at least not for too long. If you are unable to keep up with your teammates don't worry, you can still play with them and you'll still be able to compete.

Knowing the Maps

ArenaNet is still deciding on which PvE maps to include in the WPE so I cannot give many insights on those, but for PvP it looks like we'll have: Gladiator's Arena, Tomb of the Primeval Kings, and Guild Hall.

Gladiator's Arena
This is a randomly assigned Two vs. Two map. You join the lobby area (Outpost) and hit an ‘Enter Mission' button; the server will randomly select a teammate for you and two opponents. This is a really straight forward Team Death Match map. Run in and kill the other two guys before they kill you and your teammate. The map is pretty elaborate with lots of places to run around and varying elevations. Getting a line of sight for ranged attacks can be difficult in places and easy in others. It's really a well designed map for some quick and fun action, without all the team preparation required for other maps.

This is really where Guild Wars shines above all other MMORPGs, if you just want to get on and play for ten-to-fifteen minutes it's really that easy. Just log on, hit the ‘Enter Mission' button and you're playing within twenty seconds. With only two enemies to kill the map keeps a good pace and there's no running to pick up your corpse or work off your death penalty like you might find in other games. Just log on, play and log off.

In E3 for Everyone (E34E) we saw a similar randomly assigned Four vs. Four player map that was just as easy to get in and get playing. I suspect we'll see many such maps in retail and beta. This is going to really appeal to older gamers who do not have many hours to dedicate to playing.

Tomb of the Primeval Kings
Tombs are organized pick-up Eight vs. Eight matches with random game play modes. While in the outpost you assemble your team of eight and once everyone has their skills selected you hit the ‘Enter Mission' button. You begin the match immediately in a small PvE mission waiting until an opponent is available. There will be no shortage of opponent teams in WPE so you won't have long to wait, but presently in Alpha the minimum time spent in the PvE warm-up is three minutes and twenty seconds. During this time you will fight many tough monsters that will test your teammates to see if they're even worth competing in PvP with. If you're good enough you can even get bonuses to your morale by hunting out and killing Rift Warden's. Each Rift Warden gives you a +2% morale bonus to your health and energy for a maximum of +10% if you kill five.

Once the PvE scenario timer is up and an opponent team has been found you're whisked away to a randomly selected PvP map. There are many different maps with wildly different themes and layouts available. As your team succeeds you advance further and further along to face new opponents in new maps, while you send your opponents back to the outpost lobby to start over again. With each victory you gain an exponential amount of fame. Fame is used to gain skill points which allow for you to learn new skills even after you've reached the level cap of twenty.

The game modes range wildly but the objective is clearly defined for you before the start of the match so you'll know what you must do. (e.g. “Kill the enemy team, and his priest. The priest will resurrect your enemies as long as he lives.” Or “Capture the Enemy Teams Relic; the team to capture the most relics wins.” etc…) Each map requires team work and will reward the most coordinated team.

Guild Hall
This is the map that all the others have been warming you up for. The Guild Hall matches will test your guild against others and rank you based on your performance. This is where your guild's honor and might will find glory. The first thing you'll notice when you join the map is that it's elaborate. This is a big map with some amazing visual elements. You really get a sense of the grandiose scale of what you're fighting for when you see your mighty guild hall pitted against another guild and their hall.

As in the Tombs your team will consist of eight members, but unlike the Tombs each member must be part of your guild to participate. You may either arrange matches with your rivals deliberately through a Challenge/Accept system, or you can have your guild randomly matched up against other waiting guilds.

Your team is joined by NPC defenders, a Guild Thief and your Guild Lord. The objective here is to kill the other team's Guild Lord or kill the enemy team so many times that they have 60% death penalty and cannot respawn (you incur a 15% penalty to health and energy each death, and lose this penalty through Morale Bonuses and by killing enemies. Note death penalty does not follow you from mission to mission and only lasts as long as your current mission) In order to get to the Guild Lord you're going to have to fight your way through the map to your enemies Guild Hall, where you will need to gain access and then fight your way through all the NPC defenders and your opposing team themselves. You'll struggle inch for inch to make it within reach of the Guild Lord.

Here's a basic run down of how play flows. Both teams start trying to run a flag out to the middle ground. Every few minutes a 15% morale boost is awarded to the team who has their flag claiming the middle ground at that time. Don't let this mighty reward distract you, because your enemy could be sneaking around one of two side paths to try and sneak into your Guild Hall while you're not looking!

If you've secured the center of the map you'll want to push forward to their Guild Hall with your NPC Guild Thief in tow. The Guild Thief is able to pick locks and open the opposing Guild Hall for you, but you'll need to protect her and keep her alive long enough to get there.

If you notice your enemy has snuck into your Guild Hall (or you see your Guild Lord's health dropping in your team panel) you need to get back to your base immediately and try to save as many of your NPCs as possible. Their help will be invaluable and can really determine the longevity of your team.

On the other hand, if you're in the opponent Guild Hall your first objective will be their NPCs. Do not underestimate their ability to damage you; you will want to kill the entire force of NPC enemy Archers and Clerics before attempting to kill the Guild Lord. Do not be discouraged if you die while trying to clear out the NPCs. Respawn, regroup and go at it again because your opponents respawn at the same time as you (every 2 minutes) and you now have to clear them out again. If you succeed a majority of your Death Penalty should be removed and you'll be ready to defeat the NPCs now on your second try.

It will often take many attempts, as the game tries to match you with teams of relatively similar experience and rank. So your opponents should be a good challenge and this map can easily last over a half-an-hour to as much as a full-hour.

Your efforts are greatly rewarded though, as with every success in a Guild Hall match your Guild Rank improves. There has been a lot of talk from ArenaNet alluding to banners in towns reflecting the highest ranked Guild's crest and other prestigious rewards.