By: Austin Brown

The first game to come out of the new development studio ArenaNet is the hotly anticipated Guild Wars. Being created by the minds behind Diablo and Starcraft, it goes without saying that the game is going to have to meet high expectations. They have had a few weekends now where the general public has gotten to play the game in a gimpy beta state. After playing during these Weekend Preview Events I have made a few observations.

First things first, this game is very obviously made for PVP combat. Even the name yells that fact out. They have separate PVP arenas where guilds will be able to duke it out. Eight people per team combined with only six skills per person makes the game very strategic. At first glance, I thought it would be something very simplistic, and how I was wrong. For example, you can put your archers on the top of a cliff shooting down on the enemy. This makes it so that the opposing team has to take the time to run all the way to the other side of the mountain to climb up and kill the archers, while being shot at the entire time. This is only one example of many that I encountered.

Secondly, the artists of the game have made some absolutely fantastic visuals for this game. It is absolutely gorgeous. The only downside I see is their complete overuse of the bloom effect. I can understand it on some things that should give off that incandescent glow feel, but not everything in the area has to glow so much as to make me want to wear sunglasses when I play. It almost gives the game a sort of blurry look to it, which is a shame considering the quality of the visuals when not in overly bright mode.

And now for the real meat and potatoes, the gameplay. Now, I’m not sure if this is a downside or not, but the game reminds me a lot of Diablo 2. They even allow you to click on the ground to move. It doesn’t surprise me too much being that the game comes from the creators of the Diablo franchise, but it has a few twists. For one, you can only have a limited number of skills per mission you go on. This makes you really think hard about what you’re going to accomplish in a mission and forces teamwork so that you and your group can select skills that will compliment each other. What a novel idea indeed. Teamwork in an MMORPG! Who’da thunk it?

Another way in that it differs from Diablo is that there is actually a big world, instead of large chat rooms. Really it’s a place to meet people, form groups for missions, and to buy supplies. This is the only place where you’ll see a large amount of people, because once you’re in an instance, you just see your group and another group if you’re doing PVP.

Overall, I think Guild Wars is going to be an excellent first game to come out of ArenaNet. The lack of a pay-to-play cost is really going to push this game to high popularity, and I know I’m going to be counting the days until their April 28 release date.