By James R. Cook

Last week I had promised a review for this past BWE, but due to real life I haven't been able to start writing it until this weekend. For this I apologize.

I have now participated in the E3 for Everyone event, the World Preview Event, and now all three Beta Weekend Events. In all of these I seem to keep recruiting more and more friends to come join me in this highly addicting game. In previous events, I had focused primarily on the co-operative missions, as my friends were never much into the player vs. player aspect of any game but more into roleplaying and fighting computer controlled opponents (mostly because they don't whine and talk back to you). In this Beta Weekend Event, I stayed at a friend's house the entire weekend with another friend. The three of us hooked up a network and jumped into Guild Wars together to see how long we could play that weekend.

When we had logged into the game, the first thing we noticed was having to remake our characters. Not a big deal, we re-created our characters and our guild. This time around though instead of making my main character as a warrior, I decided to try out a monk/elementalist (and this quickly became my favorite profession). Our guild was recreated and that's when we noticed our new Guild House. We immediately went there to look the place over. This area is simply huge, right now there's not much added other than being able to challenge other guilds to war, but there is a lot of potential to be added (and hoping one of the additions will be a guild vault to store weapons, etc).

We also noticed the new graphical user interface. It took a bit to get used to but the added bags and pouches are a welcome addition, as well as being able to move the interface around the screen to where you want it. I know I would still like to see an easier way to add friends to your friend list though from the interface itself other than having to type in commands.

Alot more quests were open this time around, and we noticed monsters in the explorable areas were finally dropping the loot we needed to complete some of the quests we had been working on. I didn't get to see much of the new quest system ArenaNet was talking about in the IGN article though, but then again they said it's just really a taste to see what's to come.

We spent the first day running through missions and quests. I found very quickly that I really enjoyed being the team player and playing the monk. I could sit back and watch my teammate's health and heal them when needed. With the powers of the elementalist I was still able to sit back and cast powerful spells on our enemies. I also found out early on how to avoid the monsters by running around and healing myself. I definitely did find the character class I think I enjoy the most.

I can't really comment much on the missions and quests though, while they're fun, they happened to pretty much be the same ones we were running through before (doing the North Wall Missions). We died on the 3rd (due to a small glitch on the game we reported). Because we didn't feel like running through the same mission again we decided that we'd make some arena ready made characters and see what the PvP aspect of the game is all about, what we weren't prepared for is how quickly it took us by storm.

I, of course, decided to go with the Monk/Elementalist build and I found out quickly this is even more fun to play in PVP. It also helps that monks are probably the most sought after character to be on a team because of their ability to heal others... I've also learned quickly though that monks become targets QUICKLY. However, I did learn how to heal myself pretty quickly as well which helped. We ventured to the arena where the teams are picked randomly in a 4 vs. 4 setting. You don't gain any fame or anything really, just you win and you keep fighting until you lose. My first team racked up 26 straight wins, and I made a few new friends to add to my friend list. I found Arena is a great way to meet some decent people (and some real jerks too, but that's besides the point).

If you've never been a person who enjoyed PVP, let me tell you that you don't know what you're missing out on with Guild Wars. I was strictly a person who enjoyed quests and missions, but they way they have the combat set up in Guild Wars just makes it fun. Sure I lost a lot, but you don't really lose anything other than the feeling that you lose. If you're like me, you're just stubborn and jump right back in to play again. I found I used a lot more creative tactics when fighting humans and the fights were much more intense than fighting a computer controlled opponent. My biggest advice for greenies though on PVP, is expect to lose ALOT starting out. But don't get discouraged, just learn what you need to do and you'll improve quickly with time.

We soon left the Arena and ventured off to the Guild House to try the new guild battle system. Soon we were battling between another guild, and without knowing the real rules of the game yet, got pounded into the ground. Come to find out you need to take your guild thief and break into your opponent's hall, and then kill their guild lord to win. Easier said then done really. We ended up going 2/5 on the guild battles, which wasn't too bad considering most the time we used 4 henchmen (which are really worthless compared to having a full team of human players). One thing I did notice though was during the battles, it really helped our teammates that we were in the same room with each other and could shout out what we were doing and what the enemy was doing instead of trying to type it out. It definitely made me realize teamspeak servers or the like are going to really be helpful to use when playing the game. Perhaps ArenaNet could add voice chat along with their game? I think that's something that could really be innovative that not many other games offer. I know it will be a hassle in itself to get my friends to learn how teamspeak works in the first place, would really be convenient if games these days just offered it as part of their package and set it up as easy to use.

Toward the end of the event I tried out the Tomb of Primeval Kings. This was interesting, you start out fighting computer opponents to get access into the tomb and then battle against multiple teams in a free for all. I didn't get to spend a lot of time here as it was time for me to head out. Next beta event I definitely plan on exploring this tournament much further.

I know I'm probably not giving out a lot of new info on the game itself, but I did want to focus on the PvP aspect of Guild Wars and show those (who were like me) that there's a lot more to the game then questing and missions, in fact, that's just a small portion. There's a whole new world out there for us to try our hands in, and if you don't try it, you'll never know if you truly like it!