A Guild Wars Guide for the Diablo II Player

A Guild Wars Guide for the Diablo II Player

This guide is intended as a collection of information geared towards that Diablo II player who is thinking about taking the plunge and coming over to play Guild Wars.

Player vs. Environment (PvE) Gameplay

Note: Players are encouraged to reserve one of their character slots for a PvP character. (see PvP section below for more information)

Guild Wars gameplay compared to Diablo II in a few words:

• group play is more important and more required
• monsters are much tougher relative to players
• monsters have skills, armor, and equipment that works the same way as for players
• fights are longer due to stronger monsters (approx. 15-30 seconds of fight per monster)

Very few characters will be able to efficiently play solo against monsters in Guild Wars, unlike Diablo II. Most groups will need some kind of healer (e.g., a primary Monk), as well as a mix of other characters to win. Although parties can often do fine with less than max group size, rarely can groups of 1 or 2 win against the monsters. There is still the option to hire henchmen or add Heroes (with Nightfall or Eye of the North) to fill your party's ranks, but these computer-controlled allies come with their own deficiencies.

In addition, most monsters are in the same toughness range as the players fighting them. Although some character builds can do a lot of damage to a single monster in very short time, there are no instant kills. This means that battles will last longer in Guild Wars than in Diablo II. As a rule of thumb, battles probably last around 15-30 seconds for each monster. People will therefore often want to fight less monsters at the same time as group size (most groups in Guild Wars will probably consists of around four players).

Monsters all have the same types of attacks as players do, plus a few additional rare ones such as Giant Stomp. For example, if a monster is of a ranger type, it will use either a bow or some ranged attack as a regular attack in addition to its ranger skills; it will have extra armor against elemental damage and its armor against physical damage will be somewhere between warriors and casters. This applies to the monsters of the other professions types as well.

Character Progression

Characters use skills and attributes differently in Guild Wars than in D2. In Guild Wars, characters all have the same amount of life at the same level, have mana based on their character's profession, always hit with attacks unless certain conditions or hex are on them or the target is using certain enchantments or stances. Attribute points for characters are not used for these things; instead, they are used to improve the power of skills. Instead of having skill point associated with one particular skill, attribute points improve all skills associated with them. For instance, if you improve fire magic for extra firestorm damage, you will also improve skills such as meteor and flare.

Unlike in D2, where skill points are fixed once assigned, attributes can be reassigned in any town and skills swapped as well. For instance, if you're about to go into an area with lots of melee type monsters, you can change to skills that do better vs. melee and boost attributes to make those skills more powerful. Some attributes (marksmanship, swordsmanship, ax mastery, hammer mastery) improve weapon damage; others (many of the primary attributes) allow for mana/energy management.

Characters hit their maximum level (level 20) around one quarter to two thirds into the game (depends on which campaign the player owns); monsters increase somewhat in level to 24-28 near the end of the game. The attribute/skill system means that characters won't ever have to save skill points, and will be useful throughout the game, even in early areas with only basic skills. Many basic skills, in fact, are useful throughout the game. Except for the elite skills, the only major difference between early and late game skills is that early game skills are on average simpler to use.

The storyline in Guild wars is more involved than in Diablo II. It has a number of twists and turns, and most of the time your character is in the middle of the important action. Guild Wars also has, in many opinions, more interesting terrain than D2, thanks partially to the camera view and being 3-D and partially simply because it is drawn very well. The Shiverpeaks really feel like a mountain range, and the Ring of Fire really feels like a barren volcanic area. Sightseeing in Guild Wars is well worth the time.

Player vs. Player (PvP) Gameplay

The Player vs. Player experience in Guild Wars is vastly different than the PvP that took place in Diablo II. Most of Diablo II's PvP play was focused on "duels," which, over time, became increasingly frustrating for new players. The equipment, attribute, and skill point requirements to be competitive in PvP (not to mention class imbalances and cheating) were incredibly high.

Guild Wars differs greatly from the Diablo II experience in that the game really does rely on strategy, tactics, and skills more than the equipment your character is wearing. The flexible nature of skill use, attribute assignment, and even secondary profession (for PvE characters) ensures that characters never become "obsolete" because of changes in the metagame.

Because Guild Wars is a team game, there is no formal concept of duels, and PvP can only occur in specially-designated arenas. There is no risk, for example, of one of your party members "going hostile" in the middle of a mission. With the exception of the Random Arenas that are available, most PvP will also involve a bit of planning on a team build to maximize the effectiveness of the characters involved.

Players are encouraged to reserve one of their character slots for a PvP character.

While you are playing your PvE characters, you will "unlock" skills and items/equipment. When you have unlocked an item or a skill, it is immediately available to a newly created PvP character. Read this twice. It really means that you can use all unlocked skills and equipment from your PvE characters on your PvP character. As a side benefit, these same skills are available to your Heroes, AI companions that you can customize. In addition, skills, items, and Heroes for PvP may be unlocked with faction, which is earned with PvP success. This unlocking process neatly eliminates the "equipment gap" that characterizes D2 PvP.

There is no need to build a character for PvP from the ground up. Instead, since you can delete and recreate this character at will, it is easy to experience various classes and builds, as well as take advantage of newly-unlocked items and skills.

There is no such thing as non-consensual PvP, or "player-killing," in Guild Wars.

System Requirements

For a game that is so graphically beautiful, Guild Wars will run on some of the barest of hardware out there. While the system requirements are a bit higher than those required to run Diablo II, it certainly isn't a game that requires the latest $2500 Falcon-NW machine to run! Check out the Guild Wars website for the (minimum) system requirements.

Broadband is not required to play the game. Your download of updates and loading of areas will take a bit longer, but the game will run just fine. We highly recommend that once you download the Guild Wars client, you install using the -image command. To do so, go to the Guild Wars shortcut icon. Right click on it and select "Properties." Modify the Target so that it reads "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe -image" Now go to sleep. This command downloads a complete image of the game. Ordinarily, you will download only those areas you visit, so if you have a slower connection, you'll take longer to load the first time you visit an area. By downloading the image of the program, you can speed up your load times, as the game won't have to transfer as much data to your computer. A fast broadband connection will download the image over 3 hours or so. A dialup connection will obviously take significantly longer.

That said, an internet connection is required to play Guild Wars. There is no such thing as a "Single Player" mode -- everything is "Closed Realm."

Community

There are many similarities between the community created by the Basin in Diablo II and Guild Wars, but there is also some major differences.

Much like the Diablo II Guild, the Guild Wars community asks that everyone "Play Nice and Show Some Class." This is especially important in a game such as Guild Wars. If you were a jerk in a public Diablo II game, there was little chance (unless you volunteered the information) that you'd be tracked back to the Basin. And even if you were, there was no greater community in Diablo II that could do anything about it. In Guild Wars, however, you wear a cape on your back and a tag on your name that identifies you. Not only does this provide recognition, but there are several other guilds that the Basin has ties to in the game. Not playing nice and showing class can ripple through many playing groups.

In Diablo II, the Basin created an "artificial" playing environment to circumvent design decisions by Blizzard. Drops were shared among all party members. PvP was strictly forbidden unless pre-arranged. Games were passworded through WeaselTech and cared for by those involved. In Guild Wars, however, many of these problems were addressed by the game design itself. Items are "reserved" for players when they drop, and gold is automatically shared. PvP only occurs in arenas specially designed for PvP. And an instanced game world means you don't have to worry about killing that Charr boss; it doesn't matter to anyone outside of your party.

On the downside, the design of Guild Wars does mean that you can't just "hop in" to a game already in progress. If you're not there at the start of the mission, you can't join until the party reaches the next outpost. And party size limitations increase gradually throughout the game, limiting the size of the group that can adventure together. Furthermore, while everyone in the Basin could have (theoretically) crammed into the same chat channel, guilds in Guild Wars are limited to 100 members, forcing the Basin to split across many different Guilds, as well as Guild Ladder Teams (all allied through an overarching Alliance).

Nevertheless, we've built a strong community. The Basin's Guild Wars forums, our IRC channels and our TeamSpeak server serve as central hubs for communication. Alliance chat allows people to communicate with all online Basiners at once. And group games such as Mission Possible! and Pickup GvG take place regularly. You'll find that the community created in Guild Wars is a strong, active one, willing and able to help out at any time.

Related forum threads

• GW for the Diablo2 Player (Jan 2006)

Related Basin links

• Guild Wars Forums
• IRC Channel Guide
• TeamSpeak Howto