Guild Wars Factions

**Lehesu** · 05-25-2006, 05:56

Spurred by a chance encounter with Louis, who has Factions? Good, bad, overpriced?

**Crandaeolon** · 05-25-2006, 17:21

I've got Factions too, bought it mainly so I could stay competitive in PvP. It's a bit different from the original - the pace is faster and it feels more compact. I wouldn't call it overpriced, but it's somewhat less value for money than the original.

Advancement in PvE is stunningly fast, character level gets maxed out very fast when compared to other games. IMO it's a good thing, since the difficulty ramps up rapidly to challenging levels, and i'm not level-grinder type. There's also a plenty of gold rewards and lots of items from collectors. For new players the ability to buy all skills from vendors might be intimidating, but I didn't mind. Makes unlocking stuff for PvP much easier. :p

Monster groups have more mixed-class critters in them than in Prophecies and are harder in general. There's also more environment effects and monster-only skills to spice things up, as well as missions with two teams of players. Even though the game is harder, it's still mostly playable with henchmen - only a couple of missions require a human group unless you're exceptionally good and/or lucky. PvE combat in general is good fantasy action.

The plot is ho-hum, standard fantasy tripe. Voice acting is bad and cutscenes are silly. Music is a stock fantasy soundtrack by Jeremy Soule aka "The Repetitive", though the theme song has a nice pseudo-oriental feel to it. Too bad Soule's muse stopped giving after that.

Environments, apart from the run-down areas of the fantasy metropolis of Kaineng, are artistic and well done. Prophecies has more environment types but Factions has overall better artistic quality IMO. Character models are nicer looking but still as stiff as in Prophecies - the game engine is starting to show its age.

PvP is still better than anything else in the business, but some aspects of it could use improvement - accessibility is a problem for new players, and Heroes' Ascent (the "Tournament") suffers from the same problems. (It encourages silly defensive and gimmick builds.) The new additions of Alliance battles and objective-based maps are fun diversions, but not for "serious" play - which is for Guild vs Guild battles. PvP balance is good and the new classes see enough playtime.

Edit: the much-vaunted "alliance" aspect of Factions is pretty much a meaningless gimmick - the war between Luxons and Kurzicks doesn't really affect anything. All characters have universal access to all content, even the elite missions now that the alliances holding major cities have understood that there's no point in holding the elite missions back from the public. Just ask nicely for a taxi, and you'll get there.

**John86** · 05-26-2006, 03:37

I have it. Find me as Hiji Pvp. Personally I find it a bit overpriced for the content it offers. By the way, Im typing this from my PSP.

**Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe** · 06-07-2006, 19:50

I got it, and I like it...

PvE is a bit faster and more action packed than Guild Wars ep I , Assassin sure looks fun, and ritualist bloody annoying, but I don't think we have seen the full extent of that extension power yet. People are still playing non optimized build IMO... Not that I'd know what a good build is anyway

Graphically, once you're past the city, it looks great. PvP wise, I think I don't know why people are playing other games.
I know I am certainly NOT looking back at RTW for fun MP value once compared to GW.

Louis,

**Lehesu** · 06-07-2006, 20:41

Finally got factions. Too busy playing through ascalon with my N/Me to make any comment.

**Navaros** · 06-08-2006, 05:36

Definitely over-priced.

I've been following the release of this very closely.

Most people beat the PVE side of the game in 1 - 3 days and the general consensus is that it is nowhere near as good or as long as Chapter 1.

Most of the end-game PVE content and almost all of the PVP content in Factions is directly copy and pasted from Chapter 1. Not even "recycled" by doing the same thing on new maps: but a direct copy and paste job. Same exact maps, which you can already access with Chapter 1 only.

Certainly it's not worth the $59.99 CAD that it sells for in Canada, which is $10 more than Chapter 1 was when it first came out.

As for PVP being amazing: I got rank 9 in December of last year (which means I did a whole lotta PVP) and personally I found PVP gets very boring after that. After you get rank 9 you don't really get any more worthwhile rewards for doing PVP hence it is highly pointless. And waiting around for a team to form is a huge pain. Waiting for 8 good players to assemble onto a PVP team together often literally takes hours of sitting around doing nothing.

Like the original was, I think Factions is highly over-rated. I'd say it's worth about a 60% score due to it's price combined with lack of content & copy and pasted content from Chapter 1.

Having said all that, there are much worse games on the market so if you're a Chapter 1 fanatic you might get your money's worth out of Factions.