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

Guild Wars gameplay compared to Diablo2 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 Diablo2. 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 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 2. 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, except for some 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 five 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 armor, always hit with attacks unless certain conditions or hex are on them, and/or the target is certain enchantments or stances on and damage reduction comes from armor alone. Attributes for characters are not used for these things, instead, they are used to improve the powers of skills. Instead of having skill point associated with one particular skill, attribute points improve all skills acssociated with them, so, for instance, if you improve fire magic for extra firestorm damage, you will improve skills such as meteor also which appear later in the game.

Attributes can be reassigned in any town, and skills can be changed around as well, so, for instance, if you're about to go into a area with lots of fighter type monsters, you can change skills to ones that do better vs. fighters, and possibly change attributes to make those skills more powerful. Some attributes (marksmanship, swordsmanship, ax mastery, hammer mastery) improve weapon damage, others (the primarty attributes and beast mastery) have other effects.

Characters hit level 20 around two thirds into the game, after this the 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 skillpints, and will be useful throughout the game, even in early areas with only basic skills. Many basic skills, in fact, are useful throughout the gameand 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 2. Itr 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, but partially it is drawn very well. The shiverpeaks really feel like a mountain range, the ring of fire really feels like a barren volcanic area, etc.

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. And while equipment does play a role (a warrior with a Superior Vigor rune will have an advantage over a warrior without), the role is smaller, and nearly eliminates the "equipment gap" that made Diablo II PvP difficult for new players.

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 four character slots for a PvP character. Since you can delete and recreate this character at will, it allows you to experience various classes and builds, as well as take advantage of newly-unlocked items and skills.

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! The minimum machine specs are available on the Guild Wars site.

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.

Community

There are some similarities between the community created by the Basin in Diablo II and Guild Wars, but there is also somme 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 agreed to. 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 limiations 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 spilt across three different Guilds, as well as Guild Ladder Teams.

Nevertheless, we've built a strong community. The forums and IRC serve as central hubs for communication. In-game relayers will transmit messages of games and events to other Basin guilds upon request. And group games such as Mission Possible! and GvG Frenzy take place regularily. 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)