Description
Guild Wars: Prophecies (renamed after the release of
Guild Wars: Factions) sets players in the fantasy world of Tyria.
When creating a character, the player has to choose whether they want to create a
Role-Playing character or a
PvP-character and what character class they want to play (Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer or Monk).
Role-Playing:Shortly prior to the game start, the three human kingdoms of Tyria - Ascalon, Kryta and Orr, fought each other in many guild wars. The last guild war abruptly ends when the Charr began to overrun the weakened kingdoms.
The Charr, a violent race from the north (whose homeland can be visited in
Guild Wars: Eye of the North) began an invasion of the kingdoms of Tyria. Kryta's expelled Saul D'Alessio and his White Mantle repelled the invasion, Orr was annihilated when Vizier Khilbron cast a forbidden spell to protect the capital city of Arah resulting in the Cataclysm and the sinking of the kingdom to the ground of the Sea of Sorrows, what still stands is the Kingdom of Ascalon protected by their Great Northern Wall.
The player starts at the day of, and just some hours prior to, the "Great Searing", the Charr ritual that turned the green lands of Ascalon into a wasteland. At the beginning of that day, Ascalon looks for heroes help fighting the Charr and here is where the game starts.
In this tutorial area, the player can play alone or with another player, to complete the first quests, acquire the first skills and get in touch with the game world. After choosing a secondary profession, the player can leave the tutorial and start the "real" game.
Note: choosing a secondary profession is a crucial part in the design of
Guild Wars, as the player does not play
just a monk or a warrior, but a combination of the professions. With the six character classes,
Prophecies effectively has 30 different character combinations.
For example, while a Elementalist/Mesmer (E/Me) and a Mesmer/Elementalist (Me/E) might look similar, the differences are that the armor can only be used for the primary profession and each profession has a primary attribute which only this class can use. As an Elementalist, the E/Me has Energy Storage increasing the available energy drastically. While the Me/E has base energy, they can cast spells twice as fast because of their Fast Cast.
The secondary profession is locked for about 75% of the
Prophecies game, but can later be changed unlimited times. (With access to
Factions and/or
Nightfall even much earlier.)
After leaving the tutorial, the player can play many side quests (to gain experience, gold and skills), primary quests (which lead to missions) and missions itself (which advance the story).
Prophecies offers 25 missions (with primary and secondary (bonus) objectives) to play and hundreds of quests with many plot twists on various game settings (wasteland, green lands, jungle, dessert, snowy mountains, volcanic islands).
The player also has access to all PvP content while reaching those outposts in the storyline. Each skill acquired, each rune or weapon upgrade identified will be unlocked on the account for use with PvP-only-characters.
The game would is fully instanced, means each player (or a group of players) get their own area/mission "copy" from the server. While no one can join you while the player(s) is/are adventuring, no one will "steal/corrupt" you a boss or missing objective you try to reach. Each enemy slain in an area keep dead (don't respawn) unless they are resurrected per skill like the own group can do it with their own team members.
Furthermore, the game is almost only played in teams, as the game area are balanced for the maximum size of a team (2, 4, 6 or 8 players). Therefore you can either play co-op or with the lack of human players, fill in with NPC henchmen.
The game has a level cap of 20 and easily obtainable max-level armor and weapons with the design of getting "better looking" stuff instead of weapons with ever increasing damage, and increasing the difficulty as the players have to deploy tactics as the enemies aren't capped at level 20 nor are they limited to groups of 8.
For those that "played through the campaign",
Prophecies offers four "elite mission" like areas: The Fissure of Woe, The Underworld, Sorrow's Furnace and The Tomb of the Primeval Kings (the last once was a PvP outpost prior to the release of
Factions).Finally, the game offers titles to display achievements the character (or the whole account) has made, like exploring the entire map (Grandmaster Cartographer), capping all elite skills (Skill Hunter), beating the missions in normal and hard difficulty (Protector/Guardian) or even "cleaning" an area of all enemies (Vanquisher), and much more. All these achievements can be displayed in
Eye of the North's Hall of Monuments.
PvP-character:When creating a PvP-character, this character is always at level 20 and has max-level armor and weapons. They can be fully customized with all the skills, runes and weapon upgrades available at the account (unlocked via PvE or PvP itself).
PvP-characters starting at the Isle of the Nameless, a PvP tutorial with all the stuff the player needs (testing weapon ranges, different armor class targets, etc.).
PvP mechanics applying to both character types:After each enemy kill in an arena or for winning it, the player cumulates
Balthazar faction (named after
Guild Wars's God of War and Fire), with this skills, runes, upgrades and heroes (the latter one requires an account combination with
Nightfall and/or
Eye of the North) can be unlocked and therefore used in PvP.
The following "arenas" are present in
Prophecies (for PvE and PvP characters):
- Ascalon Arena - 4vs4 Team - PvE-only (level 1 to 10)
- Shiverpeak Arena - 4vs4 Team - PvE-only (level 1 to 15)
- Random Arena - 4vs4 at random
- Team Arena - 4vs4 Team
- Heroes' Ascent - 8vs8 Team Tournament, 8vs8vs8 at final map
- Hero Battles - 1vs1 human players, each with 3 Heroes (requires an account combination with Nightfall and/or Eye of the North)
- Guild vs. Guild (GvG) - 8vs8 Team
Similar to pure PvE-achievements, the PvP content also has titles for achievements for winning in PvP. In addition, GvG and Hero Battles also featuring ladder play.
Final note: all the Guild Wars campaigns - including
Prophecies - have, despite being a MMORPG,
no subscription fees.
The
Game of the Year Edition (also known as
1 Million Edition) provided seven special weapons (Luminescent Scepter, Nevermore Flatbow, Rhino's Charge, Serrated Shield, Soul Shrieker, Tiger's Roar, Wolf's Favor), which can be created as many times as needed, but are bound at the character who created them.
The
Guild Wars Prophecies 2008 release adds the
Igneous Summoning Stone (which summons a Fire Imp which helps players levelling to level 20) on top of the GOTYE items.
Alternate Titles
- "激战" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
- "GW" -- Common abbreviation
- "Guild Wars Prophecies: иэдание "Игра года"" -- Russian 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store spelling
- "Guild Wars (Prophecies Kampagne)" -- German NCsoft Store title
- "Guild Wars (Prophecies campaign)" -- US/UK NCsoft Store title
- "Guild Wars Prophecies 2008" -- 2008 budget re-release title
- "Guild Wars: Prophecies" -- 2006 re-release title
- "Guild Wars: Million Edition" -- German 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store title
- "Guild Wars: GotY Edition" -- English 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store title
- "Guild Wars (Game of the Year Edition)" -- 2006 retail release / 2009 Steam release title
- "Guild Wars: Edycja Gra Roku" -- Polish 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store title
- "Guild Wars: edizione Game of the Year" -- Italian 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store title
- "Guild Wars : Edition Jeu de l'année" -- French 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store title
- "Guild Wars: edición juego del año" -- Spanish 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store title
- "Guild Wars (campaña Prophecies)" -- Spanish NCsoft Store title
- "Guild Wars (campagne Prophecies)" -- French NCsoft Store title
- "ギルド ウォーズ： Game of the Year Edition" -- Japanese 2006/2008 Guild Wars In-Game Store spelling
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
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Trivia
A history to player territory interaction and Realm of the Gods access.Note: the following information applies to
Prophecies,
Factions and
Nightfall.
Till August 2007 the following game mechanic was in place:The Guild Wars game world was split into five territories (America, Europe, Korea, Japan and Taiwan (actually also Macau and Hong Kong, but this is commonly referred to as just Taiwan, probably as the server is located in Taiwan)). Players could either play in their own territories or meet each other in the International District for trade or joining groups for almost all PvE/PvP activities, with the only exceptions being the Realm of the Gods elite-mission-like areas
The Fissure of Woe and the
Underworld as well as the PvP-tournament
Tomb of the Primeval Kings / Heroes' Ascent.
The only way for an joint-American-European-team to do those three things was for players to change the territory in their account. However, this was limited to three times and then the territory was locked (similar to how DVD manufacturers locking the Region Code after several changes). The reason behind this was the strong relation between Fissure/Underworld and Heroes' Ascent, as PvP wins in Heroes' Ascent granted access to those two PvE areas. And if people could change territory easily, the whole concept would be in vain. And while European/American teams could join Asian teams in the International District, changing the account territory wasn't possible because of the language barrier (and the implementation in the game client).
After five consecutive victories in the Hall of Heroes (the final map of Heroes' Ascent), the territory of the winning team takes
Favor of the Gods and that territory get access to the Fissure and the Underworld for at least 30 minutes (5 consecutive wins in 6 minutes intervals). So if Europe was holding the hall until America has conquered it, Europe still had access to the PvE-areas until America completed the forth holding (one win to take the hall, 4 wins holding it = 5 consecutive wins). In this time neither Korea, Japan or Taiwan could access the Realm of the Gods.
In the beginning of Guild Wars, Korea and America had dominated the Hall of Heroes, followed somewhere by Europe. It was said that it was something special for European players to get access to Fissure/UW with only a short time windows (the above mentioned 30 minutes). However, this has drastically changed over the years. I don't know whether there are much more European players, those have more free time, have better skills or just playing more PvP, but Europe has dominated the Hall of Heroes ever since. If I should guess the percentages (no real values available), I would say that 70% of the time Europe had the favor, 27% America and the last 3% split over Korea, Japan and Taiwan. And a common, and very sarcastic, comment was "Taiwan took favor?? Nice. Have fun with your 30 minutes Fissure/UW-access this year!" And as the favor was territory based, there was no way to access Fissure/UW using the International District.
With the release of Prophecies, the Fissure and the Underworld were something special, but with
Factions (The Deep, Urgoz' Warren),
Nightfall (Domain of Anguish) and
Eye of the North (Slavers Exile), Fissure/UW were just two other elite-areas, just with limited access.
The first step against the territory-discrimination was done when the Hardmode was introduced, as boss monsters had a chance to drop Fissure or Underworld passage scrolls (which allowed a team to enter those areas with no favor).
But the major step was done August 9, 2007 with the abolishment of the PvP-territory-independent-favor-system. It was replaced with a even more controversial PvE-global-favor-system using maxed titles to expanding the now so called "time window" (it's now common to have a few
weeks time windows).
As a consequence of the removed tournament favor (Heroes' Ascent is still there and still the same, they just don't fight for the favor any more, as they actually never did by the way), the region locking mechanism between American and European accounts was removed and a direct jump-across-the-ocean option was implemented (when choosing the district, the hidden ones are now shown). It was said that the Asian districts get also incorporated into world access once the game limitations were removed.
As of March 2008, America, Europe and Korea were - for the player's point of view - merged into one territory.
Bad news happened on March 31, 2008, were most people thought this to be a early April's Fool joke, as ArenaNet announced that effective April 1, 2008 a new Taiwanese law will come into effect protecting the Real Money Trading companies (the commonly known China Farmers) from the server operators which hinder the Taiwanese "economic". This made it for ArenaNet illegal to take any steps including banning accounts against those companies/individuals even when they deliberately violated ArenaNet's "original" End User License Agreement. See statement from
Gaile Gray, at the time ArenaNet Community Relations Manager.
So, with April 1, 2008, accounts from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau users had been disconnected from most of the Guild Wars world, including entering international districts (and therefore playing PvE) or trying to trade with accounts from other parts of the world.
Announced
April 8, 2008, ArenaNet and NC Taiwan had decided to shut down the Guild Wars Taiwanese server and migrate the Taiwanese accounts to America, removing all restrictions which were applied a week earlier. The community's reaction for this was just that the Real Money Trading companies did that already at their own, for selling their "goods" in America. So it was assumed that this was just a step to restore the playing ability for the legit users.
As of May 24, 2008, the Guild Wars world is still split into 2 territories: America (with American and Chinese districts)/Europe/Korea and the other one is Japan.
Finally, as of October 9, 2008, the travelling restrictions to Japan were lifted, making the game globally accessible to all players around the world.
This entry to the MobyGames database was contributed by
Rambutaan (299) on May 29, 2005.
