December 06, 2004 - This past weekend, ArenaNet hosted the December beta session for Guild Wars, its mission-based online RPG, which is drawing ever greater amounts of interest as development moves forward toward release next year. The title is massively multiplayer, but not in the standard sense. Player characters are persistent. However, the advancement process only goes to level 20, which should be attainable within roughly the same number of hours, meaning there's little or no treadmill to endure. At that point, you'll still be able to gain additional spells and abilities, giving you additional options when choosing the eight to use at any given time. The gameplay includes a story element that will play out through a linear series of 20 or more cooperative missions created on demand for you and your team. Other locations like towns and PvP areas are also instanced.

One of the developer's goals this month was to test high-level PvP. To this end, participants were given the chance to pick from a selection of 21 pre-made characters that could only be used in the arena and tournament locales. The game has six professions. The Warrior and Ranger are the melee and ranged specialists respectively, while the Necromancer concentrates on raising undead minions and other dark magic. The Elementalist is an offensive caster, the Monk is a healer, and the Mesmer is highly proficient in de-buffs. Each avatar has a primary and secondary class. Since this means a total of 30 possible combinations, all were not available. Those on offer still provided considerable variety. For instance, you could pick a Dark Knight (Warrior primary / Necromancer secondary) or Paladin (Warrior / Monk), a Trapper (Ranger / Necromancer) or Minion Master (Mesmer / Necromancer), etc.

In a couple of cases, the same pairing was used, but with different specific skills; each class will have approximately 75 to 80, and there will also be some common ones. The Pyromancer (Elementalist / Mesmer) is a fire magic caster that can draw energy from foes, with a number of area effect spells that make it especially effective against tight groups, while the Geomancer is similar except focused on earth-based abilities. The Protection Healer and Zealot are both Monk / Warriors. The former primarily uses protection prayers to reduce damage to allies and removes hexes and conditions, with some melee abilities for protection, while the latter's strengths are protective enchantments and offensive signets.




Although it may not be meaningful, every profession was used as the primary three to five times except for the Necromancer. With Mesmer as its secondary class, the Warrior's Bane is described as particularly effective at stacking multiple hexes to weaken and slow down enemy melee fighters. What helped make this option stand out was something I had been told at ArenaNet's media event last month. When I asked why neither the Necromancer nor the Mesmer are not included among the NPC henchmen you can include in your party, the reply was that they are more intricate to play. As a very preliminary impression based on different and limited amounts of time with the various archetypes, this does seem accurate. With the others, it appears can generally pay more attention to yourself and your party, and less to the enemies.

Guild Wars has three PvP modes. Of these, I didn't try the one for guilds. Arenas offer quick battles between teams that are assembled semi-randomly by the game. The testing session last month started out with four per side, then switched to eight. This time, it was back to the lower number. Most participants seemed to be using level 20 characters, so the clashes were somewhat more even than I recall. However, it wasn't a huge change. They were still over within two or three minutes, the same as before. What I didn't see was any in which one side triumphed within a minute, which had happened a couple of times in November. Of course, this is merely an extrapolation from my personal experience, which may not be completely representative.




The Tomb of the Primeval Kings is set up for groups of eight. At this location, you begin in a meeting area just outside, and have to recruit or join a team; the game doesn't place you on one. Largely depending how assertive you are, it can be only a couple of minutes before you're ready to go, or you can end up standing around for a fair bit longer. In any event, when you enter the mission, the first order of business is to protect a Ghostly Hero NPC from attacks by a series of creatures. These last a couple of minutes, but they don't come at you in huge waves, so with the pumped-up characters, this isn't a very difficult task, even when a group doesn't work well together.

The next step is more of a challenge. In the half-dozen matches I played, there were three teams, of which the last one with a member standing won and advanced against new opponents. This is where coordination and cooperation come into play - not just sticking together, but joining up to take down individual adversaries more rapidly. The most common tactic, probably not surprisingly, is to prioritize eliminating those that can heal and resurrect. In this regard, every character wears the garb associated with its primary profession, so it's easy to tell at a glance which ones are Monks.