Re: your opinion
I played Guildwars for about 3 and a half months over the summer when I was stuck on dialup (the game worked admirably well on dialup). It was very fun for most of the time I played it. Once I maxxed out levels and abilities, got a great weapon and got the second best armor money could buy, it began to get stale. Here are the reasons for why it got stale for me:
Disclaimer: I played the game before any expansion packs, so take this with a grain of salt
1. To get the best armor in the game (which has the same protection capabilities as the second best, it just looks cooler) you must gather 105 type of one component from one of the two planes, and 200 components from the other plane. Now this would not have been a huge deal, except that they were so rare, it was like a god given gift if you got one. You could buy them from players and sometimes the merchants, but they were incedibly expensive. Without buying them, you would probably have to spend about 3 years collecting them from each of the planes if you did nothing else in the game.
2. Some of the people were absolute idiots. I played Everquest for 6 years before I quit and I knew some dumb people in that game, but sometimes I just wanted to rip my eyes out from the sheer stupidity. Whether it was not knowing the mission, quitting in the middle of a mission, running around and bringing way to many monsters back to the party, or being generally abusive and greedy, I saw way too many idiots and retards in the game.
3. Certain classes could solo far, far better than others. Of particular intrest was the Monk/Warrior. With a certain build and certain items, they could SOLO the two planes where all those great and expensive items drop for the best armor. Yeah that's fair.
4. The developers repeatedly nerfed various skills and builds. I played an Elementalist/monk (like a wizard that heals too) and I had various sets of skills that I could combine to solo some smaller zones (nothing like the monk however). Every now and then I would get a nice prize, but it was pretty boring just killing certain areas, but it was something I could do by myself. However, whenever I would get into a good skill set (also called a build), bam... some vital aspect of that build was changed so the whole thing wouldn't work. Now, this wasn't always unexpected, as often many people would use the same builds to do this. However, the reason why I quit was because they changed something so fundamental of an Elementalist's playstyle that half my spells were useless. When I started the game, monsters who were casting spells or attacking one person would stay there, even if you cast an area of effect spell (fire rain, meteor shower) and you would get the full damage of the spell in. This was how I played my character from the day I started him. Three months into the game the developers decide they want to make the monsters smarter and that they will now MOVE OUT OF AREA OF EFFECT SPELLS. I couldn't take that, as about half my spells would do 1/3 of the damage they normally do.
In the end, I definately liked playing the game. The graphics were amazing, the combat system was great and varied, the class system was awesome, and there were more areas to go and play in than you could shake a stick at. Just watch out for the problems described above. I am sure many things have changed since I last played, so take all I have said with a grain of salt.
