Buying Guild Wars 1 (Not yet another GW1 thread ... I think)

[Allanon the Mystic]

Ah I see. Thanks a lot ! I thought that classes available in one campaign were also available in subsequent campaigns as starter toons. So I'll have to reorganize this so as to be able to start with Factions. Gonna see what I can do. Any comments on the lore aspect ? Can I start in any order and still experience the entire lore with no spoilers/mess ?

---------- Post added 2012-02-28 at 11:36 AM ----------

What do you guys think about this :

Factions -> Unlock EotN
Complete EotN
Complete Nightfall
Go back to Factions and complete it
Complete Prophecies
Start Guild Wars Beyond

There are two little details that I need to clear up with this plan :

1) When I unlock EotN from Factions, would it automatically mean that I would have also unlocked Nightfall ? Or do I need to quest more ? I want to start Nightfall right after EotN.

2) There is that "Go back to Factions" that is still a little confusing to me. Should I just write down the last quest I did in Factions before starting EotN and go back to pick up the follow up when I come back to Factions, or is it more involved ?

I don't know enough of the progression with GW1, so I will just follow your lead.

[Deleted]

Aside from the tutorial zones of Factions and Prophecies, would I miss anything by doing things in this order ? Also, does this order mess up continuity ? (No spoilers ! O_O)

It goes in this order Prophecies-> Factions-> Nightfall-> Eye of the north. I would recommend starting prophecies if you want to learn story. I suppose it doesn't matter much lore vice if you play factions before prophecies, but I highly recommend not going to EOTN or finishing nightfall before finishing these 2 campaigns. Specially EOTN will give you quite big spoiler very early on it if you didn't play prophecies first.

Prophecies is also one that got slowest learning curve so it give you time to learn the game where other campaigns got very quick learning curve and give you heroes and you most likely don't have skills for them. You can do prophecies missions just fine with henchmen and wiki have good details of what skills they bring so you can pick the ones which support your profession best (example). Also I would recommend guild if you feel you need help learning the game or get stuck on some harder missions. You can find some of these here http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Guilds like here is one list http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Notable_guilds (not all active) got quite few good guilds you could join, there is also recruitment forum on gwguru that get posts frequently.

[Deleted]

Ah I see. Thanks a lot ! I thought that classes available in one campaign were also available in subsequent campaigns as starter toons. So I'll have to reorganize this so as to be able to start with Factions. Gonna see what I can do. Any comments on the lore aspect ? Can I start in any order and still experience the entire lore with no spoilers/mess ?

There are some spoilers if you play the campaigns out of order. Some quests and missions in nightfall make references to events in prophesies and factions, EoTN makes references to prophesies. Guild Wars beyond is basically an extension of the story of all previous campaigns, so I would definitely play that one last.

If you definitely don't want any spoilers you need to play them in this order: prophesies (or factions) -> factions (or prophesies) -> nightfall (or eye of the north) -> eye of the north (or nightfall) -> guild wars beyond.

[DrunkenBeard]

Thanks a lot leipuri, that was very informative. I guess I'm just going to do it this way :

Factions
Prophecies
Nightfall
EotN

Hopefully there are no spoilers if I do it in this orders. The only potential spoilers would be when going from Factions to Prophecies, are there any ?

EDIT : Just saw your post nektar. So you confirm that I can go Factions before Prophecies ? That's great I'll decide between EotN and Nightfall later.

[Deleted]

Thanks a lot leipuri, that was very informative. I guess I'm just going to do it this way :

Factions
Prophecies
Nightfall
EotN

Hopefully there are no spoilers if I do it in this orders. The only potential spoilers would be when going from Factions to Prophecies, are there any ?

EDIT : Just saw your post nektar. So you confirm that I can go Factions before Prophecies ? That's great I'll decide between EotN and Nightfall later.

As far as I know I don't think there are any spoilers to proph in factions, but you want to be on the really really really safe side play them in the order that leipuri suggested.

[DrunkenBeard]

Problem with that nektar is I can't go Assassin. Unless ... I start a Factions character and go Prophecies at the first chance I get, then go back to Factions when I'm done with Proph.

[Deleted]

I honestly don't remember a single prophesies reference in factions. While there are characters from prophesies in factions they don't mention any of the events of the first campaign. Play factions first, there are no assassin skills available in prophesies and that would make playing one there really boring.

[DrunkenBeard]

If you play for lore reasons you are doing it way out of the timeline and a few things won't make any sense to you if you do it that way (like one of the last Nightfall missions involves bosses from Prophecies and Factions).

The only reason you should do it as you suggest would be for ease of play (getting heroes and such).

The timeline in GW is (using the Mouvelian calendar)

1070 Prophecies turorial
1071 Prophecies Campaign
1072 Factions Campaign
1075 Nightfall Campaign
1078 EotN expansion
1079 Guild Wars Beyond

Thanks for the Timeline As much as I want to start with Prophecies (I really do), I also want to play an Assassin. So it's either one or the other, and right now I think I'm going with the Assassin as long as jumping from Factions to Prophecies doesn't have any spoilers. I'll just treat Prophecies as sort of a Caevrns of Time when I get to it.

[Allanon the Mystic]

Thanks for the Timeline As much as I want to start with Prophecies (I really do), I also want to play an Assassin. So it's either one or the other, and right now I think I'm going with the Assassin as long as jumping from Factions to Prophecies doesn't have any spoilers. I'll just treat Prophecies as sort of a Caevrns of Time when I get to it.

I don't really care about learning the lore from the game, I hardly learned any of the lore from Warcraft by playing the game. I learned most of it by finding an interesting character and going to their wiki and going for topic to topic to character to event and learned most of it that way. Unless there wa sa special event like the Firelands one. If I want to learn most of the lore I will learn it by doing the same way. :P

So again, I'll be following your pace in the game, doesn't matter to me what path you want to start in~

[Deleted]

If you play for lore reasons you are doing it way out of the timeline and a few things won't make any sense to you if you do it that way (like one of the last Nightfall missions involves bosses from Prophecies and Factions).

The only reason you should do it as you suggest would be for ease of play (getting heroes and such).

The timeline in GW is (using the Mouvelian calendar)

1070 Prophecies turorial
1071 Prophecies Campaign
1072 Factions Campaign
1075 Nightfall Campaign
1078 EotN expansion
1079 Guild Wars Beyond

I surprised by the gap between the factions and nightfall campaign. For example when you finish Istan (the starting island) there is a quest in which Menlo recruits you to join the fight against the Afflicted, thereby allowing you to travel to Cantha. I always thought that the events in factions and nightfall occurred more or less simultaneously and that the one in Cantha ends earlier (for obvious reasons).

[Allanon the Mystic]

This is kinda BS, that applies to WoW not to GW AT ALL the main difference is you pretty much forced to play the story so will get the lore by doing missions.

I don't see how it's BS at all, leveling up I didn't learn a lot of lore in game, so after a while I just rushed to max.
And I personally don't see in taking my sweet time in GW1 atm to learn all the lore since I am more interested in getting the HoM before beta/release.

Yes, I am interested in the lore, I just don't see myself having the time to learn it in game, and will most likely learn most of it from their wiki or once I buy the books.

[Deleted]

As I recall that quest actually says you are going back in time, not the actually quest text but some text on the screen will say something like "you are witnessing past events" or something like that.

Ah, that explains it, must have forgotten that. It's been such a long time since I had to do that quest.

[Allanon the Mystic]

The thing is this thread isn't about what YOU think, I believe the OP was interested in the lore.

And I SAID that I will follow along with HIS pace, but my opinion is that I don't care what HE does, since I will just be following and playing along. We are leveling together in case you didn't read the whole thread :x