Viable?  I've recently seen some videos online that looked like good PvE content and it made me curious =). 

I bought the first GW when it came out, but lost interest right away for two reasons.... 1 it had FAR too much instancing.. basically everything but cities, and 2 it was mostly a solo game... you hired henchmen instead of grouping.....   when you tried to get a group 90% of people just ignored you.....  

I play MMO's for team PvE, exploration, and social interaction. 

So tell me more about the current state of Guild Wars!

Thanks!

The state of GW's is alive and healthy. There isn't a game that has a much better storyline than GW. Yes the game is 100% instances except cities and pvp launching areas. The game can be solo'd up to maybe lvl 12-14 with just henchies but then the henchies don't do it anymore imo. You need to get into a guild and/or make a few IG friends. I have both and it makes the game much more enjoyable. 

How far did you get in GW? What lvl and city? I may be able to help better with that knowledge.

The game has plenty of PvE content. I'm surprised you lost interest when Prophecies was still new, I never had any problems grouping back then. I've had the game since near release, and I've still yet to finish the 1st expansion (Factions). But then again I only play once every long while, but thats the beauty of a non subscription game.

GW has loads of cool pve content.

tell me more about group PvE content =)  Describe some favorite dungeons... how many dungeons are there? 

Is most content "complete once" then forget it, or do you do certain dungeons over and over.

Is there "end game" dungeons of some sort?

I'm not very good with the names of all the dungeons/zones but yeah the majority it meant for lvl 20+. They also have something called Hard Mode and Vanquishing. Both are fun and turn just about every zone into end game material. You have to beat the game with one of your chars and be lvl 20.

Looking only at PvE "endgame" content in the GW series there should be something for most people.

These days most PUG's in "elite" dungeons equals speedruns for rewards mostly.

If you want to enjoy the experience with a regular mixed team (not running boring optimized gimmick builds for speed) you really need a good guild/alliance of likeminded people.

(Note: All links point to the unofficial guildwars wiki)

This is what I would describe as "endgame" pve content for GW:

Prophecies:

• The Fissure of Woe (after all this time still my favourite place in GW)
• The Underworld
• Sorrows Furnace
• Tomb of the Primeval Kings

The first 3 areas have several quests and a full run can take from 2-4 hours. For a good challenge your team can decide to bring only skills and professions that were available in the original Prophecies campaign. (Highly recommended). For a really hard challenge go hard mode+original skills

The Fissure of Woe (FoW) and the underworld (UW) are accessible from all 3 campaigns and are considered core content. The most expensive armor in the game (obsidian armor) can only be crafted in FoW, and only after finishing the first few quests.

Factions:

• Urgoz's Warren (Kurzick elite mission)
• The Deep (Luxon elite mission)

Both of these were originally only available to those alliances who held (by having the most faction points in the game) the capital cities House zu Heltzer (Kurzick) or Cavalon (Luxon). Today these missions are accessible also by getting a scroll that can transport you to the staging area.
Both missions are designed for teams of 12 people.

Nightfall:

Elite area Domain of Anguish consists of 4 interconnected sub-areas that must be completed to have a shot at the final confrontation with Mallyx the Unyielding. This is considered one of the hardest (if not THE hardest) pve challenges in GW. Most players will never complete this in hard mode.

Eye of the North:

All content in EotN is basically endgame content. EotN introduced 18 dungeons and most of them can be quite challenging for a mixed guild/alliance team.

Run time is from 30 minutes to several hours. Completing one of the dungeons reveals a rewardchest with a chance of unique and rare skinned weapons.

All of the endgame content is repeatable and if you ever want to get obsidian armor for your character you may end up spending quite some time in these areas. (Ectoplasm and obsidian shards, of which you need 105-120 each, only drop in FoW, UW and TotPK. A full run in UW usually yields some 8-12 ectoplasm for the full team of 8)

Not too bad for a game where PvP was the intended endgame

Originally posted by Halandir

Looking only at PvE "endgame" content in the GW series there should be something for most people.

These days most PUG's in "elite" dungeons equals speedruns for rewards mostly.

If you want to enjoy the experience with a regular mixed team (not running boring optimized gimmick builds for speed) you really need a good guild/alliance of likeminded people.

(Note: All links point to the unofficial guildwars wiki)

This is what I would describe as "endgame" pve content for GW:

Prophecies:

• The Fissure of Woe (after all this time still my favourite place in GW)
• The Underworld
• Sorrows Furnace
• Tomb of the Primeval Kings

The first 3 areas have several quests and a full run can take from 2-4 hours. For a good challenge your team can decide to bring only skills and professions that were available in the original Prophecies campaign. (Highly recommended). For a really hard challenge go hard mode+original skills

The Fissure of Woe (FoW) and the underworld (UW) are accessible from all 3 campaigns and are considered core content. The most expensive armor in the game (obsidian armor) can only be crafted in FoW, and only after finishing the first few quests.

Factions:

• Urgoz's Warren (Kurzick elite mission)
• The Deep (Luxon elite mission)

Both of these were originally only available to those alliances who held (by having the most faction points in the game) the capital cities House zu Heltzer (Kurzick) or Cavalon (Luxon). Today these missions are accessible also by getting a scroll that can transport you to the staging area.
Both missions are designed for teams of 12 people.

Nightfall:

Elite area Domain of Anguish consists of 4 interconnected sub-areas that must be completed to have a shot at the final confrontation with Mallyx the Unyielding. This is considered one of the hardest (if not THE hardest) pve challenges in GW. Most players will never complete this in hard mode.

Eye of the North:

All content in EotN is basically endgame content. EotN introduced 18 dungeons and most of them can be quite challenging for a mixed guild/alliance team.

Run time is from 30 minutes to several hours. Completing one of the dungeons reveals a rewardchest with a chance of unique and rare skinned weapons.

All of the endgame content is repeatable and if you ever want to get obsidian armor for your character you may end up spending quite some time in these areas. (Ectoplasm and obsidian shards, of which you need 105-120 each, only drop in FoW, UW and TotPK. A full run in UW usually yields some 8-12 ectoplasm for the full team of 8)

Not too bad for a game where PvP was the intended endgame

 

I've had  prophesies for just over 3 years and the others for almost a year, and  for a PvP focused game I've been incredibly busy with PvE in just completing the standard mission paths and sub-plots

Ive never bothered much with the above "end game" areas, because i havent found a need too.

GW has grinding (but which MMO doesnt) especially with Titles, some titles can only goto to Rank8 through normal play then Hard Mode is needed to get them to Rank10,

HM is very different to normal play, I've tried it with Henchmen & Hero's and i don't recommend it, the basic Hireling builds just aren't robust/effective enough to cope with the demands of HM play, and with being limited to a max of 3 Hero's there are area's where you really NEED atleast 1 more real person along.

I too have never done any of those end-game dungeons. You can do fine without them since GW isn't heavily reliant on items.

I've pretty much only played the game as PvE (I've dabbled just a few times in PvP and was bored with it), and like you I eventually got bored and left.  However, I just recently returned and am actually having a lot of fun!  I think part of it is the fun of just returning to a game after so long and being like "Oh, I remember that..!"

Yea, it is almost all instances, but I was thinking of this the other day.  While I like the big open world of other MMOs, this is really the only game that I've played where I felt like I actually WAS the hero of the world..essentially how you feel in single player games.  And I think the big reason for that is the instancing, where after completing a few quests you can see a difference in the game world even if it's just completing a quest where you thin out some of the bad guys on a particular path; then you go back afterwards and see "hey! I actually did something!"  Or maybe it's just me...

I have to disagree with you though about it being hard to find groups when the game came out.. There were always people looking for groups!  There still are a few, but in most places it seems like everyone already has a group, has a group made of guildies/friends, or is only looking for people that are lvl 20 to help them run through it.  Either way I haven't really cared because I've been running through with just the NPCs.. I'm actually almost lvl 18 and heading towards the Henge of Denravi.  True, I've died probably more than if I had real people, but eh..I'm having fun so that's all that matters.

I disagree with the second poster.

Guild War's PvE is just as boring.

I play the game because it's F2P.

The PvE is dead outside of the stupid Ez-mode quest grind.

There is'nt even a character development for crying out loud.

And with the added Hero system, there is even less Player grouping.

(IMO the Hero system does make the single player gameplay, more fun then without them, because [its a scheme to make up for the fact that you can only have 8 lame spells at a time without the Heroes])

The PvP is dieing. Hero Accent is dead on all servers.

Only thing living is the Alliance Battle (Guild Wars' version of Eye of the Storm [But better the EoTS])

Originally posted by tro44_1

I disagree with the second poster.

Guild War's PvE is just as boring.

I play the game because it's F2P.

The PvE is dead outside of the stupid Ez-mode quest grind.

 

There is'nt even a character development for crying out loud.

And with the added Hero system, there is even less Player grouping.

(IMO the Hero system does make the single player gameplay, more fun then without them, because [its a scheme to make up for the fact that you can only have 8 lame spells at a time without the Heroes])

 

The PvP is dieing. Hero Accent is dead on all servers.

Only thing living is the Alliance Battle (Guild Wars' version of Eye of the Storm [But better the EoTS])

Guild Wars PvP is far from boring in my opinion. Have you noticed that magically a company has managed to create a game without quests consisting of "Go kill X amount of Y?" Do you read quest text? Because if you don't I can understand you're bashing the game as PvE is all about the storyline. Let's not mention missions, which are fun and have cinematics to increase immersion. Not many games can boast such a PvE experience. 

Secondly, if you think Guild Wars PvE is dead, you clearly haven't played a dead game. 

Character advancement in Guild Wars is present, albeit in a watered down form. Guild Wars is a game meant for casual players, but also hardcore players in the form of PvP. ANet never intended us to grind for levels, and if you think that that is what you are doing you need a serious reality check as to what a grind is. 

Lastly, I had to lol @ the Heroes Ascent comment, as well as the Alliance Battles bit. Have you taken a trip around the Battle Isles lately to see where everyone is situated? Ever heard of Fort Aspenwood, the Jade Quarry? You do realise that you can switch between territories and that about everyone has migrated from the European districts to the American districts too, right?

Guild Wars takes the approach of letting you max out your character pretty fast, and then you can just do the content. That could be a problem if you don't like doing content, but prefer grinding levels, running back and forth between point A and point B, spending half an hour looking for a group before giving up, or various other things that I think are a complete nuisance.  There are plenty of games that let you do those, though, and very few MMORPGs that let you avoid such nuisances entirely, as Guild Wars does.

Pretty much everything is doable with just henchmen and heroes (AI characters that can be members of your party).  The main exceptions are some areas where henchmen aren't allowed.  Those areas don't really have any purpose except farming, though (no non-repeatable quests, no storyline, etc.).  And farming itself doesn't really have any purpose.  As I said, it's not a grinding game.

The missions are generally not that hard.  If you find them too hard, you can level some title tracks and get access to pve-only skills (mainly in Eye of the North) that basically function as cheat codes for the game.  But everything is doable without that.

After you complete a campaign, you can bump up the challenge considerably by switching to hard mode, which makes pretty much everything in the game into end-game content.  Nearly everything is still doable with just henchmen and heroes, though The Eternal Grove can be pretty rough that way in hard mode.

That doesn't mean that you can't group if so inclined.  Your party will have the same number of characters whether you group with other players or just take henchmen and heroes, so grouping doesn't affect the difficulty much.  That's why a lot of players don't group at all, but just take henchmen and heroes.

The game doesn't have a concept of separate servers, though, which helps a lot if you want to find players to group with.  Everyone on American servers who wishes to do a particular mission gets stuck in the same district, so there are lots of people around who wants to do whatever mission it is you're looking to do.  If that's not enough, you can freely switch to the English language districts on European servers, or to other language districts to find players.  Switching to Korean or Japanese districts may not be such a good idea if you don't know the language, but the game won't stop you if you want to.

If you wish to group with other players, I'd usually recommend getting a few players without regard to class, and then filling in whatever other classes your party needs with heroes.

Originally posted by tro44_1

I disagree with the second poster.

Guild War's PvE is just as boring.

I play the game because it's F2P.

The PvE is dead outside of the stupid Ez-mode quest grind.

 

There is'nt even a character development for crying out loud.

And with the added Hero system, there is even less Player grouping.

(IMO the Hero system does make the single player gameplay, more fun then without them, because [its a scheme to make up for the fact that you can only have 8 lame spells at a time without the Heroes])

 

The PvP is dieing. Hero Accent is dead on all servers.

Only thing living is the Alliance Battle (Guild Wars' version of Eye of the Storm [But better the EoTS])

I are he the 2nd poster here to defend my honor! Do you actually understand GW's game play? You do know that it is a skill based game, not a "I'm mostest uberest with the bestest ubersest gear" type game.

Have you ever been Vanquishing? That is very much fun, but we are all allowed to have different opinions. 

Just thought I'd throw this out, but anyone with Prophecies that wants to group give me a PM.  I made it to lvl 19 and Sanctum Cay with just NPCs, but now I'm pretty much stuck :/  I don't mind running older missions if you need to get up to speed or anything.

(Note: I figured I'd ask people here since you all seem to be rather level headed, as opposed to all the trash talking people in the cities..)

(Edit: Of course as soon as I post this I beat the Sanctum Cay mission.. So, anyone for the desert? Or bonuses?)

Ha I logged into Guildwars since I hadn't in years to see what it might be like.  My first reaction is that the community is like 12 year olds.  I logged in two characters and tried to talk to people, said hello, got no response in the first area.  The second area had more people and one person called me a fag, people were jumping all over like idiots, and any chat going on was rude and crude.  All in all I was really turned off in about 30 minutes.  I never got anyone to respond in an inteligable fashion.  Also there isn't any real global or ooc type chat.  So the chat in town tends to be very quiet.

Was actually considering looking at guildwars as I finished up with eq2 but not any more....

I'll be heading back to vanguard.

Originally posted by ethion

Ha I logged into Guildwars since I hadn't in years to see what it might be like.  My first reaction is that the community is like 12 year olds.  I logged in two characters and tried to talk to people, said hello, got no response in the first area.  The second area had more people and one person called me a fag, people were jumping all over like idiots, and any chat going on was rude and crude.  All in all I was really turned off in about 30 minutes.  I never got anyone to respond in an inteligable fashion.  Also there isn't any real global or ooc type chat.  So the chat in town tends to be very quiet.

Was actually considering looking at guildwars as I finished up with eq2 but not any more....

I'll be heading back to vanguard.

Definitely one of Guild Wars' biggest problems. But unfortunately a global chat would simply not work due to the sheer number of people playing. Would be an extremely fast-scrolling chat window. 

I recommend you find yourself a Guild. Guilds are definitely where the game shines. You'll have people to chat to, play with and in most cases chat is moderated by guild leaders who kick unruly members. It's worth another chance.

P.S. You can't jump in GW  Hehe

Originally posted by Quizzical

Pretty much everything is doable with just henchmen and heroes (AI characters that can be members of your party).  The main exceptions are some areas where henchmen aren't allowed.  Those areas don't really have any purpose except farming, though (no non-repeatable quests, no storyline, etc.).  And farming itself doesn't really have any purpose.  As I said, it's not a grinding game.

Hmm, I rather like to see you farm an obsidian armour with bots... or some hardmode playing.

It is true that most of the missions are easy, some of the later in the first campaign not mentioned (at least not if you just use bots) but GW is still harder than most other MMOs out there right now so it is all relativly speaking.

Originally posted by Rocktober

Just thought I'd throw this out, but anyone with Prophecies that wants to group give me a PM.  I made it to lvl 19 and Sanctum Cay with just NPCs, but now I'm pretty much stuck :/  I don't mind running older missions if you need to get up to speed or anything.

(Note: I figured I'd ask people here since you all seem to be rather level headed, as opposed to all the trash talking people in the cities..)

(Edit: Of course as soon as I post this I beat the Sanctum Cay mission.. So, anyone for the desert? Or bonuses?)

Well, give me a PM and I can give you a hand some day, have a few lvl 20s and did they whole first campaign, was a while ago of course so I might be a little rusty

Originally posted by ethion

Ha I logged into Guildwars since I hadn't in years to see what it might be like.  My first reaction is that the community is like 12 year olds.  I logged in two characters and tried to talk to people, said hello, got no response in the first area.  The second area had more people and one person called me a fag, people were jumping all over like idiots, and any chat going on was rude and crude.  All in all I was really turned off in about 30 minutes.  I never got anyone to respond in an inteligable fashion.  Also there isn't any real global or ooc type chat.  So the chat in town tends to be very quiet.

Was actually considering looking at guildwars as I finished up with eq2 but not any more....

I'll be heading back to vanguard.

Yes there are some 12 yr olds but not as many as you make it out to be. The community is alittle rough at times, but there is always someone willing to help. Either that or I've always been lucky. Or is it that you didn't log into GW's as you said. There is no jumping in GW's and the fact you insist the general chat is rude and crude... Don't you know chat has a filter unless you change it. Which since you didn't know that there was no jumping means you sure didn't know about the filter. Btw, how did you get to the towns you went to? Did you take the flight path? Oh and what towns where you in? First you said chat is rude and crude then you say there isn't much chat so it's very quiet. You are full of contridictions, but even in your last 2 sentences you can't keep it strait.