I spent far too long playing Guild Wars last night. My right eye is throbbing like someone hit it with a hammer, and I'm desperately behind on my posts. The upside is that I now have a pretty good sense of the game's basics.

Before I go into the intricate game mechanics that ArenaNet crafted for Guild Wars, I have to say that this is probably one of the most beautiful massively multiplayer games I've every played. The world is just so lush with scenery, animals and interactions. It really feels like you're playing a single player RPG a lot of the times.

Okay, enough high-minded chatter. Onto the gameplay nitty gritty, after the jump.

It's pretty interesting how they decided to handle player-versus-player and cooperative combat. The game uses the concept of mirror worlds better, and more frequently, than any game I've ever played or heard of before. Basically, mirrored worlds work by creating a perfect replica of the world for you to play in. And that can't be affected by the thousands of other players out there on the server.

This is used in most games nowadays, but usually just for missions. In Guild Wars, mirrored worlds are used with much more frequency and creativity. When you first start the game, everything but the towns are mirrors. So all of the exploration and adventuring you do is done with just you and your team.

But this changes with some missions. I don t want to spoil anything, but let's just say the world of Guild Wars is fantastically malleable. The storyline isn't just an interesting thread that keeps you coming back for more; it actually completely changes the world you are playing in, and I mean completely. As this happens, the game spawns new versions of the world that are mirrored but filled with everybody who has gotten that far through the game. The towns still seem to be the home base, with all players co-mingling, and the missions are still worlds unto themselves, but the line between them is very hazy.

The end result is that Guild Wars feels more like a game, rather than just a series of raids and returns to town. It's almost like playing Diablo—the missions are so integrated into the story line that you don't feel like you're leveling, you just feel like you're playing.

Unfortunately, if you don't make it past the intro of the game, you won't ever really see the game's full potential. And this intro is designed in such a way as to not feel like it's just some sort of training appendage, it feels like a full game. So a lot of gamers might get turned off by their initial Guild Wars experience.
I haven't played deep enough into the game to see all of the play areas, but it looks as if there are parts of the game that are player-versus-player, but still on the same server. You just travel to them and, once you are in that territory, you know you've got to watch your back. I love this idea.

The game does support another player-versus-player mode. When you first start the game, you can create a character solely for player-versus-player action. This character plays on a different server and starts off at level 20. The catch is that the character can only use the weapons and spells you've unlocked in the normal servers. So the more you adventure in the real game, the more badass your PVP only character can be.

The PVP-only mode seems to really just be a series of fights between groups of players in mirrored maps. They last until only one team is still standing. Sorta fun, but just sorta.

Guild Wars is filled with plenty of innovation. You can map travel, which means at any time you can pop open your map, click on any of the towns you've been to and instantly move there. This can be done anywhere, so once you finish a mission you can just pop back to town.
The game also supports a very robust skill system which allows you to learn from hundreds of skills, but you can only equip a handful at a time. You also have the ability to train in two professions, though once you select them you can't change.

Overall, I've got to say I'm fairly impressed. Of course I really liked World of Warcraft initially too, but now I never play it. Lets see how long it takes for me to get sick of GW. The over-under is, let's say, 2 months.

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