History VideoGame / GuildWars

* BiggerBad: The presence of the Elder Dragons is hinted at in ''Eye of the North'' by the creation of the Nornbear and the awakening of the Destroyers.

** Actually fixed in a patch, adding repeatable quests that have enemies of a level close to one's own, allowing players to get the title without "DeathLeveling."

* ScamReligion: The White Mantle. While they seem to be good at first you find out they [[spoiler: practice HumanSacrifice]] and eventually you gain the ability to see their invisible "gods" who turn out to be [[spoiler: HumanoidAbominations called the mursaat]]

* BossOnlyLevel: The last mission in ''Factions'', "Imperial Sanctum",is just about killing BigBad Shiro Tagachi and nothing else

* AwesomeButImpractical: Meteor Shower, which hits for massive damage and knocks things down 3 times with a gap just long enough for them to stand back up, unfortunately it takes 5 seconds to cast, in [[PlayerVersusEnvironment PvE]] most enemies have probably already scattered or died by this point and in PvP you'll be lucky to get 4 seconds through casting before someone decides it's time to interrupt it. It is useful against monk-walls though.

* BoringButPractical: Several examples, one of the foremost is Warrior's Endurance[[note]]Gain 3 energy every time you hit with a melee attack[[/note]]. A very simple skill, and not flashy at all, but allows [[SpamAttack spamming]] high damage energy-based attacks. Even melee weapons outside the warrior profession can be effectively abused as the skill provides more than enough energy in a very reliable manner, while the attribute it's linked to provides additional armor penetration. This was so effective in PvP that it was [[{{Nerf}} quickly changed back to being a stance.]]

* CripplingOverspecialisation: Players may only equip eight skills at any one time, and when you start forming teams, there's a cap at eight characters per party. Without careful planning, it's easy to overspecialize. Therefore, one of the keys to successful play in both [[PlayerVersusEnvironment PvE]] and PvP is the careful balancing and combination of skills, and there's a [[http://www.gwpvx.com website]] dedicated to collecting and distributing builds of particular effectiveness for all the ''Guild Wars'' professions. On the other hand though, [[MasterOfNone under-specializing can be just as disastrous]].

** ''Guild Wars 2'' is similar, limiting [=PvP=] to specific areas and events. The addition of WvW in ''Guild Wars 2'' blends both, however, allowing large scale PvP battles in large open maps dedicated to the gamemode.

** The Guild vs Guild PvP mode is this trope.

** Most mission-outpost are now highly underpopulated compared with a few years ago. The introduction of the Zaishen quests, that daily designated a single mission, boss, area and pvp-battle for being worth an extra reward, was done to concentrate the remaining players so that forming a pick-up group becomes much easier.

** The 'War In Kryta' update added a character called Courier Falken who fights using brawling moves, including a unique move called [[VideoGame/FZero Falken Punch]]. And sometimes he sings this funny song: ''[[SpiderMan Delivery man, delivery man, does whatever a courier can. Transports packages, any size. Brushes off Mantle, just like flies. Oh yeah, here comes the delivery man.]]''

* SelfImposedChallenge: The game offers displayable-for-bragging-rights "titles" to those looking for HundredPercentCompletion, be it map exploration, [=PvP=], or merely guzzling flagons of virtual alcohol.
** At least one title were added to recognize this type of challenge. Many players refused to leave Pre-Searing Ascalon, and went so far as to pain-stakingly grind their way to level 20 in a zone where that is nigh impossible. For this, the developers introduced the "Legendary Defender of Ascalon" title.

''Guild Wars'' is an MMO produced by [=ArenaNet=], a splinter group formed off of Creator/BlizzardEntertainment, and published by the Korean [=MMO=] giant Creator/NCSoft. It has been both lauded and criticized for its notable and unique business plan, which is quite simple: It's an MMO that requires no monthly fee. Part of the reason is due to instancing, and part due to design. Anet has said (to paraphrase) that it's not aiming to be a ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' killer, but that it's happy being its own niche. Indeed, ''Guild Wars'' was largely an experiment to see if this business model could even succeed in the first place, which it undeniably has.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/c964998ed13f3fca640445f52c98b396.png]]

* OneSteveLimit: Originally played straight then averted: There were initially two [[{{Dracolich}} bone dragons]] named Rotscale: one as a level 21 boss in Sanctum Cay, the other as a level 30 bone dragon in Majesty's Rest who technically wasn't a boss despite his high level and proper name. They eventually changed the Sanctum Cay version to just be named [[ADogNamedDog "Bone Dragon"]], and made the Majesty's Rest version a lot more powerful (while still not technically a boss as the game defines the term, he has a massive 17700 hp, drops a unique item, and has a quest involving killing him.)

* ArtificialBrilliance / ArtificialStupidity: The AI sometimes makes pretty dumb decisions, like standing in the middle of an [=AoE=] (To be fair, they stopped doing this around Factions), interrupting skills that had too-short a recovery time to make it worth, not use their builds correctly, etc. The Henchmen get it worst and are barely used, especially when you could fill the entire party with heroes. To be fair, the henchmen's main shortcoming is that they all have poor builds, coupled with the fact that there have been little to no upgrades over the past six years. They ''can'' use the builds they ''do'' have rather well, it's just that most of them happen to have very poor/generic builds. The heroes on the other hand are able to dualclass, and there are some builds that the AI can use rather effectively so the player isn't constantly micromanaging. They actually do hear the player pinging and focus fire on the target they call out, something most players don't do.

* BonusDungeon: The Fissure of Woe, Sorrow's furnace, The Underworld, The Deep, Urgoz's Warren, the Domain of Anguish, and Slaver's Exile.

* CollectiveGroan: For example, in the cutscene preceding the "Venta Cemetery" mission in Nightfall.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Enemy mesmers have the ability to interrupt your party's spells with much more accuracy than any human player can possibly achieve. On the other hand your AI-controlled heroes also have the same ability so...

* DeathIsCheap: Monks and other professions carry resurrection spells, the real problem comes from death penalty which reduces your total HP/MP, thankfully there are items that can reduce or eliminate the penalty, not to mention that it is also reduced by gaining XP. In fact, the optional tutorial mission in ''Factions'' kills you automatically during the mission, to teach you about resurrection shrines and death penalty. If you're a Survivor candidate (trying to get to a certain number of XP without dying), however, death is ''not'' at all cheap, because even one death will stop your progress in that title track, forcing you to start gathering the required XP without dying anew.

** Guild Wars 2 averts this in favour of NoOneShouldSurviveThat: player characters can't be killed, only "[[YouCanBarelyStand downed]]" or, at worst, "[[NotQuiteDead defeated]]". Members of any class can revive defeated players, only costing them a little time. Or you can warp for a small fee and be revived as well.

** Actually, 2 platinum, but a bug allows you not to pay at all. Another quest in Nightfall requires you to pay off a pirate boss, but the same bug occurs here.

** Turai Ossa doesn't really count, however, being the (unnamed in Prophecies) Ghostly Hero around whom the 3 main missions in the Crystal Desert revolve.

** In ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' auto-attack doesn't exist anymore, but you set a skill to be used repeatedly. And you always have an auto-attack chain on each weapon that will act similarly to a basic attack.

* CatFolk: The Charr
* ChekhovsGun: The Tapestry Shred you can get from Gwen in Pre-Searing Ascalon

* ClingyJealousGirl: Cynn, just Cynn.
* CollectiveGroan: for example, in the cutscene preceding the "Venta Cemetery" mission in Nightfall.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Enemy mesmers have the ability to interrupt your party's spells with much more accuracy than any human player can possibly achieve, on the other hand your AI-controlled heroes also have the same ability so...

* ArabianNightsDays: Vabbi

* AncientAfrica: Nightfall takes place in the FantasyCounterpartCulture of this.

* CrapsackWorld: In the Tyrian continent of the first campaign, [[{{Arcadia}} Ascalon]] is [[spoiler: burnt to a crisp wasteland]], the Dwarf Kingdom is in being destroyed from within by civil war with the AlwaysChaoticEvil Stone Summit, Kryta is taken over by the [[ChurchMilitant White Mantle]] who [[spoiler: use human sacrifice and worship [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens the Mursaat]] ]], and the Kingdom of Orr was completely obliterated off-camera [[spoiler: by Grand Vizier Khiliborn (otherwise known as [[BigBad the Lich Lord]])]]. Cantha (outside of Kaineng City, at least) and Elona tone this back to more reasonable levels.
** Judging by what's been released about the storyline of Guild Wars 2, the ENTIRE place will pretty much be a CrapsackWorld after the rise of the [[spoiler: Elder Dragons.]]

* CripplingOverspecialisation: Players may only equip eight skills at any one time, and when you start forming teams, there's a cap at eight characters per party. Without careful planning, it's easy to overspecialize. Therefore, one of the keys to successful play in both [[PlayerVersusEnvironment PvE]] and PvP is the careful balancing and combination of skills, and there's a website, http://www.gwpvx.com, dedicated to collecting and distributing builds of particular effectiveness for all the ''Guild Wars'' professions. On the other hand though, [[MasterOfNone under-specializing can be just as disastrous]].
** Apparently you can't do CripplingOverspecialisation in GW2, since you have at least one healing skill, and five skills (read: half of your skill bar) can be changed willingly (though with a little cooldown).

** Ritualists can also summon minions. However, their Spirits, while they don't require corpses, asre stationary. Ritualists also have the Spawning Power attribute, which boosts the health of all summoned creatures. "Summoned Creatures" includes Necromancer minions, so a Ritualist can dabble in Necromancer-style minion mastery as well. With mixed success.
* MobWar: The war between the [[GangBangers Am Fah]] and the [[TheMafia Jade Brotherhood]] in Kaineng City.

Stylistically, it's very hard on physical realism, and exploring the world of Tyria for the sheer level of detail put into its architecture is rather breathtaking. As a sort of hybrid between the typical "Persistent World" MMO and a CRPG, the game dips its ice cream scoop of writing into both buckets.

Now has a [[Characters/GuildWars character sheet]], still under construction. Feel free to help.

A [[VideoGame/GuildWars2 sequel]] was released in August 2012.

** Ironically, although faction farming was popularised through Luxon vs Kurzick PVP battles, players quickly found more efficient ways to stockpile faction points through PvE content. It became a common adage that the enemy faction weren't your enemies at all: interaction with the opposite faction at the high-water point of faction farming was nonexistent, all of your rivals were on your own side.

** [[PacMan In one bonus mission you are practically a giant head inside a labyrinth that has to "eat" certain enemies while avoiding enemy ghosts. And did I mentioned that the action of "eating" a special type of enemy will give you the power to defeat the evil ghosts chasing you?]]

* OurGiantsAreBigger: They turn into {{bears|AreBadNews}}.