Featuring a level cap of 20, Guild Wars focuses on skill and strategy rather than grind and leveling up. Victory comes down to your particular character's build and equipment, and your tactical choices. This focus on skill makes Guild Wars fantastic for more casual gamers who couldn't justify $15 a month to play a game like World of Warcraft.
There are three Guild Wars campaign: Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall. Each can be playing online as a standalone game. Instead of registering a new account, you can add a Campaign's key to your existing Guild Wars account. This will allow you to move your existing characters around the Guild Wars world, and explore the new content and missions in the new campaign.
Eye of the North marks a change for Guild Wars, in that it requires you to own at least one Guild Wars campaign. The content is also firmly aimed at established players, who have progressed through existing campaigns. Eye of the North advances the story told in the original Prophecies Guild Wars campaign, and is set in unexplored areas of the continent of Tyria.
Unlike the other Guild Wars campaigns, there are no starter areas, and no training missions to introduce you to the game. There are 18 new multi-level dungeons, 150 new skills covering all 10 professions, 40 new armor sets, 10 new Heroes to aid you, as well as new Title Tracks, weapons, and items.
The new multi-level dungeons are a new feature in Guild Wars. Accepting a quest will allow you to explore these new dungeons, with specific enemies and tasks needing to be completed before you can progress to the next level.
Dungeons feature many high level enemies, and provide a wide range of unique item rewards, as well as the chance to boost your standing with new factions. Once a dungeon has been completed, you are able to take the quest again and repeat the dungeon, allowing the player to try new tactics, or to achieve rare unique items they may have missed the first time.
One of the main highlights of Eye of the North is the Hall of Monuments, which allows players to preserve armor sets, pets, Heroes, and Titles earned from playing the Guild Wars campaigns. These accomplishments will be carried forward in to Guild Wars 2, allowing players to build on their achievements and experiences in the original games.
With so much new content, and providing a link between the original Guild Wars campaigns and Guild Wars 2, Eye of the North has a lot to recommend it to existing players. The expansion can be purchased from within the game, instantly unlocking the new content for players.
Guild Wars 2 is expected to be in public beta in the second half of 2008. With over 4 million copies already sold, Guild Wars has established itself as a successful and popular online game.
