chin.democ. wrote:I don't understand these MMORPG's, can someone tell me in a nutshell what you actually do?
well i can only speak for guildwars as it is the only MMORPG i have ever played.
You start out by making a charr lvl1. First you choose his/her primary profession (warrior, ranger, elemantalist, ritualist, dervish, assassin, paragon, necromancer, mesmer or monk). You can lvl this char thru earning xp points. You earn xp by killing monsters, fullfilling quests or doing missions which take you thru the storyline. The max lvl is 20 (140,600xp). By lowering the max lvl that much (compare max lvl in WoW is 80) you take away endless grinding on mobs etc.
Special about Guild Wars is that you are able to choose a second profession. Every prof is mixable, you can for instance make a W/E or Mo/Rt etc. The catch here is that not every profession synergizes as well. To cast spells, or use skills u need energy (a war and para are the exception more about it later).
Some professions have more energy than others (eles have the most, it can rise up to 90, but then again they have the most 'expensive' skills in the game, wars have the least, 20 base, + the lowest natural energy regeneration making a W/E a very strange and low profitable mix to make, at first!). As said before warriors and paragons are exceptions to the 'you need energy to use skills'. These two professions have acces to 'adrenal skills'. Whenever you deal, or take, physical damage you gain one strike of adrenaline, these can be used to power off special adrenaline attacks (other profs use spells etc, so no phys dam for them).
if you want to know more about the professions, how they work etc. i advise you visit
http://wiki.guildwars.com cause there is too much for me to right down here
Guild Wars is a heavily teambased game. You face the world in parties varying from 4 to 8 member (12 in special cases). As you can only bring 8 skills at a time, you realy need to look into the builds (set of 8 skills) of your team so you can optimize the effectivness and even not bring the same skill twice. Another important note is that builds are easily changed. Opposed to WoW where you have to invest in a skill tree, and you can only change it by paying money, in GW you can change secondary proffesions and attributes by a mouseclick. Again for more info about attributes etc see aforementioned link.
Maybe also important to note, the game actualy just starts at lvl 20. All of the more exciting, challenging missions and areas are at the very end of the game, or have nothing to do with the storyline (which you can finish btw). Once you have finished a campaign (there are three official ones, and one expansion) you can redo the whole thing but in Hard Mode. Hard Mode wields an extra dimension to the game. The AI you face is a lot tougher than in Normal Mode (they move 25% faster, flee out of AoE damage faster, have faster skill recharge and skill cast time, higher attribute points etc), and realy forces you to optimize your team. Whereas you could get away with less perfect builds and teams in NM, you will be punished severely when you try this in HM. You can also switch to NM and HM with a mouseclick.
if you are interested in the game, or want to know more just visit the link, everything you want to know is on that wiki.
The game is very cheap to buy (it cost me 15 euros a piece) and does not involve monthly fees
i don't know if this answered your question or not...