Product DescriptionGuild Wars: Factions is a stand-alone adventure you can play independently or as part of the Guild Wars world. The stand-alone Guild Wars: Factions is the second campaign in ArenaNet's massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Explore an entire new continent, with a wide range of professions, skills, missions, and monsters. There are also new options for Cooperative and Player-versus-Player (PvP) play, and enhanced features for guilds. - Hundreds of new creatures, guild halls, skills and more
- Two new professions: the deadly Assassin and the necromantic Ritualist
- A whole new continent, Cantha, either connects to the lands of Tyria or stands on its own
- Guilds band together into alliances to gain control of towns and access exclusive Alliance Missions
- New game types include missions with ranked scoring and large-scale Alliance vs. Alliance battles
Customer ReviewsReviewed on 2008-07-01 
gw factions
Factions is a good game as an add on to the orginall guild wars group. these moduals can be ran with others or as a stand alone . factions should not be your first on though start with the origanl proficies or nightfall first then add factions for complete enjoyment |  | Reviewed on 2008-05-28 
Expanding the Guild Wars experience
Guild Wars: Factions is the second Guild Wars campaign, and adds the continent of Cantha on a separate map from the original (Prophecies) campaign. The storyline is new, with only minor connections to Prophecies, and the areas and NPCs have a distinctly oriental appearance to them. Factions adds new PVP elements to the Guild Wars experience, new skills and classes, and faction allegiance elements.
On the PVE side, Factions adds a new campaign and two new classes- the ritualist and the assassin. In general, assassins are very strong vs. single targets- similar to rogues in World of Warcraft- but are not cut out to tank or to do massive area damage. Ritualists are one of the more versatile classes in the game due to their selection of spirits and spells, and can make good healers or damage dealers. Of special note, they have many skills that either create or assist them while carrying items, which means that with certain builds you can actually do fine with no weapons. This is certainly the only class for which that holds true. You can often find henchmen of these classes available, which is a nice touch.
You start characters at a relatively easy pace on Shing Jea island, and by the time you leave there you will probably be around level 15. Leveling characters off the island is a very rapid process, as most quests give upwards of 3,000 experience. In fact, the Factions mainland is by far the fastest means of leveling characters in any of the Guild Wars campaigns. If you own other campaigns, you can take your characters directly to the mainland, and your Factions characters can enter other campaigns once they reach it. Note here that Factions does not, in itself, support heroes. If you want heroes, you'll need to get either Nightfall or Eye of the North (highly recommended, as henchmen in general are quite flaky teammates). Once you do, there is only one hero available in Factions itself- the assassin Zenmai- so you'll have to travel to the other campaigns to recruit the others.
New skills in factions include a lot of unique- some quite useful- regular skills, plus a handful of 'cloned' skills that are identical to existing Prophecies skills, and of course some new elite skills. Some of the elite skills are available in Eye of the North, and in some cases are substantially easier to acquire in that campaign. Though at first one might think the cloned skills are useless, they can actually be quite useful if you really like the skill in question. This is because they don't share cooldowns, enabling you to essentially use the same skill twice in a row. The most new skills are, naturally, for the assassin and ritualist. However, since you can take those classes as secondary professions, it's likely you'll find many of these that will be useful for other characters. In particular, assassin skills tend to be useful in PVP, and ritualist skills can make some very difficult PVE encounters a joke.
The Factions campaign is very standard Guild Wars fare, with one major difference from the prior Prophecies campaign. That is, you can't complete missions out of order- you are physically barred from proceeding to new areas until you pass the requisite missions. This is good for the story flow, but it can be frustrating for those that love to take shortcuts. The campaign story is about what you would expect- nothing that will knock your socks off, but not bad either. Some of the missions offer departures from the norm, such as a few that can involve two separate parties of 8 players. In practice, however, these tend to run very similar to standard Prophecies-style missions. For example, there rarely is another player waiting to do those two-party ones, so you usually just end up with a ton of henchmen. In most cases, you achieve the mission bonus by simply finishing under a certain time, not by doing special tasks as in Prophecies or Nightfall. Generally, the areas are quite well done, and you'll see a lot of new enemies and settings. Even the henchmen are quite unique, including such oddities as giant trained necromancer rats and a ranger that has a pet crab. This is generally a good thing, but there is one major point of irritation: different outposts have different henchmen, so often when you arrive in another town you'll lose part of your party and have to replace them. Also, there's a few outposts that have highly impractical henchmen, including at least one where the only healers available are mediocre at best. I suppose this is the price one pays for variety, which is probably why Nightfall and Eye did away with it. Completing various stages in the campaign allows you access to new items and armor, as well. Some of these armors use materials tied into faction (more on that later) and most of them are quite unique in appearance.
PVP is supposed to be one of the main enhanced aspects in this expansion, and to some degree it is indeed better. There is one new PVP mode in Factions: Alliance Battles (AB). In this, you form a group of 4 and enter battle alongside 2 other groups, either fighting for the Kurzick or Luxon sides. It is a very straightforward game of domination, with only a few minor features like resurrection orbs to set it apart from any other domination mode in the scores of multiplay games out there. There are 5 AB maps, and only one of them is truly 'fair.' The others either slightly or strongly favor one side, and are determined by the state of the territorial border between the Kurzicks and Luxons. Thus, if the Luxons control most of the territory, the maps will favor the Kurzicks, and vice versa. In theory this sounds like a cool idea- it encourages the sides to push each other for territory, since having your favorite outposts in enemy hands is inconvenient (for one, resurrection shrines near them won't work unless you bribe the priests). It also means everyone will get a chance to win. In practice, it makes Alliance Battles a really boring wait. The problem is that people KNOW that when their side has most of the territory, the map will heavily favor the enemy. And let's face it, nobody likes to lose an endless string of battles in a row. The fact that you have no idea who is going to be in the other two teams in your match doesn't help, since even the best 4-man party isn't going to be able to do much with 8 supporting nimrods or AFK'ers.
Additionally, there are static PVP missions- Fort Aspenwood and the Jade Quarry- in which individuals join an 8v8 scenario with more wrinkles than simple domination or deathmatch. These are generally quite fun, but also tend to run a lot longer than AB and- especially in the case of Jade Quarry- have very few participants in comparison. For those seeking faction, you can also run competitive missions, which reward you based on your score, and repeatable quests. The latter are by far the fastest way to earn faction, but due to their very nature are also the most boring. The main advantage of these non-PVP faction farming methods is that you don't have to wait in a queue, and you can easily do any of them solo.
To facilitate the factions style of competition, guilds can form alliances with other guilds of the same allegiance (Kurzick or Luxon). Joining such a guild allows you to contribute faction to your alliance, which in turn allows your alliance to compete for 'ownership' of outposts. The benefits of ownership are largely simple prestige, but also help determine the border between the factions. Contributing faction to your alliance grants double points for the Kurzick/Luxon title track, which affects the power of Kurzick/Luxon PVE-only skills. These skills are very powerful- at higher title track ranks, clearly overpowered- and (unlike most other titles) progress in the title track is shared across all characters in your account. You can also spend faction to acquire the skills themselves, or to buy materials for Kurzick or Luxon armor (two looks for each).
Factions is, generally speaking, a good game. For newcomers to Guild Wars, I wouldn't recommend it above the others, but it makes a good expansion for veteran players. In particular, those who want a bit more PVP in the game will like what Factions offers, though I should caution that it's still a long way from true 'world PVP.' The campaign is decent, particularly if you like to level up characters quickly, and has some nice extras and rewards. Additionally, the two new classes are great, and are probably worth getting the game for just by themselves. | | Reviewed on 2008-05-08
Review of Guild Wars: Factions
This game is awesome. I suggest you start out with a Warrior/assassin. It's so much fun!!! | | Reviewed on 2008-05-02
Decent addon to the Guild Wars franchise
This is a good expansion to the Guild Wars experience. Along with a whole new continent to explore, you also get 2 new character types to use...the ritualist and the assassin. They key gameplay difference between this a the original Guild Wars is that you level MUCH quicker in this game. You can max out in several hours of playing time. This is because all of the missions and quests are much more difficult that in Prophecies and you will encounter many more high-level enemies in the beginning of the game. Another cool feature is that you can carry Prophecies characters into the world and Factions characters into Prophecies once you reach a certain point in the game.
This is also a standalone game. It works well in conjunction with Prophecies or totally on it's own. If you liked the original Guild Wars game, you will love this one. | | Reviewed on 2008-04-28
Guild Wars Rocks
This is arguably the best game of the Guild Wars series. Not only does it have great graphics like all the other games, the storyline is unique and it takes very surprising, unexpected turns...kinda like in a good book. The new content in this game is amazing, and the end-game gear is awesome. | |
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