I bought, played and adored playing Prophecies. Guildwars delivered with it's debut. It was good, still is good.
I did not buy into factions.
I know people that did. Some people enjoyed it. But most people look at Factions compared to Prophecies and it's obvious that you just paid the
same price for
less game on the 2nd go. That totally, totally sucks. A new contient, new missions, new characters were a blip. All over in a day. Most people finished Factions in a single day that I know anticipated it. Sure, you can do that with Prophecies as well, but it took time to learn how to do it. Factions seems like it was meant to just get people happy fast, and let them down even faster.
1 - Lots of money in Factions. Prophecies-only players have no clue how many plat Factions players work up just doing those missions. It's ridiculous compared to our zero gold questing of before (which I prefer... anyways).
2 - Lots of crazy items in Factions. All the new skins. All the big bosses. All thsoe crazy uniques. Factions broke the old market on things like Dye and Runes, which only came from real actual work. Factions instead, replaced it with a flooded market of endless uniques which are so easily obtained that you practically run it just for them and don't care about playing the story, whatever this is to it.
3 - Factions introduced some of the worst things we complain about. Double skill builds. Before, when we had skill problems being too powerful, they were nerfed and that was that. This time, A.net doesn't seem to realise that having the same skills with different names doesn't balance a game. It unbalances it completely. That's the problem with faction skills, which are the same as prophecies skills, which are only obtainable by people who bought
both games. This is a pathetic market ploy and they should create
new skills instead. The dreaded touch skills are a great case in point. Allowing that kind of skill, which is perfect in all ways, to be used multiple times without having to use a very expensive and cool down echo skill, is the same thing as having a magic the gathering deck with 20 moutains lands cards and 40 lighting bolts cards. That's factions for you. Ruined the aspect of PVP. There are plenty of guilds that avoid the silly dual-skill-touch gimmick and I have mad respect for people like that who have some ounce of reason for playing this game other than "clicking."
4 - Too much, too fast. Too short of a game. Huge let down in my opinion. I like the efforts of new characters, but I'm pretty dissappointed with the Ritualist and Assassin. They both have their strong points, and uses, but they're hardly begging for everyone to be played. This is expected,
if it were an expansion but Factions isn't an explantion. It's a
stand alone game and it shouldn't play and look and feel like a simple
patch update from Prophecies. Factions is to Prophecies as Lord of Destruction is to Diablo II. The difference is, Diablo II didn't promise a new game. It just offered an expansion. Guildwars didn't do that. We got "Chapter II" but really, it's just "Chapter I, B."
Now, A.net already knows all this. It's obvious. They messed up with a small PvE game that Factions is, ruined a huge portion of their market from playing there, and realised that they need more than just 13 little missions and fancy skinned weapons to get people to buy and play.
It looks like A.net is at least
trying this time around with Nightfalls.
I really like the new characters. They have lots of fun new stuff. Not just old stuff tweaked to look new. And I hope, hope, hope that Chapter III doesn't just give us a
third freaking touch skill called "Gotcha! LOL."
Currently, I want to buy Nightfalls.
The larger appeal to PVE is what I want.
I can PVP no matter what game I have.
But I can only PVE over and over if it's new.
I want new.
Do not screw around with dual skills and these crappy market ploy skill crossovers A.net. Do not. You will lose customers and become Battle.net!
** In short, keep an eye out. If you liked Prophecies you may just have something fun again with Nightfalls. But don't hold your breath.
