Is Guild Wars fun?

So I am thinking about buying Guild Wars Factions or Nightfall but first I wanna know if they are fun to play cause I have heard of the 8 skill limit and this looks like a stand still spam skill game so if there are 8 skills to spam that doesn't do alot for the combat. So here is my question. What makes the combat in Guild Wars (Factions and Nightfall) fun?

Fun is a relative term. What I find fun, you might not. So, if I say GW is a fun game, it really means nothing to you. I'd suggest you try the trial first.

In any case, your skill bar only holds 8 skills at a time, but there are 100s of skills to choose from, and they are easily changed.

The fun comes from creating your build to suit an area, and running it well. In theory, at least. Once you've figured out the "best builds" (which will take you quite a while unless you just copy someone else's build), then fun comes from blowing stuff up and getting cool looking weapons and armor. There is very little "grind for x% more damage" type of progression in this game, though they have added a small amount.

Bottom line: fun is very subjective. You clearly have a lot of misconceptions about GW already, so without knowing what you're looking for it's next to impossible to give you a straight answer.

Also, the trial kinda blows. It's really not indicative of the game as a hole. "Spam skills" are generally pretty crappy.

Pretty much what Quaker said. But i still believe that Prophecies was much more enjoyable and fun than factions and nightfall. History is a bit better and you see the evolution between lands, which is nice....

Regarding the actual combat, there are few rpg-ish games with as good combat as gw has.
Your 8 skills are what defines your character; skill build has far more impact than character choice. Unlike most other games you dont have 1 spam skill and a few other skills with ungodly cool down either, instead your (or your allies) skills work in synergy to create a greater effect.
The game is silly cheap, buy it and try it.

I'm an RTS gamer myself. I don't play other MMOs for more than a few weeks/months because the fixed skillsets and grindy nature make me bored. Typical MMO endgame consists of grinding max gear. GW has no such thing. At best you grind for rare items that don't do anything other than "look pretty".

The prestige weapons/armor/minis they have in the HoM (Hall of monuments) calculator is not representative of the game. None of those are required.

GW was different, that's why I still bother to log on albeit the skills haven't changed much recently. Back in its heyday there were monthly skill updates.

Most MMO games are structured in that if you can't kill a mob at level 40 you can kill it at level 50 or 60. The player doesn't get stronger, the character does. Guild Wars is completely opposite, since the low level cap causes you to think things through rather than to just get higher level to stomp the mob you couldn't kill.

So in summary, yes Guild Wars is fun the first time through Normal mode and Hard mode and PvP is consistently fun due to the dependence on player skill rather than stats. After a few times you might get bored because you already have seen it all but you can make a new profession to see it from a different point of view.

Considering that in the past year they have transitioned from a full team to a "Live Team" consisting of 5 people, they have still managed to do two complete profession overhauls (mesmer and dervish) by changing almost ALL of the skills. There have been sporadic skill updates from the Live Team in the past year and although they are not monthly they are pretty close. After 6 years of being around there are only so many skill updates that actually need to be done. They've been focusing on transition (to GW2) related content instead.

Guild Wars is about PvP. If you like PvP try it out, If you don't like PvP check out other alternatives like Rift, Lord of The Rings Online, Final Fantasy, etc or even Shooters (Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc) and how I could I forget about World of Warcraft. To put it simply Guild Wars is dying, there are very few players in 70% of the outposts of the games so if you enjoy PvE you'll either be enjoying it with Heroes / Henchmen or you'll be finding a Guild that has people who are still playing through the campaigns and farming.

PvP as a whole is losing it's popularity too, Alliance Battles aren't very full anymore, Fort Aspenwood still has Leechers, Jade Quarry still has Mesmers, Rangers, Necromancers and Monks and Heroes Ascent / Guild Vs Guild are still made up of Balanced and various meta builds (dual warrior, triple warrior, dual ele, split, hex, condition, spike, etc).

However 12000 hours of Guild Wars since release and I'm still enjoying it even if I took an 8 - 9 month break to check out World of Warcraft last year, however I'm starting to become bored again and will probably be making the transition to Rift or World of Warcraft until Guild Wars 2 assuming nothing happens that's fun in the next few months of Updates to Guild Wars 1. (PvP Update / Changes were mentioned in that Video Interview).

Depending on whether you like cruelty to animals by beating a dead horse, or prefer to be blissfully ignorant frolicking among Pre-Searing Ascalon forever... GW is pretty fun for any newcomer!

Thank you all for your answers I am going to get this game. Should I get prophecies Nightfall or Factions (Factions territory war looks nice)

In my opinion, nightfall is better, I enjoyed the storyline much more than the other two campaigns, and also, you'll get heros, that are actually quite useful if you're a solitary player (yu can't get them in other campaigns). But wait for more opinions, or just buy the one that you think is the coolest.

I just bought a new player slot as my main acct doesn't have a mesmer. I own all 3 games and decided to start her in Nightfall because as Domador mentions; in Nightfall you can get heroes. As was also mentioned above, GW is dying and you will have a hard time getting a party of real people. I find Heroes to be better than the henchmen that all games offer. Another benefit of Nightfall is that you can potentially get a "ferry" to the docks which allows you to get max armor very early in the game. If you do get a GW game and enjoy it then run out and get Eye of the North expansion because it also has heroes. You can access this area at lvl 10 (you'll get there rapidly). They just modified the game so players can use 7 heroes because everyone knows that heroes > henchmen.

I think it's fun.

A couple things I like about GW combat which make it good:

1. Body-blocking. Put yourself on a corner, plant your feet, and keep the sea of red dots on the other side of you. You can physically prevent the bad guys from punching your healers in the face.

2. No gear-chasing power creep. Every max sword in the game will do 15-22 damage. Damage doesn't go up and up and up and up in a never-ending spiral. You won't do 5 damage at level 1 and 5,000 damage at level 20, because there's no "uber gear" progression.

How long is a piece of string? Guildwars is fun, like any other game if it's a favourite genre of yours and it has good replayability. The first is up to you to decide, and secondly, it's lasted this long so it must have something going for it.

I think of GW as a sort of "live action" puzzle on which I can work an hour on every day. I find it very entertaining. The game challenges you constantly to find good skills combinations, good team combinations, how to approach a quest or mission and so on.

The game is by no means "dead", don't listen to the naysayers (who I don't know why they stick around if that's how they feel...)

Personally I love the game as much for the story as the action. I would suggest, if you can afford it, looking into buying the entire package, Proph/Faction/Nightfall/Eye of the North.

The concept of having to pick just 8 skills, out of several hundred, that work well together and against your current foe is a very powerful incentive for me to play. While you can get stuck on builds that others have found work best they are by no means the only skill combinations that work and even those that don't work well can be fun to play at times.

So buy them all, start in Prophicies, start one character of each class and play until at least lvl 10. This will help you to find what class you like best and how all of them work together, that is important in the later portions of the game.

Forget everything WoW and alike have taught you about MMOs and expect GW to be nothing you've ever played. Then you'll love (or hate) this game.

Try the game for yourself, because this game has a unique game play and doesn't suit all audiences.

The game is as fun as you allow it to be. Only the original campaign has any "grindy" parts and there have been many updates to the game that allow people to find the game as easy or as difficult as they want.
If you like playing solo, Nightfall and EotN give you heroes (customizable AI teammates) to form full parties if you wish. If you like playing with others, joining a PvE focused guild can get your character along very fast.
Additionally many players enjoy helping new players and you should be able to progress at a very swift pace.

^well put

i like gw combat because its simple(imo)

More fun than RIFT, AION, and World of Warcraft combined.