Guild Wars history

I hope this thread is in the right place.

I was browsing through some old screens of GW, back when it looked a lot more cartoony ah la WOW.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=93776
I've also downloaded videos of Gwen wrecking havoc in LA and massive dance parties happening as the BWE ended. I only started playing GW after it's official release and I've been wondering what GW was like pre-release.

Anyway the point of this thread is to compile information on the evolution of GW from it's infancy until it's release. I'd really appreciate it some information on how the whole concept started and how it used to be like with respect to gameplay, skills, professions, weapons, levelling, etc; both in PvP and PvE.

Reminisce away...

Here's some screenshot from first Preview event E3 4 Everyone in 2004



Notice 9th skill in first screenshot .. to bad we can't have a temporary 9th skill anymore.

..I can't find my screenshots of bone dragon and forgottens anymore

Whoa are you having skills from more than 2 professions there? I recognise Healing Signet, Breeze, Vital Blessing, Retribution, Frenzy?, Kinetic Armour?, Faintheartedness and Life Siphon. Could you have more than two professions then? I also recognise a Malaysian/Singaporean player in the 1st screen of yours, just from what he typed. :P

If only I had a penny for each time I needed a 9th skill slot....

hehe yeah the mesmer and the monks are from Singapore

the "frenzy" is the old icon for Barbs(or is it the same?) and the "kinetic Armor" one was the old weaken armor skill icon. The skill #3 is restore life =)

The first 2 screenshot were taken in the jungle preview map.. the only monster there were behemoth. The last one was taken northen of ascalon wall. (Ascalon was named Kylo)

At this time the Tomb of Primeval king was way up into north ascalon.


I found the map on http://gw.stratics.com

o.o id hate it back then, looks boring.... more boring than it already is cus they wont frigin update >

whoa...the graphics back then are...shockin O.o

Whats the skill right of Barbs?

You used to have these things called Skill Charms for each individual skill. You had to either equip them with a ring (learn them permenantly, but had to be one of your professions) or a skill necklace, which allowed you to temporarily learn a skill. This is how people got multiple profession's skills on their character. My old guildmate used to run his E/Mo with a pet and I always remember how funny I thought that was.

There's a lot of history behind this game. Concussion Shot used to be called Tongue Biter, which was unconditional and left he victim unable to even try to cast a spell. Hammer knockdown used to be ridiculously unbalanced (none of them made you lose all adrenaline, and the knockdown time was liek 4 or 5 seconds) the warrior skill Thrill of Victory used to be completely different. Before, if it was the killing attack on an enemy, it would heal you for 200 health. I always loved that skill, and was oh so sad to see it go :-(

There also used to be that occasionally glitched Snow Ettin in the Shiverpeaks that appeared as a friendly with a green name and everything. I remember people went nuts about it and wanted to know if they could tame it somehow. I also remember when they delayed the beta in December I believe to add in Pre-searing. I swear though, every Thursday night before the beta started, people went freaking nuts in the forums. The betas would always start a couple minutes late, and there would be one thread on guild-hall that had 700+ people viewing it, everyone posting random stuff to pass the time until they opened up beta...then everyone just flooded into the game. That was such a blast playing those beta weekends, and then going through 4 weeks of withdrawl from GW. I always used to do everything I had to do during the weekend ahead of time so I could play for the entire weekend.

Oh, and Furs used to be the rarest material to ever find. There never used to be res shrines in the EAs. It was like a mission, where if your party dies, they have to return to the last outpost. This was extremely fun and made journeys so much more epic. I remember spending hours trying to cross the Shiverpeaks via the Northern route. It's a chain of about 4 or 5 EAs, and if your party died in any of them you had to return to Yak's Bend. It took about 2 or 3 hours to do, and I remember the first time I actually got close, we were about 20 seconds away from the gate to the Gates of Kryta mission outpost, and a monster had laid about 30 traps that all exploded at once when we walked over them and we all died. I about had a heart attack!

The Riverside mission was the farming capital of the world. I remember seeing the first video of a Korean farming it with Amity and Zealot's Fire. I was so damn impressed to see someone killing 13 Justiciars at once. Everyone would also flip out about killing the Zealots, they gave the best drops in the game.

I could go on for hours, but I have to get back to my homework!

How come the Necromancer has Heal Signet?
Unless that's what the old signet of devotion looked like

The BWEs sounded amazing. I really wished I knew about them back then. Were they on every weekend?

anti: Those are some cool stories.. I'm assuming that Amity didn't use to get cancelled by Zealots. That'd be pretty cool.

Healing signet used to be on all professions. Like the Res sig and Signet of Capture.

Can you tell me how the skill worked?
I.e. what attribute was it aligned to seeing as it was for all professions.
If it was 'No Attribute' did it only heal for say '100' hp and could not be increased at all?

Just curious

The graphics of the old skillbar looked cooler, too bad they changed it .

I think its the old Putrid Explosion icon.

it's the old icon for weaken armor...

*ahhh* the good ol' times ...

The Betas were great but the anticipation was a killer. They would open the servers up right when I had a good 6 hours of work left. They were the slowest 6 hours to ever pass.

One of the servers, Ashford Abbey, had a glitch where you could leave through the fence instead of the portal. It took you to an instanced map with no monsters. It was just totally open to run around.

The BWE's absolutely rocked... It was pretty much a 72 hr GW fest once a month. I would call in sick to work and be at it all weekend long. There were lots of differences back then. I remember one BWE where they accidentally left a backdoor open into Dragon's Lair... (You gotta be aware that only part of the map was available to us during BWE's and many of the connecting spots were there but not active in the way they are now) Ascension wasn't implemented then and we had no access to the desert or lower shivers. They also would cross us up by making areas that are cake now REALLY tough... It was a very fun time. Even when Gwen flamed everyone in every town at the end of one BWE. (They had REALLY great endings to the BWE's to show off!) I am proud to say that most of the members in my guild I met in BWE's and they are still active.

Man.. I wish I played in the BWE's.. It sounds like it was more fun than Guild Wars is now!

They were great only played in two of them. The first one was when missions were 1st implemented.

The good old days - pets use to wander around and aggro anything (red or green passive creatures) with no control over them what so ever.

They were tweaking seemed to be hesitant about implementing the attribute refund system - The only concern was it would turn in to D2 skill tree (opps can't go back now).

There was no "pre" asclon. You were in the desert and had to walk through this little area to get to destroyed asclon.

I wish I had some of the older screen shots still.

The biggest thing I miss was the culture, you could shout looking for group to explore (no objective) and get in to a lot of fun pugs.

I messed out on the gem -> elite skill exchange, the old interface, and the final beta event with all the monsters showing up in the towns when they shut the final bwe down.

Of course a lot of people got ticked after (with final bwe only) creating a pvp charcter with all skills unlocked - there were testing balancing then turned the skill unlock system back on.

Almost forgot the "tone" of the begining of the game:

Current: your friends with high up guard, join armry, your special etc.

Orginal BWE Mission: King worried, need mass "bodies" army, any able body forced to join, due stuff then searing happens, with the tone of your nothing special just another grunt, one of some to live through it

If you lost the dual pre->post training the post missions was this is the price for failing with some stupid clean up mission in the ware house.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/27014676/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/27014830/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/27014885/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/27015097/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/27015141/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/27015222/
My contribution(s).