Interested in winning money for playing the best fantasy-genre team PvP game ever?

[Zuranthium]

Hi there. If you love fantasy-genre MMOs, and specifically love combat and PvP, then you should most definitely be playing Guild Wars 1. The level of strategy and teamwork, and potential for unique character selection, surpasses that of any other MMO. You get diverse, yet defined roles in this game that people love (unlike Guild Wars 2, with it's lack of healers), and the possibilities for individual character templates and overall team composition are almost endless.

The highest form of PvP in Guild Wars 1 is Guild vs Guild battles, which places 8 players against 8 other players on the battle field (each team has a base on opposing sides of the map). Matches run for 28 minutes and the eventual goal is to kill the other team's Guild Lord inside their base.

Every month, on the 3rd Saturday of the month, there is a world-wide Guild vs Guild (GvG) tournament. The winning guild of the tournament receives $2,000. Details can be seen here - http://teamquitter.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=32589

Because Guild Wars does have a rather high learning curve, I (and some others) will personally help mentor people who'd like to start up. My entire goal with this is just to simply re-grow the community of Guild Wars 1, and get a broader (and deeper) amount of competition going. For the love of the game!

[Zuranthium]

Relevant documentary about the most high-profile Guild Wars tournament from years ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdJM0xsbHhs

[a_gnoll_pup]

daoc called, they want their best fantasy genre pvp title back

[Zuranthium]

daoc isn't nearly as good. Great for it's time, though.

[runlvlzero]

I would try DAoC again if I had a time machine.

[Bardalicious]

would play if I could ever remember GW1 login info lul

[Handpartytowel]

gw1 was great. i had a blast playing a ranger and then a cleric. gw2 was fucking awful.

[Kevynne]

What is guild wars

[Zuranthium]

Here's what the teams for a typical Guild vs Guild match look like:

http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mAT/2013/March/997/

2 frontline (Warrior or Dervish)
3 midline (Elementalist / Mesmer / Ranger / Necromancer / Paragon)
2 backline (Monk)
1 flagrunner (usually Ritualist)

*Frontliners do the highest damage, so they are often the main source of kill threat in a build.

*The midline provides all manner of possible abilities: damage assist, disruption, shutdown, enchantment removal, supportive defense, movement control.

*The backline, your Monks, provide protection abilities, healing, and condition and hex removal.

*Then you usually have one person in a build who is planned to run flag, which starts out in your base and needs to be brought out to the middle of the map and placed in the flagstand. Every 2 minutes that your team controls the flagstand, without the other team replacing it, you get a boost. Once your flag has been replaced, you need to go run a new one from your base, if you want to be able to boost. Flagrunners are usually Ritualists because they provide good defense that synergizes with Monks, which makes them ideal for both large fights and also defending your team's base on their own.

A "typical" GvG match has all 8 players going to fight at the center of the map, with each team's flagrunner going back to the base to get a flag as needed, and whoever wins the fight there pushes the other team back into their base and eventually kills the opposing Guild Lord.

However, it's also very common for teams to "split" characters off throughout the match, either to attack the enemy base or to go after someone running a flag. This is where the game gains an immense level of additional strategy. I've not yet mentioned the 10th class in the game, Assassins, because this character is usually used for splitting. Any character can split, and Assassins aren't even always specifically the best at it, but they are mostly used for that purpose.

Deaths in Guild Wars are usually extremely high consequence because characters only resurrect (with a penalty) every 2 minutes. Teams always bring addition resurrection abilities on in their team build, but these are limited and/or prone to be disrupted. Because of this constantly immense level of danger, the very flexible method of building all different kinds of characters and team setups, and the overwhelming necessity for teamwork and strategy, Guild Wars is by far the best live-action team PvP game ever.

[Zuranthium]

High-def recording of a GvG match, with good commentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpbmHx_2W8s

Might make it clearer what the gameplay is like.

[Kagatob]

Whenever anyone says "The best *insert words here*" it usually sucks. ;)

[Zuranthium]

What kind of retarded logic is that.

[Kagatob]

What kind of retarded logic is that.

lolmad

[Zuranthium]

Bump.

[this user was banned]

GW1 is a far cry from the "best" of anything to be honest. There is little variety within top end team builds that win because battles are so formulaic and boring. I've watched hundreds of top end guild battles back in the day and it all boils down to what the current meta is, based on what recent nerfs/buffs get thrown out by development.

There was a time when people would experiment with different builds which were deemed gimmicks like spike teams and it always devolved into the same boring party composition with some minor variations for "flavor" if that's what you like to call what bland tastes like.

Battles usually involved waiting on that clutch interrupt that would shut down an enemy healer and then someone would get spiked down. Yeah, sometimes there were splits which would be interesting at times, but in the end, same boring thing.

Whenever anyone says "The best *insert words here*" it usually sucks. ;)

For once I actually agree with him...

[Zuranthium]

GW1 is a far cry from the "best" of anything to be honest. There is little variety within top end team builds that win because battles are so formulaic and boring.

Completely untrue. I mean that has been the case sometimes, because of various game updates that needed to be fixed, but generally that is not how the game works. Spike builds (lots of different kinds), condition pressure, hex pressure, melee pressure, caster pressure, flagpush, shutdown-heavy, split (lots of different kinds), and "stonewall" are all viable most of the time.

[Shilver]

I used to run a top 500 GvG guild back in like 2010. GW1 easily has the best team PvP bar none. Too bad the scene it mostly dead outside of the mATs :(

[OMGWTF420]

go away zuranthium

[Gaffin Deeppockets]

this game waz fun back in the days

[Zuranthium]

Bump.

[Kagatob]

Nobody cares Krillin.

[Zuranthium]

Bump.

[Intrinsic]

As someone who played with top 10 teams in GW(Te before setting co-founding my own EU focused guild [Wi] with Nox, as well as guesting for iB/EW etc) i'm a bit biased i guess(plus i ended up being a PvP content/balance tester for them for 3.5 years, long story) ;p But GW1 for me is the most pure player skill driven game around. Why? because everyone had the same equipment/items/skills available to them and it was pure player skill and teamwork which won you games, not what phat lewt you had that is what made it the best in my eyes.
I did have one of our commented matches uploaded on gamerstube but they changed the site and screwed it somehow so need to reupload it. It was a commented vid done by the GWVersus site of my guilds 2-0 victory in the Season 2 playoffs over the reigning world champions The Last Pride[EvIL] who were the best guild ever hands down to play GW, a Korean team of course ;p
What is little know is that in scrim practice prior to that game vs the 2nd best Korean guild War Machine[WM] we Flawlessed them(zero deaths for our team) using a modified Bunny Thumper build(running an Assassin in place of a mes/nec) specifically for the match vs EvIL on this map, so we were just on fire that day. http://www.zenadsl5706.zen.co.uk/gw064%20-%20Wi%20vs%20WM%20-%20Flawless.jpg

DAoC was a different beast and for server wide realm wars it is still unbeaten to this day imo, our DAoC community is still alive and active 12 years on and once enemies on the battle field are now friends.

Edit: Uploaded the vid, fairly low res as it was from like 06/07 http://youtu.be/dKa3l-V0LgE . I mained Monk but on this map i played Mes/Ele, i'm the 5th one down the list of players on the left side of the screen.

[Zuranthium]

Awesome to hear from you! Hope to see you playing GW1 again (PM me?)

"GW1 for me is the most pure player skill driven game around." - Absolutely. It's my goal to get more people out there to understand this and experience it. Guild Wars 1 is an extremely important game, especially for the MMO genre.

Do you play the classic Emu DAoC, btw? I was thinking about trying it. I played the game back in the day, but never at a serious high level because I was too focused on other games. I'd like to see what I can get out of it and broaden my depth of knowledge with regards to the game, because I do know it was an important precursor to Guild Wars 1.

[Intrinsic]

As much as i still love GW1 and always will i just don't have the time for much anymore, a few hours a nights is what i get and that goes into EQ atm :)

I did play Uthgard yeah with out DAoC server community, had a 50 Bard and many alts. And yep many of the GW devs played DAoC which is what they hoped to achieve with GW2's WvW but on a larger scale.

[carli]

GW1 was amazing! It was my first PVP experience and I've been a pvp nerd ever since! (mostly GW1, WoW, SWTOR, Tera) Wish I could remember my info *shrug* I quit just before the first expansion came out so I'm sure I'm wayyyy too far behind now. Either way, good luck in the tourney whoever is joining. 2k$ is something to brag about for sure!