Hey man, glad to hear you're picking up the game. Mirawyn and I are more than happy to help you get acclimated - make sure to add 'Maid Mirawyn' and 'Paulus Secundus' to your friends list when you get your account created.
One of the great highlights of Guild Wars, in my opinion, is the Player vs Player (or more accurately, Team vs Team) play. Guild Wars is often regarded as having the best PvP environment of any online game. PvP play carries several advantages:
- You can create and use level 20 'PvP only' characters who have immediate access to all of the best skills, armor, etc. in the game (but you do have to 'unlock' these things first).
- As you play you will earn 'Balthazar Faction', which is what you spend to unlock armor, skills, etc. for PvP-only characters. You can even 'buy' elite skills, which is never possible with PvE characters.
- You can 'build' a competitive character much more quickly than is possible in PvE.
- Our guild has regular Tuesday and Friday night PvP events, usually starting at 10PM EST. Its a fun social and teamwork environment, especially if you have a headset and can join us on teamspeak.
There are disadvantages for PvP too:
- PvP is a dynamic and highly competitive environment, so it takes most players a lot of time to get fully acclimated.
- Aside from earning 'rank emotes' and faction you can use to buy stuff for PvP-only characters, there are few rewards for PvP play - in other words, you won't often earn cool stuff like you do in PvE. This is particularly frustrating when you go out for PvP and end up gaining little or no fame or faction - because you end up with nothing to show for a couple of hours or more of playtime.
- Teamwork has its disadvantages. Sometimes it takes a long time to put the team together, and sometimes there are people on the team who are lacking the experience or skills/equipment/whatever to do their part effectively.
If I haven't managed to scare you off, I hope you'll reserve a character spot for a PvP-only character. You could make an ele, which is one of the character types we use in most of our team builds, and not too hard to play either. Or a warrior. I'll be happy to guide you from there, just let me know if you decide to give it a try (you can always delete the PvP-only character if you don't like it).
Paul
