I played prophecies to around lvl14 when the game first released,. I took a hiatus and when I came back, I could no longer find the necessary groups required to progress in the game. I have been thinking about buying Factions, since Alliance Battles have caught my eye. However, will I need to buy Nightfall to either

A: Solo Factions' campaign with heroes due to a lack of PVE players

or

B: Have the necessary skills to be competent in Factions PVP?

Also, should I download and install Prophecies for the skills even if I dont care for my old toon?

Will my lvl 14 be able to hit the ground running at that level in Factions?

Thanks

you may want to hold off buying a campaign for now, since this september, Guild Wars Complete Collection will be coming out at a price a little more than 1 campaign. All 3 campaigns plus the expansion EOTN in one box! Its a real bargain!

the problem isnt really with the lack of players, but the large number of towns & outposts scattered across the 3 continents, and instanced gameplay that makes it seem like there are few player in hubs.

i would suggest that you join an active guild with an active alliance. Having Heroes help too to finish most missions, God knows ive vanquished and finished missions in hard mode doing Heroes/Hench. Bring a friend, ask him to bring his heroes with them and you can have great fun together.

Oh btw, alliance battle is great fun, my fave pvp type!

Nightfall has many great skills imo. Many NF skills are required for some great builds. EOTN has very powerful PVE-only skills which can greatly help finishing missions and vanquishing maps. I dunno where i will be without my Pain Inverter, Asura Summons, Ebon Vanguard Assasin , and until the recent update, Ursan Blessing.

I thought there already was a EOTN with the rest of the campaigns in it? Im sure I saw it last christmas, they had 2 different versions and I bought the cheap with only the new expansion, the other one cost twice as much (40 or 45 euros if I remeber right).

But, yes, heroes is enough to get you to 20 and beyond, but when you reach the desert the missions get really hard and forget the hard mode with heroes, that's tough enough with good players. I never really found it that hard to get a group but I havn't played since spring.

The first campaign is better than nightfall and a lot better than factions but they do have a play value even though the first one is a lot bigger and harder. EYTN is quite nice also.

Can't wait for GW2 with less instances, GW is the best programmed game I ever played (together with Diablo and Warcraft 3 but Jeff Strain programmed those games too). :)

Getting the complete collection (probably close to the price of 1 expansion) is really good advice.

Doing that will let you access all content and all skills and that is a great advantage even if you just want to play the pve content in GW. If you get into PvP having access to all skills/professions soon become a must and it will be a lot more expensive to buy the remaining expansions as stand alone packages.

It is actually possible to finish all campaigns "solo" with just heroes and henchmen in your party. However, most people find it a lot more fun playing with other humans and the first thing you should do is look for a fairly large guild/alliance with priorities that matches your own.

I am in a large alliance of likeminded grownup casuals and the activity really surprised me when I first joined. Actually I only have guild and alliance chat active and that is where all group forming, pleas for assistance and such is found. Getting a group together for any mission is usually something that takes max. 5 minutes.

While some mission outposts might seem deserted it does not mean that noone is doing those missions. It is just that guild/alliance teams often form in the guild hall and then maps to the mission and immediately enter without picking up any "outsiders".

There is a lot of nice guilds/alliances out there, my first suggestion is: Go out and find a good, stable, helpful guild that is part of a larger alliance. You dont need to buy expansions and such to do that and once you find the right guild you will even get lots of advice on what to spend money on

Since you only got Prophecies and will buy another game you won't have access to all skills since some also were introduced in Nightfall and Eye of the North. In lower forms of PvP such as RA, TA and AB not having access to all skills in the game will hardly prove fatal, but should you decide to proceed to the higher (and funnier) forms of PvP not having all skills may prove troublesome.

Since you'll most likely be playing PvE or lower forms of PvP in the beginning I would suggest you to only buy Factions, even though it's the most boring of the campaigns. Buying Factions solely for Alliance Battles isn't really a good idea considering how much more content you get in Nightfall and the fact that Factions isn't that great. Nightfall will provide you with heroes, the funniest campaign, best missions and so on while you in Factions will get the shortest campaign, quite boring missions and two classes that both are fairly flawed (Ritualist and Assassin).

My suggestions would be: reinstall your old Prophecies and see if you actually like the game; buy Nightfall and try it out; buy the all-campaign pack, even if you already got Prophecies. I would not suggest you to buy only Factions. But that's my personal opinion only.

Thank you for all the kind advice. However, I think that since I value A: Spending as little money as possible on Guild Wars and B: Getting to lvl 20 and good pvp quickly, I may just buy factions for like 20 bucks. I really dont have much interest in buying Nightfall, unless A: Heroes are REQUIRED to solo Factions  content if need be or B: Nightfall skills are REQUIRED to be somewhat competent in lower end PVP.

Originally posted by MMORPDEATH

Thank you for all the kind advice. However, I think that since I value A: Spending as little money as possible on Guild Wars and B: Getting to lvl 20 and good pvp quickly, I may just buy factions for like 20 bucks. I really dont have much interest in buying Nightfall, unless A: Heroes are REQUIRED to solo Factions  content if need be or B: Nightfall skills are REQUIRED to be somewhat competent in lower end PVP.

you'd bebetter off buying the PvP packs off the ingame store if you just want to pvp

I may do just that, however I wouldnt mind a short PVE campaign to become more comfortable with my toon. I guess that would negate the lack of Nightfall skills, so the only other problem is the soloability should the need arise(and after playing prophecies, I'm sure it will) of Factions.

You can pretty much solo anything with henchmen on normal mode to be honest, so no need to worry.

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Originally posted by Lydon
You can pretty much solo anything with henchmen on normal mode to be honest, so no need to worry.

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In some of the end-game missions you may find yourself having some minor problems but overall no challenge will ever arise (in normal mode) that's big enough to prove troublesome. Heroes do however add much more to the game since you can change builds for them yourself, and that really adds a lot.