For those of you that don't know the game, Guild Wars is an online multiplayer fantasy RPG that was first released in 2005.  It has many gameplay similarities to MMOs like Everquest or World of Warcraft but also many differences that set it apart from them.  For one thing, there is no subscription fee whatsoever.

I first played Guild Wars back when it was new and shiny.  Recently I've reinstalled the game so that I could revisit the world and play it some more.  I found to my dismay that all of my old characters' details such as hair and skin colour had been changed.  Perhaps NCsoft had some problems a while back and lost a lot of data?

Either way it didn't annoy me for very long.  I never had a very strong connection to any of my Guild Wars characters, and I wanted to make a new character as well.

I was quickly back into the game in control of a a sprightly Assassin (who turned out to be a midget compared to Dae's new Ranger).  I always found the game to be quite beautiful and I think it's aged quite well.  The polygon count and texture size may seem a little crude compared to newer games, but there's no denying that the game is very colourful and the world has a lot of beautiful detail.

I really love the Guild Wars skill system.  Of late I've been putting a lot of thought into what I like and dislike about fantasy games' skill systems, and the design of Guild Wars really stands out.  It's a real pleasure to collect skills and put together your perfect skill set.

Guild Wars 2 is coming up fast and I really hope the sequel can improve upon the original.