Guild Wars is really neat. To succesfully complete the bigger quests, you are forced to group together with other players. This promotes a group feeling.
For example, in pre-sear Ascalon (before the invasion), to open the north gate, you need another player – one player needs to position himself in front of the gate while the other one goes to the top and pull the lever. It is timed to be impossible to pull the lever and run down to enter the gate. Clever !
A week ago I quested with a Greek guy whose LineAge 2 clan was preparing to move to Guild Wars – he was the advance party. Two days ago I played with a Dutchman, today with someone from Sweden. Diverse nationalities with divers ages ! The youngest I played with was 16, the oldest 30.
It’s fun virtually meeting and chatting to different people from different countries. And since you’re playing the game, you have the same interest, you can always talk about the game itself as a conversation breaker.
Most of the people I’ve met are nice, and in return I try to help out where I can, answering question on quests and dispensing advice, but of course there are some annoying people as well. Especially those that shout : SELLING AXE DMG 9-12 ! and repeating that shout every .34 seconds (they get around the excessive spamming rule by tacking on an exclamation mark every time).
But if you can’t stand them, just change your district or go do a quest. Chances are you won’t meet that particular person again. If worse comes to worst, add them to your ‘ignore’ list.
However, Guild Wars could do with some extra features for this area :
– you need to add your friends to a friends list by typing in the name; you can’t just right-click and select from a little menu : ‘add this person to my friend list’.
– they could use the same menu for ignoring people !
It IS functional, but it seems curiously unfinished. I suppose that gives them room for improvement, the game itself is swell.