My ranger uses a variant of the Barrage Build, filled with plenty of interrupts and buffs.

Community Stickies Compendium 2.0 -> http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/lets_play_guild_wars_gog :)

Took on an ele as my main char on Prophecies, level 6 so far.

Anyway, there are a few things I'm curious about, is it just me or everyone:

1. I usually miss the first spell on a mob, due to it's movement.
2. In PVP (Snowball fight, in my case) enemies easily dodge my spells by just moving around, yet when I try to do that, they still hit me successfully.
3. I barely see my ping button green, I've never had problems with pings in any MMO's, yet here - I seem to always be orange, sometimes even red. Very rarely green and only for a minute or so.
4. When going to a new area it starts downloading. It downloads 4x times slower than my usual download speed is, and it's never constant, always jumping from lowest to the highest, which is still 4x slower than my usual.

As far as dodging by movement goes, that's something you'll learn how to deal with as you play. Though you could be having trouble with it due to your high latency.

Downloading the game completely could help with that, as it would ensure there's no data streaming in the background. It would also help with loading times. To force the game to fully download, you have to start it with the -image parameter. To do that, just open your shortcut properties and add -image to the end of the "Target" field. Once the game is fully downloaded, you'll have to remove the -image parameter to actually start the game, else it'll just detect that it's already fully downloaded and close automatically.

I haven't had any latency problem in GW recently, but I'm in North-America, playing on the North-American servers. You could try switching regions, to see if it helps. (To switch regions, just use the district menu when you're in a town/outpost. Should be in the top-left corner. Last option should allow you to switch regions)

So as long as I don't download the full HUGE game trough that -image command, download will keep rolling around in the background, clogging up my connection while playing?

Damn. Thanks for the answer, though. Are you playing GW currently?

I'm not playing much these days, currently busy with my huge backlog and some new games. I do log in from time to time though, and will probably do a few wintersday activities and participate in the main event next week. Like Supercoolandrew wrote earlier, we have a GOG guild, but it's not very active right now. Still, there's 3-4 members that log in every few days, so if you want to join up, just PM me or Andrew your IGN, and we'll add you. If you want to try and find a more active guild, that's fine too.

Some spells take enemy movement into account, some don't. Flare (which is probably your standard attack spell in the beginning) doesn't. You can start the fight with a wand shot (which should hit) followed by a spell (which shoulf hot an enemy that's now approaching you).

I rarely do PvP, but yeah, it may be experience related. Or they are using sweet (which makes one faster), but IIRC they don't work in PvP.

Servers are probably at their limit right now. During Christmas, many people pick the game up again to get certain quests and items that are only available during the holidays.

Same thing, I guess. You can download _all_ the files that you don't have by making a shortcut to the game's exe file and entering this in the target line:

"F:\Games\GUILD WARS\Gw.exe" -image

Of course, replace the F:\Games\ with your installation path. Clicking on this shortcut will download everything from the server that you don't have already, and then close (it won't start the actual game, so don't wonder). Let it run while you're away for a while (or sleeping).

Yes, Flare is my standard spell right now, but I manage to miss with it due to monster's movement.

pretty nice choice, especially since Elementalist is going to be buffed during the next major patch. Prophecy has a pretty slow pace, so it will take a while for you to be able get far enough into the storyline to gain access to other campaigns. However, slow pace makes the learning curve more gentle than other campaign, and they give you most of the skllls instead of you having to purchase them yourself from the skill trainers.

About dodging, some projectiles are easier dodge than others due to the difference in movement speed, and I usually find more luck when trying to run sideways than trying to move up and down. I generally use my mouse when trying to dodge projectiles, though I'm not that experienced in PvP and that might be a bad idea when playing PvP. Being blinded also reduced the accuracy of your snowballs greatly, and I think necros get access to skill that blind in snowball fights.

In terms of Ping and download speed, I have the exact same problem, and I assume that the server distance is the reason for the download speed.

If you want to join the GoG guild started a while ago, you can send me your ign and I can send you an invite for the guild.

Every spell with description saying about launching a projectile can be dodged.

Yeah, dunno how I could have missed that since I was using necro hero through most of last week to farm snowball dominance...

A good place to practice dodging projectiles is in the dragon arena, which is available during the Canthan new year and the Dragon Festival. Like snowball fights, it's a festival only pvp arena, and it can be summarized as "GW's take on dodgeball". Main attack skill is a projectile with a relatively long casting animation and it's the only ranged attack skill. You also get a speed boost skill, so you're mostly just dodging projectiles while trying to hit the enemies with your projectiles.

Damn, got the need to roll another class. I hate when this happens.

Reading the comments and responses - thank you thebum, Psyringe, Thunderstone, Andrew etc etc - I have come to think I have been quite unfair to Guild Wars in assimilating it with standard MMOs with people running around and killing other gamers for personal trophy collection.

Any internet dependency including DRM, Steam and so forth just gets that internal bigot aroused in me, lol.

Guild Wars might not be my next game purchase but I would not say "never" now. Party based game is certainly gameplay I find most enjoyable, and having real, individual style, flair and collaboration to each party member is probably great fun at best.

Appreciate the insights in all the posts, and you go, OP, Guild Wars, yea! :-)

I tend to prefer roguish type characters but I suppose point of sharing the gaming experience is to find someone who loves playing spell casters or tankish types, right? Look fwd to hearing how your charcter build up was.