Guild Wars: Eye of the North for PC Reviews by Gamers

In Eye of the North, you won't find new starting areas and professions like in Factions and Nightfall. It's an add-on expansion strictly for level 20 players, offering loads of additional content. The big focus here is on PvE (player versus environment). Of the 150 new skills added to the game, only 100 are viable in PvP (player versus player), and that's pretty much it for that portion of the game. As a result, the PvP side of things remains largely unchanged, as players get no new modes or professions. This seems to follow the trend since Nightfall of ArenaNet putting more and more emphasis on PvE aspects. With Nightfall came heroes, customizable and controllable NPCs, which lent a certain Dungeons & Dragons flavor to solo adventuring. That's not a negative - many players love to quest by themselves and welcome the opportunity, which exemplifies the versatility of Guild Wars' design. Eye of the North expands the single-player element further, adding in 10 more heroes and providing a new narrative campaign which can be beaten almost entirely without human help. The main campaign, unfortunately, seemed to end rather quickly, and isn't particularly interesting. Introduced are the Norn and Asuran races who, along with the Dwarves and Ebon Vanguard forces, must marshal their strength for an assault against creatures known as Destroyers. You do get more interesting quest and dungeon mechanics than in the past. Oola's Lab (the story version) is an entertaining experience, filled with pseudo-puzzle elements. Then there's a stronghold raid in the Charr homelands where you manage catapults while protecting a battering ram. Examples such as this help to break the monotony of grinding and create the illusion you're doing something a little more involved and interesting, something to incite the adventuring spirit. While some of the missions benefit from mechanics like this, the story that ties everything together is riddled with cliché. Dialogue between characters is as brittle as it is predictable. The Dwarves thirst for combat. The Asurans are the haughty magical race. The Norn are honorable, solitary warriors. Most notable is the dynamic between Pyre Fierceshot, a Charr, and Gwen, an Ebon Vanguard with a sizable chip on her shoulder, something Prophecies veterans are sure to appreciate. Their dynamic, once established, never really develops into anything. Gwen is always suspicious of Pyre, and Pyre respects Gwen's anger and doesn't back down. Then there's Ogden Stonehealer (guess which profession he is), who incessantly berates Jora the Norn about needing an army to combat the Destroyers, while Jora insists one Norn is an army. This exact exchange happens on approximately three different occasions, and is close as anyone in Eye of the North comes to achieving a dimension of character. For the rest of it, allegiances are forged, honor between the races is upheld, and you're given a tale you've likely heard many times before. Guild Wars has always been good about presenting narrative elements like this with cutscenes and voiced characters. It lends a more credible, memorable aspect to the protagonists and villains when compared to cramped boxes of text in most MMOs and action-RPGs. Yet whatever is accomplished through the storytelling is tarnished by the stereotypical personalities spouting forgettable phrases. It would have also helped if the Destroyers, a race of subterranean creatures resembling insects after a magma-chugging contest, had any personality at all. As it stands, these things just live to attack. While they've been given interesting creature designs, they don't particularly stand out as fearsome or charismatic, just a faceless horde of seething, spiny monsters. What's there to do after the main mission? This expansion offers 18 dungeons, all of which take a number of hours to complete. Depending on the dungeon you can gain reputation points, amass crafting reagents, and grab a special item from the chest at the end. Then there's the general reputation grind, where you hunt mobs for hours on end in the zones outside towns. A little variation is thrown into the mix by giving you reputation bonuses every 25 kills, but overall it's still a grind. Completing primary and regional quest missions will give you reputation bonuses the first time through, as will turning in a completed Hero's Handbook, something which should be fully filled out by the time you finish the campaign. A Dungeon Handbook is also available for particularly intrepid players, which is slowly completed as dungeons are found and explored. Then you get the mini-games, which are an entertaining break from reputation grinding. The Norn have one-on-one brawling tournaments, the Dwarves a series of sorties where you're limited to brass knuckles and accompanying skills, and the Asura have polymock. The oddly named mini-game consists of picking three polymock pieces, basically monsters with specific skills, and challenging an NPC with just as many pieces to a fight. The goal is simply for your pieces to survive longer. It's not the most complicated game in the world, but it's certainly an appreciated break from repeatedly clearing entire zones of mobs.

And here's the differentiation between hardcore and casual players. Unlike the hardcore, casuals who managed to get a level 20 character, which is rather easy to do in any of the previous campaigns, will not be sticking around to max out their reputation levels. It's still possible to access one faction's armor, which only requires level five reputation and, after the main quest, zone-specific side-quests, and mini-game play, can be achieved for a single faction with minimal grinding. You'll need loads of money too, though, which may take a while longer. Considering this game is from ArenaNet, it's no surprise the armor sets look good. There's some extraordinary talent working in their art department, and it shows with the marvelous creature designs and animations, often stunning environmental vistas, and weapon and armor designs. Aesthetics aside, items in Guild Wars are still an odd affair, since many are mere cosmetic upgrades with minimal statistical difference. Those entrenched in the community won't care, however, as a powerful driving force in Guild Wars has always been vanity, and the rewards give you ample opportunity to show off. One odd new item, spectacles, lends a particularly strange air to your avatar, since the glasses have a distinctly modern appearance. On a character wearing elaborate fantastical armor, it just looks out of place, but no matter. Aside from all the new PvE content, Eye of the North is supposed to hook Guild Wars players into Guild Wars 2 through the Hall of Monuments, a sort of instanced trophy room. Special titles, armor sets, and other deeds are recorded and displayed here, and will give players access to special items in the sequel. For players obsessed with grabbing every armor set and special title in the game, this is certainly a much appreciated feature. As much as Eye of the North functions to extend Guild Wars' lifetime by adding in tons of new areas to explore, it also highlights some of the design limitations, mostly with regards to the reward system. To play any kind of game like this, it just seems as though you need more ways to congratulate the player. After the story campaign is finished, the possible rewards take a significant amount of time to grab, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. This is more or less an MMO, and requiring such extended play hours is part of the design. However, there really aren't many rewards to be obtained on the path to achieve that end goal armor set or title, at least compared to other games of this type. You get crafting reagents and the like, but ultimately your character and equipment will stay the same for what seems to be an overly long period of time. Of course anyone still playing the game at this point likely won't care, since you know this already.

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