Cheap Guild Wars: Eye Of The North - Expansion Pack (Video Games) (Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Vista, Windows XP) Price

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Customer Reviews of Guild Wars: Eye Of The North - Expansion Pack

A great idea that wasn't playtested enough
I've been playing GW since shortly it came out and have bought every campaign and expansion and have been generally very happy with it. I wish I could say the same for Guild Wars: Eye of the North (GWEN). First off, let's start with the good things: <
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>1. Tons of eye-candy. Tons of attention was paid to making the dungeons et al. look amazing. There are gas traps that shoot out amazing fountains of poison, there are cogs and wheels in motion, etc. It is very well done in the graphics dept. <
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>2. The story line is really good. It ties in various factions from previous campaigns. <
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>3. Tons of new PvE skills. There are new Title tracks and skills to go with them (Norn, Dwarf, and Asura) with benefits for displaying the title (similar to Lightbringer track from Nightfall). There are also standard skills you can buy for PvP and PvE from a skill trainer as well, but by and large, the new skills are on the Title tracks, which also means they can't be used in PvP. <
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>Now for why I am disappointed in GWEN: <
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>1. Dungeons - These were touted to be oh-so-amazing things to explore. Well, they are in an entirally visual way. The problem that arises is that most dungeons are a pain in the rear. You basically have to meta for each specific dungeon and if you don't ahead of time, expect to finally reach the boss at the end of the dungeon after 2-3 hours fighting your way there and find out that you have no way of beating the boss, and will have to start all over. There are some simple puzzles in dungeons which I will say is a good thing, but they are childishly simple. There not even to the level of say Knights of the Old Republic series (whose hardest puzzle was a modified Towers of Hanoi). Another issue is the benefit/difficulty ratio - it just isn't worth the time to go through the dungeons (except when required to). On average, there is 7.5K xp and 1.25k gold for clearing out a 2-level dungeon (plus a guaranteed gold item or gem drop at the end). But be prepared to spend 2-3 hours earning it. Yes, you'll get tons of swag to sell and score some pts. for the various Title tracks, but you can do other things with a lot less hassle for the same, if not better, rewards. <
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> The dungeons just feel like they were thrown in without making sure they were not a NPE (negative playing experience (a playtesting term used to indicate an experience where the fun was pretty much sucked out of the game for a player)). <
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> Unfortunately, some dungeons are required to complete the story line, and one is very heinously a NPE. After spending quite some time to fight your way to the boss, you find out that he has a shield that requires you to run through fire to be able to drop explosive to bring down the shield (requires 3 runs). Problem is that the enemy can explode the explosives you are carrying, deals almost lethal damage (very lethal if you have any death penalty), and that he never misses under ordinary circumstances. Even if you bring down his shield, you have about 30 secs. to kill him before the shield goes back up and he starts healing. Then you have to try to bring his shield down again! My description just doesn't do justice to how much an NPE that dungeon is! Unfortunately, just about all dungeons are like that. <
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>2. Lack of universal (usable in both PvE and PvP) Elites - the new Elites are PvE only ones. This is a minor gripe but some new universal Elite skills would've been good. <
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>3. Polymock - this is a new side game that allows one to basically duel an NPC one on one and play as a different creature (skale, ice imp, etc.). Sounds neat, right? Problem is that you have to go sequentially against your opponents (you can't just go to the local Polymock NPC and play him; you have to fight your way to him), and those that you have to challenge always have better pieces (the creatures you can take the shape of come as playing pieces). The only way to get better pieces is to beat people in the Polymock series, random drop in a dungeon (only found after beating the boss of a dungeon), or the secondary market (i.e. buying it from someone (prices currently run around 60,000 for one piece)). Furthermore, once you actually play Polymock, you find out that you and your opponent are stuck on towers, and your opponent always has Area of Effect spells that he can't miss with. While there are people that can excel at it, most players find it generally a pain to do. Fortunately, it isn't required to complete the story-line. <
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>4. AI has been changed for heros/henches - In past, your heros and hechmen/women would continue to fight if you had to back off to heal yourself for a moment. Well, they've changed the AI so that if you move at all during combat, the AI interprets that as a call for retreat and your heros/henchmen will immediately stop fighting and break-off. It doesn't matter that all you were trying to do was get in to position to attack - your heros and hench will break off and form up behind you! <
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> So, to sum it all up: GWEN is artistically amazing and is generally fun, but feels that while the makers wanted to make the final chapter of GW 1 memorable, they forgot to playtest to make sure the fun of playing the game all-the-way-around exists. <
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Enjoyable Experience
I have enjoyed the Eye of the North expansion pack so far. Here are some positive and negatives I've seen about the expansion from playing it since the release. <
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>Positive: <
>- More content for the seasoned players <
>- More spells <
>- Reputation gains <
>- Hall of monuments (achievements transferred to Guild Wars 2 when released) <
>- New Armor set for each class <
>- Expanding questline, elite boss fighting (Notorious Monster kills) <
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>Negative: <
>- Heavily populated areas in Expansion parts (large server ping) <
>- Short quest line than actual campaign (casual players don't worry, it still is pretty lengthy when you take your time) <
>- No changes in PvP beyond new spells <
>- Confusing Hall of Monuments and Dungeon Exploration / Explanation <
>- Traveling to other towns is extremely hard, and lengthy. <
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>The biggest pet peeve I found is that it's easy to get lost in the content of the game. The main story line follows a linear pattern but early on, then splits into several different quests which then don't have markers to run to. It doesn't help that the explanation given in the quest log is difficult to understand, and sends you "South" or "North" to a city you have no idea where it is at. I want to follow the main story and do the quests later, but I feel like I'm being forced to do other things instead which I don't care about doing. <
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>The reputation grinds are a scary memento of how World of Warcraft handles "content" for the hardcore players. I don't enjoy grinding reputation. I don't have time to kill 10,000 enemies for someone to like me. I would suggest NCSoft to not go the way of their Lineage II folks or Blizzard entertainment and stray away from it. You're not fooling anyone when you call it reputation. Its just another way of leveling a character that is already level 20. <
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>Beyond those two big sticklers, I have enjoyed the content overall. The expansion dungeons are vast and very well done graphically. It felt like an epic adventure at times, and the difficulty bar was raised significanlty. Just crossing to a new area is a challenge in itself. I recommend this expansion to anyone with the original Guild Wars campaign. It wont knock your socks off with content, but it is a good addition to people looking for something fresh in this already vast game.

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"Expansion" at the regular price.
OK, it's just an expansion. As with most expansions the visual updates are stunning, but the story line is bereft of any length. A couple things to consider from the get-go on this one... First, the $40 price is only ten bucks less than a full-blown game and Eye of The North is about 20% in size, but there's no monthly fees like many other popular online MMO's. Second, for Guild Wars addicts out there, it's a must-have if for no other reason than to merely complete the set. <
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>Alright, since only seasoned Guild Wars players will be purchasing this game, here's some nitty-gritty... <
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>The promise of The Hall of Monuments is pretty lame. It's a not-so-cleverly disguised attempt at busy work. Here's what you can do there... <
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>Your armor: You can display ONLY complete Elite armor sets, not sets like the cool Kurzick or Luxon. Most of my favorite sets of armor are not invited to this party. Oh, and it's COMPLETE sets... so many times you'll have to go back and pick up the helmet or mask that many players do without. The animation of each set on the podium in the Hall is well done, but it's limited to only 5 at a time. Here's my constant question: Game designers have the power to create anything from nothing, why limit the display? <
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>Your achievements: This is really the only one that makes any sense, but on the flip side is visually the most disappointing. For any title track you've maxed, a little flag or trophy is displayed. The display is really unappealing, but at least the promise of keeping your titles has been fulfilled. Again, you can only display 5 at a time and with a dizzying array of new titles introduced with this expansion it's severely limited. Creative design has left the building on this one. <
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>Your Heroes: You can display Heroes you've acquired, but ONLY it you've upgraded their armor. Hmm... busy work again. Only a few players even bother to upgrade their hero armor and it's certainly a grind to do so. Level 20 pets can be displayed and that's a cool thing, but your /petname is not. Again, only 5 at a time. I mean really, it's a huge room, but it feels clunky and poorly thought out. <
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>Your weapons: Not the cool green weapons from the other games, only weapons from Eye of The North. Weird. My Gorrel's Staff isn't welcome. Again, forcing the player into busy work for the sake of being busy. <
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>Your Minipets: You can display the Minipets you acquire, but as soon as you do they become customized to that character and unusable on any other character you have in your account. So, if you're like me and keep all your minis in Xunlai storage to play with whenever you want it's a total bust. I understand that Arenanet doesn't want you to display a pet then go and sell it, but couldn't they have designed it to be customized to the account and not the character? VERY disappointing. <
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>Tapestries... One last busy work item. To display your achievements on 4 of the 5 walls in The Hall of Monuments, you need tapestries. 4 of them. They're only available as rewards for Primary Quests in Eye of The North. So, if you just want to go in with your 4th or 5th character simply display their achievements, think again. You'll have to grind through the game each time. I'm sure there will be Tapestry farmers out there selling them, but really. Why isn't the Hall account based? <
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>Other things... <
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>I heard some talk about the design of the building called Eye of The North being the largest building Arenanet has designed to date. OK, that's all it is, a large building. Of all the visuals in the game, The Eye of The North building is hands-down the most uninspired. It's simply a large interior with a brown floor and brown walls. Ugh. You can go to other places in the game and see burning hearths, varied topography, flags waving in the breeze... but as the "central hub" of this expansion it truly lacks imagination. Maybe it's because of the lowest-common-denominator demands of the programming, but I doubt it. Just look at places like Shing Jea Monastery or even Kamadan with it's sunlight direction all wrong casting a big shadow over the one place anyone would want to gather. Those places put this one to shame. Crikey! Ya'll could've thrown in a fireplace and and some pattern on the floor! A hasty piece of work if I ever saw one. <
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>The Asura... I think we all could tell from the introduction of the Asura mini-pet a couple months back that this whole Asura thing was going to be horribly out of place design-wise. Oh boy, it really is. And not only that, the dialog is extremely racist (or species-o-centric... whatever you might call it) and the Vekk's voice-over (the main character you have to live with the whole expansion.. sheesh) is terribly mismatched to the toon. My wife (who is Japanese and always complaining about the lack of professionalism in American animation voice acting) summed it up in one phrase, "What's with his voice?" The Asura are like a bunch of 12-year-old skate punks who have been uglied and turned into mean little farts. I can't stand them. If I'm going to use an Elementalist hero, I bring Zhed. <
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>New Armor... well not really. The tag line ballyhoos 40 new sets, but you have to break that down to 4 sets per profession and only 2 per gender. There's ultimately only 1 set of armor for your individual character because the second set is for folks who play a lot of PvP (which seems to be where the designers want us to go... more busy work... more on that in a second). The ONE set of armor is only offered after an incredibly long grind process involving leveling up a couple expansion-specific title tracks. It's not a simple process of completing the game or acquiring wealth and materials. I 'get' that it's meant to be a reward for the long-term players, but it shouldn't be advertised any other way. <
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>Other thing on the New Armor... ho-hum design. So, after the long and tedious grind, you finally get your brand, spanking new Norn Armor!... yawn. The box cover would lead you to believe that red-hot Amazon-esque Viking armor awaits you. That couldn't be further from the truth. Spectacularly uninspired design. I'm sure whoever worked on it, worked hard. I'm not taking anything away from that, but really... c'mon... WOW US! Most of it looks like old costume design from Little Big Man meets Johnny Mnemonic (note I didn't say Matrix... if it HAD been Matrix inspired, at least that would've been something interesting). More than once I've observed the sigh of "What gives?" concerning the new armor in the Chat Panel. <
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>PvP. This is where Arenanet wants you to go. It's the place where they have the most control on the play. It's the place where all of us who signed up with Guild Wars in the beginning because point-and-click games like Myst had seen their day bletch at. It's a place for young boys and single older men. There's mano-e-mano's, guild v. guild, random groups fighting... I can't really think of a online combination they haven't tried. The Eye of The North bring plenty with it, plus a bunch of mini-games for grinding points that PvP folks will love. So, is this a negative? For me, it's a whole part of the game I don't give a hang about. For others, it's the only place they like to go. If you're like me and yearn for a new generation of Zork or The Journeyman Project, you'll be very depressed over the direction Guild Wars is taking. <
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>Alrighty... a couple good things. <
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>Jora is a mighty sight to behold. Sadly out of place, but for all you red-blooded adolescent boys out there... she's your fantasy girl. At best your character will only come up to here waist and it's oddly disconcerting, but you can always see her in a battle and she very nicely designed (if you like your women 9 feet tall and dressed in very skimpy Princess Leia outfits). <
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>The Landscapes. This is where Guild Wars in general excels over all the rest and Eye of The North is no exception. Truly beautiful. Hats off to the team behind the gorgeous landscapes. I don't give a hang about dungeons... boring to me, but the return to snowy mountains is a welcome sight. And because the worlds are instanced just for you're party and not a world-wide persistent graphic where everyone gathers, it's allowed the designers to really kick the engine up a couple notches. I'm a bit worried about Guild Wars 2, as I've heard some discussion of going the other way, but we'll see. In the meantime, enjoy the scenery. <
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>The Charr. Coming back to the Charr storyline was a good idea. Short, but a good idea. I won't talk too much about it as that would be a spoiler to folks who haven't bought the game. I'll leave it with... Playing with a Charr hero: Good. Playing with an Asura: Not. <
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>At the end of the day, I hope Eye of The North is just the first of a couple expansions for the original Guild Wars. There's still much that can be done with this game before Arenanet abandons it completely in favor of Guild Wars 2. It's not the end-all I had hoped for, it's just OK. It's CLEARLY meant as a "something to keep them all busy while we're working on the next game" game. If you've got all three GW's, a whole bunch of Level 20 characters, don't mind grinding, and like PvP play (plus a couple seriously stupid mini-games like Polymock)... buy the expansion. If not, stick to the original Guild Wars Prophesies while it lasts.