IGN's Best of 2005: Guild Wars
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Since Guild Wars straddles the line between online gaming and traditional RPGs, we're able to slip this one in here as well. What makes Guild Wars so great, in our opinion, is that it has the streamlined addictiveness of Diablo but with a large in-game community. It also looks darn good, and we love the instanced missions that place your character in the cinematic cutscenes, along with your party members. Guild Wars also manages to carve out an interesting and fairly involved story drawn from an original world. And combat, especially multiplayer combat, is a lot more than simply standing in one place, periodically swinging your weapon, and waiting for someone to die. Guild Wars employs a player energy pool that's shallow but regenerates quickly, establishing a tightrope walk sometimes as you try to balance energy usage and energy replenishment. No more health or mana potions, just pure combat. Also, the streaming client is an awesome technical achievement -- a tiny little set of files that download content on-the-fly, and darned quickly, too.
