NCSoft, best known for its 3-milllion subscriber based Lineage, took me on a tour of 4 new games in an hour at E3. Well, we made it through 3, the fourth I had to come back for later. Don't they know I like to ask questions?

Guild Wars was new game for me before E3. I did what little research I could online - they've a website at GuildWars.com and there are some decent interviews floating around out there, but I found it hard to get a feel for what the game was about until I actually saw it.

Something they repeated regularly throughout the presentation was that this game was made to appeal to a broader audience. No numbers crunching; lore but not so deep that without it you can't play; a guild and PvP system that are completely voluntary. No one is forced to PK even in defense of your guild (although I'm not sure how your guild would feel about that).

We didn't go much into the world that existed because really, it was a backdrop for the game play. The point of Guild Wars is to log in and play. Period.

During character creation you pick your class, currently 3 classes have been announced - Warrior, Ranger and Necromancer. But, you're not locked into a set of skills with your class. Only a set of skills ASSOCIATED with your class. You gain more skills through both quests and experience, but in addition you can gain strategies. So, two rangers who took the exact same skill sets could still be wildly divergent because they chose different strategies. And there are hundreds of skills. It's not unheard of to be dual-profession either.

The nice thing about this is that even though one person who only plays a few hours a week as opposed to the person who plays a few hours per day will have the same number of skills. And at equal levels - they'll just be missing the extra strategies in which to use them. The emphasis is placed on the skill, the strategy is to keep the boring hack-and-slash at bay and give you better control at combat.

The leveling "treadmill" isn't quite the same in Guild Wars, I'm not sure they even remembered to add it. ALL characters earn about 1000 experience per hour. It's just that as you grow in level, so do the monsters in difficulty. But the available experience remains the same.

That's the other thing; the game isn't about "level". It's about questing and being part of a guild. Guilds are not a requirement, you're not forced to join and stick with it so you can be a solo player if that's what suits you and there will be quests designed around both the solo player and the player who has little time. But, Guild Wars will have arenas set up for PvP and GuildvGuild. You'll never be way layed in the wilderness - PvP is an option.

Questing (called in this game, missions) starts by going to an outpost to determine a party. And when you've found your party the decision-making begins and this is where Guild Wars gets very interesting. You may have hundreds of skills, but you only get to pick 8 when you go on a mission. So, your party needs to pick cooperatively or you may find yourself back at the outpost picking new skills.

Also, don't think that once you've completed a mission its over, each mission could have up to 3 different goals and you won't know until you start it. So, in the "Save the Girl" mission you may have to save her the first time, kill her captors the second, and get their and find she's a succubus the third....surprise!

They're also using "private realms" for missions. So no more quest jumping or griefing - you and 5 other parties could be on the same mission, but don't expect to see them there (or get their help). They're off in their own map of the mission.

When I asked about traveling through the land I found it very exciting. Once you've been somewhere, it's unlocked on your world map. You simply open your world map, click and you're there. No more endless running and running and running.

Content will be upgraded on a monthly basis through streaming, so there will be no down time. And at this time, they expect to do this with no monthly fee. Their belief is that if they can appeal to a broader fan base they won't need it.

They'll also produce the odd expansion from time to time but those will be purely optional. If you want to go on playing for free with your streamed updates, you can.

Developed on a P3 866 with a GeForce3 and not yet due out for a year, this game SHOULD have the broad accessibility their looking for.

I just can't wait to see more of it! Umm....there is more here, in our Image Gallery!