Guild Wars Gets Harder...Literally

Last week, one of the biggest MMO's got a lot more difficult, and at the same time players are getting richer and gaining experience. It is a win-win as the current population of Guild Wars needed something to do while awaiting the upcoming winter expansion: Guild Wars: Eye of the North.

The first big change is the addition of the Hard Mode, and the emphasis is on hard. Every zone and mission in the game has been given this option. Mobs are higher level and use more skills, including elites. They cast faster, coordinate spikes better, and drop better loot and more gold then before. The best part is you always have the choice of Normal or Hard Mode before entering a zone or mission.

It gets better. If you clear a zone of all mobs, it is considered 'vanquished' and you receive gold and experience points (xp) based on how much stuff you killed. Obviously, the bigger the zone the more of both of those you get. And while in Hard Mode, you receive double xp on kills. Henchmen are also now level 20 and got boosts in armor and weapons in hard mode. In missions, completing them in Hard Mode means more xp and gold, as well as skill points.

The xp bonus also applies to hard mode in pvp, but that is the only benefit available in that playstyle.

But make no mistake about it, hard means hard. The newbie island mission of Zen Daishen, for instance, something you could solo in normal mode is much more difficult now. The Afflicted rangers slammed us with a massive ranger spike thirty seconds into the mission, and much more efficiently then any Halls group running the 3-2-1 spike build.

To test out just how hard this was, a group of me and my fellow guild mates did the Dragon's Lair mission. Crystal Spiders were stacking us with shatter enchants, rendering our monks useless and loads of damage to everyone. Glint was a little tougher but wasn't too much higher that beast could go. We completed it, plus bonus, but it took a lot longer.