Guild Wars. Running: A lost art

Back in the day, the only campaign of Guild Wars was Prophecies. It was the first and only component of the GW universe and both developers and players had not completely found what GW was destined to be nor realized what exactly they would do with it. Pardon me if that makes no sense, I often tend not to make sense to people who are not me. Please bear with me for a moment. This whole thing has been a build up to, well, just take a look at the title of this post if you have not already. Chances are you have, did you take a second look? I probably would have, so as to make sure I didn't miss something. No, the title really is that short. And by short I mean it is longer than most of the other ones (titles) but still not as long as your typical sentence. Certainly not as long as this, but Grenth knows this should have ended a bit ago. Anyways, without further ado..,


Running: A Lost Art.

The land of Tyria is a vast open one. There are many regions, such as Ascalon, Kryta, The Magumma Jungle, The Crystal Desert, The Fire Islands, and The Shiverpeak Mountains.
Traveling from place to place is rather easy.. whether it be outpost to outpost or region to region. Now, travel is made beyond easy by the use of map-travel. By clicking on your map, you can automatically teleport to any city or outpost in the world!! However, there is one catch... You must have visited that outpost before you are able to insta-travel to it. And well, that makes slightly more sense. Wouldn't you agree? You can't go right off to Colorado if you've never traveled there before; you must look at the maps and chart your route. In many areas, a player can simply walk out the gateway of an outpost and head towards their destination. But, it GW is a MMORPG and this game type is designed to handle all sorts of skill level and well, levels. The high-end areas can not be reached by low-level nubs. The high-end areas are where you can craft the best weapons and earn the most experience, as well as get the best loot. Well, the low level characters of people who have already played the game a bit will have non of that. And neither will the incredibly lazy people, or the people who don't feel like playing the game they bought. The solution - runners!

A runner is a character, typically at level 20, and one of the more durable classes who takes people in his or her group, goes out into the wilderness and runs runs runs to the desired outpost. (If one character in the group zones, the entire party zones - this is what really makes this possible) The reward-- plat's. Or so we hope... Scammers have been known to be ******* jerks who deserve death. They go with a runner who takes them where they want and then they don't pay. We don't need these types..


Standard running classes:

Originally it was Warriors and Rangers. Then monks gave it a shot (with their protective and healing prayers, and using ranger stances for the speed boost)


With Guild Wars Factions, some Assassins did a bit of running using their own skills and often a few of a different class (monk or ranger)


Nightfall got Dervishes into the running game and they are very good at it, as the class allows for some unusual / non-standard builds. (A build being the 8 skills on the skill bar and the distribution of attribute points)


Perhaps the most popular run of all Guild Wars time was the Droks run. This run went from either Ascalon City, or more often, Beacons Perch. The destination: Droknar's Forge. The main city in the Southern Shiverpeaks, one of the hardest areas in Guild Wars Prophecies, and the first place you can craft MAX ARMOR. The path to Droknar's Forge is a perilous one, claiming many noobs and idiots unprepared or less-than-skilled for the adventure.

Prices for a Droks run have varied, ranging from 2 to 6 platinum normally. One of the main causes of this fluctuation... the nerfbat. ArenaNet smacked runners in the face constantly with the changes to Lornar's Pass and AI scripts. There was a time that it seemed every month they made it harder and harder to successfully complete a Droks run. Sometimes it was hard even getting 1/10 of the way into the run. Some even say that it is near impossible for a warrior to do this run (when originally they were the only ones that could) However, the Dervish rose as the new Droks runner. They could do the run with near-ease. Unfortunately for them, they came with Nightfall. And by then Factions was out so there was already more locations to get max level armor. And getting to KC from Tyria is simply too easy. As an added blow to this run, Consulate Docks is the first place to get max armor in Nightfall. It is literally connected to Kamadan, the starting city of Nightfall, and a person can get a ferry from Kamadan to docks for 500 gold in anywheres between 5 minutes and an hour depending on what time it is and what district they are in.


In Factions, ArenaNet made running all but impossible. Gates cover the entrances to almost every single outpost in the campaign, and they will only open if everyone in the part has completed the storyline up to that point. I hate it. Both as a runner and a person with 8 PvE characters.


In Nightfall, some outposts are blocked off until the character reaches a certain point, but most are not. However, they found another way to stop people from moving too far along in that game. Mission requirements. They are ftl - the reverse of ftw, which in case you don't know is "for the win."


The glory days of running are long gone. However some runs do still exist. They are either hard to find a runner for or hard to find someone who wants the run, and they don't usually cost over 2k, if that... 500g to 1k is now the standard rate on most of the runs still done.


I'm glad I ran when I did. I made a lot of money, got to see interesting places, and the routes of many those runs still lie within my deteriorating brain. I may not be able to remember where I put my socks 10 minutes ago, but the path from LA to Sanctum Cay couldn't be clearer, and I haven't done that run in over a year and it is 3:30 in the morning.