I have been playing world o fwarcfart with my friend and we are having a blast. We are playing a trial but we are thinking about buying the full version. The only thing that is holding us back is the monthly fees. Can someone tell me the difference between guild wars and world of warcraft? Does it play the same? I know there are no monthly fees for it which is a huge plus. Does it require a better graphics card? Thanks in advance!

Also it would be awesome if you guys can recommend me a decent graphics card. I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE Graphics with TurboCache. It makes everything look like sh*t. I dont want an expensive graphics card. maybe something under $60? I just want to play WOW with a good framerate. Im currently playing at 7 fps LOL.

i have a ati radeon hd 4870 and i can play guild wars on max with 60 fps steady. But Guild Wars is not a very demanding game and i think you can go with an even cheaper card if that's all you want.

as for Guild Wars  vs World of Warcraft.

Guild Wars is great its fun, its easy to get into and its quite deep/lengthy i have 800-900 h invested into it (across 4 years) but World of Warcraft is like a zillion times bigger there's so much to do and see. If it wasnt for the monthly fee i would be playing WoW.

However they are not very much alike, except for the camera view. Guild Wars has 20 levels, which you will reach pretty fast. There is no traditional loot that you collect. Everyone can get the best armor and weapon pretty quickly. (statswise) then if you want some of the more exclusive armors or items you have to put some time into the game, but all they do is look more fancy. Guild Wars is more about PvP, it has a great PvM mode but PvP is where Guild Wars shines.

http://guildwars.com/freetrial/

There is no doubt that WoW is the better game, if anyone says otherwise they clearly have not played the game for more than a few weeks.

However, Guild Wars is free to play once you buy the initial game...I'm sure it is a great game in itself, never having played it personally. It really just depends on you: which game are all your friends playing? Neither game will be much fun alone.

If you wanna spend the cash, WoW is the way to go.

Guild Wars is not really an MMO.  You're not questing with anyone outside your group out in the world.  You only see other players in the hub cities or during PvP matches.  So if you want a traditional MMO experience WoW is your only choice of the two (until Guild Wars 2 releases).

Having said that I liked Guild Wars a lot better than WoW.

Apples and Oranges comparison.

Guild Wars is more akin to Diablo 2 where the towns act as HUBS to meet other people where as WoW is a shared world. GW is more about instances of zones where as WoW treats instances as exceptions.

Guild Wars is more like a some kind of Card Game battle system where as WoW is more of a arcade streamlined version of D&D.

I've played both, but spent way more time with WoW. I disagree towards the comment that WoW is better, but I will say this. GW appealed less to me. I prefer the leaning of shared worlds and wasn't a big Diablo 1/2 fan. Though you might want to consider getting GW anyways since it's just like buying a game and doesn't really compete against WoW. 

Heres the thing about WoW. If your going to play WoW. Then play WoW. Drop all other games as they will be a hindrance towards your experience to playing WoW. Your going to play WoW to see the world, quest and play with friends. If you don't dedicate the time to play WoW with your friends then your gimping your time with them. The game is not friendly towards large level differences. It's not that you can't, but you lose much of the experience you would get for traveling with the same level. I've played more than enough times where my wife or myself power leveled each other characters by rushing red conned quests. Yes leveling was faster, but gosh darn it was boring. If you meet online friends of your level you need to maintain same levels. It's really game where you can't just do a little bit here or there unless you plan to play solo.

Bolded: Nice one.

OT: I prefer Guild Wars but they are really different games.

It's a tough comparison, they're pretty different games. I've played Guild Wars for more than 2500 hours and I had my WoW account for a month before I got bored.

Guild Wars is a game about skill, rather than stats and loot. You're locked to a maximum of eight skills at any given time, and you can change your stats and skills as you please when you're in a town. It's a really fun game if you like being creative with the way you do things, because there are a lot of skills you can use, but you can only use so few at a time. That's not to say it's hard to find a good build, but it can be hard to find a truly awesome build.

And in Guild Wars, there is very little focus on grind compared to WoW. In GW, the level cap is just there, it's not something that really matters. You'll reach it quickly and in order to get better at the game, you have to figure out how to be a better player. It's not about grinding to a new level or grinding for new gear, it's about experimenting with the way you play games.

For example, rangers have traps, and by choosing a mesmer as my secondary profession, I was able to create a build that allowed me to kill some of the more powerful creatures in one of the big dungeons in the game alone. It's all about refining your skills and knowledge with the game.

That's why I got bored of WoW. When I played (just when BC had been released), it was grind, grind, grind. "Go out and kill these mobs for me" yadda yadda, and I know things have changed since then, but in the end it's still WoW.

There is a free trial for GW, and I think it's definitely worth checking out. It should run on your PC, though it won't be too pretty I'm guessing.  http://www.guildwars.com/support/gwtrial.php

They reall dont compare to each other.

Never played guild wars but I'll tell you now don't put the investment into wow unless you have the spare time. Esspecially if you want to raid. I've been glad I've been clean for over a year, but Cataclysm might make me buy a new compy just to play again.

As everyone have said, Guild Was cannot be compared to WoW because they are too different. Personally, I prefer GW because I've played plenty of shared world grind games. GW has a low level cap so grinding isn't really a necessity, story driven so there are very few go here and kill 10 of those quests, everywhere outside towns is instanced so you won't encounter trolls who aren't in your party, you can teleport instantly to towns and outposts you've previously visited, and skills can be changed at any outpost or town before you head into the field so there's no "messing up a build" and starting from scratch. There are a few gripes I have, one is that it's difficult to solo in PvE you usually need to bring along heroes or henchmen if you're playing alone, and two is the inability to jump. There have been several times where I wanted to throw my computer out the window because the mini map made it seem like I could cross a certain area but there was in fact a ledge and I had to walk all the way back around the mountain range.