Guild Wars' mostly-an-MMORPG approach has always made it a hard game to categorize. Sure, it's massive, multiplayer, and online, but it lacks the monthly fees and repetitive gameplay that all too often characterize the genre. So it's appropriate that Factions, in essence its first expansion pack, doesn't quite match the traditional definition of an expansion either.

First up, you don't need the original game to play it. You can buy Factions, start a new character, and begin exploring Factions' new continent, Cantha, straight away. Factions characters and those from the original Guild Wars campaign, Prophecies, can interact with each other. Factions also comes with 300 new skills, piles of new equipment, monsters, guild features, warring factions for players to ally with, and so on.