Well,
PvE is a lot different to most MMORPGS (as you might already have gathered). The only place where people interact with each other is in towns; once you step outside you're on your own, or are accompanied by the party you take with you. The main PvE game itself is based on a series of missions, sort of like instances (from what I would guess), where you take your party and complete a number of objectives in a certain area. Completing each mission nets you a load of experience and allows you to proceed to the next mission in the series, the story sort of unfolds as this happens.
There are other things to do besides, though, like exploring the outside world away from the main mission areas to complete jobs for NPCs or farm some loot. There's no ganking or any other kind of outside interference, just a fairly linear and progressive type experience that takes you on travels all the way across the map. There is some PvP after a fashion, which occurs at arenas in certain towns, but it's all kind of basic and there's no real reward or anything.
There is of course the separate
PvP section of the game, which I've never troubled to explore, where you can fight against other teams and make your way to the fabled 'Hall of Heroes' and all this caper. I can't tell you much about that, though, and I don't think anyone else in THN ever really bothered with it either (maybe Bart, but he makes himself scarce these days).
Our main focus is always on the PvE and main story side, so I'm hoping on Sunday we'll be able to complete the first few missions and get you familiar with the concepts of the game.
A quick run-through of the classes:
Warrior - Just a basic tank, capable of using a variety of weapons to exert close-range damage on opponents. Each weapon carries its own skills, and often they aren't transferrable between each other, so it'd be a good idea to specialise yourself to either axes, hammers or swords. The warrior's tactics attribute deals with some support actions like accuracy improvements and speed buffs. Mostly a pretty selfish character, though.
Monk - The healing class, with a wide variety of health regeneration spells and buffs. Actually not a particularly popular class (probably because people would rather hit and kill things than help anyone else), but certainly one of the most sought after for groups and the like. Also the primary target in PvP battles
Elementalist - A damage-dealing mage that can specialise in fire, air or ice magic. Fire magic goes ballistic with damage dealing and AoE spells, air magic tends to inflict status effects on the enemy and ice magic ... well, I'm not sure really. A bit of both, more than like. Also has a few spells which can benefit the party, and are capable of some minor personal protection.#
Mesmer - A mage, but one unlike the elementalist. Instead of dealing immediate damage (like, a spell hitting for 50 damage), the mesmer would inflict a health 'drain' which lasts for a few seconds, whilst harassing the enemy with a variety of nasty status-inducing magic. Can cause major damage, but tends to be weak when engaged up close, and, since it has no personal healing spells of note, relies on a monk's healing abilities.
Ranger - My personal favourite. A bowman by trade, rangers are capable of inflicting moderate damage from long range. A bit of a jack-of-all-trades, they also have a few healing spells, some wonderful AoE enchantments and can also employ handy traps. In addition, they can have a constant travelling companion, a pet, who deals a bit of full-frontal damage to the target.
Necromancer - Another mage, but one which focusses on blood magic and death, as the name might suggest. Can actually do a wide variety of things, including healing and damage-dealing, but requires dead bodies and leeching from enemies to do so. Can call a personal squad of undead at their command by animating bone fiends and ghouls from corpses.
If your favoured area of expertise is healing and tanking, then I guess you couldn't go far wrong with a Warrior/Monk. They can deal some awesome damage, and have the capacity to take care of themselves at the same time, but typically work in a selfish manner. What I mean is, they'll heal themselves at the frontlines of a battle, but don't have enough MP or time to help any other party members. You could try the other variant, a Monk/Warrior, but I couldn't attest to the effectiveness of that setup. I think what generally happens is the monk ends up trying to heal from the frontlines, but that puts them in the enemies' sights and they end up dead in two seconds flat.
Monk/Mesmer might be a shout, since they'll be able to fire-and-forget a curse and then heal up the rest of the party. Also keeps you on the fringes of the battle and out of harms way, for the most part. Just need to watch the MP bar in those circumstances, though, because Mesmer spells are pretty costly.
I should also mention that Guild Wars doesn't put an awful lot of focus on levelling, which is demonstrated by the 20-level cap. It's more to do with your skill build (you can have a max of 8 equipped at each time), and how your character fits in with the team.
