While there is some debate on whether Prophecies or Nightfall has the better storyline, it is generally accepted that the Factions storyline is inferior to the other chapters about Guild Wars Gold. The games lengths can be roughly measured by the number of missions they contain. While quests in Guild Wars send your party out into the exportable world to perform tasks, missions send your party to a specific zone, where the group must achieve an objective under certain conditions. After a mission is completed, players will either find themselves in the next mission staging area, or else they will receive quests that will lead them to the next mission about Guild Wars Gold.

Prophecies remains the longest game of the three, with 25 missions in a linear storyline with very little grind but a slow pace. The large number of missions means that players spend a certain amount of time completing several missions in the first area of the game before moving to the next major area about Guild Wars Gold. Whenever a mission does not directly drop players off at the next mission, the quests they are given are usually direct. There is very little backtracking in Prophecies, as every mission or quest leads the player to someplace new. While Prophecies contains very little grind due to the slow rise in difficulty throughout the game, some players find themselves getting bored with the long story. Still, many players enjoy replaying the Prophecies storyline on new characters again and again to get Guild Wars Gold.