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.

Factions contains only one real grind¡ªbut it is a big grind indeed. At one point mid-game, players must accrue 10,000 unspent factions points for their chosen tribe, the Kurzicks or the Luxons, before moving on in the story. These 10,000 points take quite some time to gain through quests and Alliance Battles¡ªbut factions points are also account-based. The prepared player will take multiple characters to that point in the game, accrue the 10,000 points, and gain access for all characters to the next stage in the story before spending the faction points about Guild Wars Gold.