Guild Wars is an online role-playing game franchise developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft. The games were critically well received and won many editor's choice awards, as well as awards such as "Massively Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, as well as Best Value, Best Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), and Best Game. Guild Wars was noted for being the "first major MMO to adopt a business model not based on monthly subscription fees", its instanced approach to gameplay, and the quality of the graphics and play for computers with low specifications. In April 2009, NCSoft announced that 6 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold.. Note that units sold does not equate to number of players, and, because Guild Wars accounts never expire, there is no notion of "active account" as used by other MMORPG companies. The sequel and second major entry into the series, Guild Wars 2, was announced in March 2007 and released on August 28, 2012. It features updated graphics and gameplay mechanics, and continues the original Guild Wars tradition of no subscription fees. The Guild Wars series had sold 11.5 million copies by August 2015
Publications Year TitleType Note 2005 Guild Wars Prophecies MMORPG Standalone game 2006 Guild Wars Factions MMORPG Standalone game 2006 Guild Wars Nightfall MMORPG Standalone game 2007 Guild Wars: Eye of the North Expansion pack 2009 Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon Novel Novel by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb, cover art by Richard Anderson 2010 Guild Wars: Edge of Destiny Novel Novel by J. Robert King 2012 Guild Wars 2MMORPG Standalone game 2013 Rytlock's Critter Rampage Free browser game 2013 Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows Novel Novel by Ree Soesbee 2015 Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Expansion pack 2017 Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire Expansion pack 2022 Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons Expansion pack 2023 Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure Expansion pack2024Guild Wars 2: Janthir WildsExpansion pack2025Guild Wars 2: Visions of EternityExpansion pack2025Guild Wars ReforgedMMORPGRe-release of the original 2005 gameTBAGuild Wars 3MMORPGStandalone gameTBAMISTBOUND: Guild Wars Card GameCollectible card gameStandalone game, China only. Developed and published by NC.
Related works
The NCSoft crossover game Master X Master featured Rytlock from Guild Wars 2 as a playable character.
Guild Wars subseries (2005–2007)
The original subseries consisting of the Guild Wars Prophecies, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, and Guild Wars: Eye of the North games coexist within a unified game world. The games provide two main modes of gameplay—a cooperative role-playing component that is specific to each campaign, and a competitive PvP component that is shared across all campaigns. Three stand-alone campaigns, one major expansion pack, and several "mini"-expansions were released in the series from April 2005 to April 2013. The games depict the fictional fantasy world of Tyria; each campaign focuses on events in disjointed sections of the world at roughly the same time. A player creates an avatar to play through the cooperative storyline of a campaign, taking on the role of a hero who must save Tyria from its antagonists. Players can group with other players and non-player characters, known as henchmen and heroes, to perform missions and quests found throughout the game-world. PvP combat is consensual, team based, and limited to areas designed for such combat. Players are allowed to create characters at maximum level and with the best equipment specifically for PvP play, which is unusual for MMORPGs. Historically, ArenaNet hosted official Guild Wars tournaments where the most successful players and guilds competed for the chance to play live at gaming conventions and win prizes up to US$100,000.
Gameplay Players use a 3D avatar to interact with the world around them. The game predominantly features a third-person perspective but also has the option of first-person. These characters are able to walk/run and interact with other characters through chat. They can also perform actions such as fighting and picking up objects, as well as interacting with special objects.
Character creation Players can choose from a range of up to ten different professions. When creating a character, players can select their hair style, face, skin tone, height and avatar name—the selection depending upon that profession chosen. As the player progresses through the game, they can unlock different armor and weapons to alter the visual appearance of that avatar. They can also decide whether they want their avatar to start in a Player vs. Environment world (the RPG aspect of the game), or get right into the competitive Player vs. Player and fight live against other players in the game.
The maximum level for character development is capped at 20—by this point, the character will also have reached 170 attribute points. Players may also choose to do certain quests to gain another 30 attribute points, making the maximum points available 200. Experience can still be gained and is used to learn more skills or buy consumable items throughout the game.
Professions
A profession is a type of class commonly found in most RPGs and is central to the gameplay in Guild Wars. Each profession has an array of attributes and skills that help narrow a class's proficiency in order to perform a customized role that is determined by the player. The Warrior profession, for example, has access to the primary Strength attribute that increases their armor penetration with martial weapons, and is able to wear heavy armor providing the highest protection against physical damage of all professions. Elementalists, on the other hand, wear less protective armor, but can use their primary Energy Storage attribute to give them a much greater pool of energy than other professions.
Guild Wars also introduces the ability to choose a secondary profession, expanding the selection of attributes and skills. A character does not, however, have access to the primary attribute of its secondary profession. Many, but not all, skills become more powerful with more points in a class's primary attribute. A Warrior/Elementalist, therefore, is a warrior who may use spells in combat, although the Elementalist spells used will generally not have as much power as those of a primary Elementalist. This is increased by the fact that runes, which among other things increase attribute levels, can only increase the attribute levels associated with a player's primary profession.
There are over a thousand skills in the game that can be acquired by the character over time, but players may only use and equip up to 8 of them at any one time. This introduces levels of strategy, in which one must have a careful selection of skills that work well with one another and with teammates in order to survive.
The core professions are Warrior, Monk, Elementalist, Ranger, Necromancer and Mesmer. The Assassin and Ritualist professions are exclusive to Guild Wars: Factions, which can be played along with the aforementioned core professions. The Paragon and Dervish professions are exclusive to Guild Wars: Nightfall, and can also be played with the core professions. Unlike the campaigns, Guild Wars: Eye of the North (the only expansion pack of the Guild Wars franchise) does not offer any new playable professions.
Environment The Guild Wars universe consists of persistent staging zones known as towns and outposts. These areas normally contain non-player characters that provide services such as merchandising or storage. Other NPC's provide quests and present rewards to adventurers. These areas are also used when forming groups of people to go out into the world and play cooperatively. Players that venture out from the staging area and into an instanced explorable area are then able to use their weapons and skills to defeat monsters and interact with other objects in the game. As players progress through the game, they gain access to additional staging zones. Players can then transport their characters instantly from one staging area to another using a process commonly referred to as 'map traveling'.
Combat Apart from fighting with weapons, skills make up the majority of combat interaction. Each skill has a different effect when used, and fall under many different categories. They can range from offensive skills such as setting foes on fire and defensive skills which include resurrection and healing allies. Enchantments that include giving players extra health points or Hexes that drain the enemy's life and add it to your own make up part of the skill selection in Guild Wars. Attack skills are used in conjunction with weapons to augment the damage that they can deal and cause different side effects (such as knocking people to the ground with a hammer, causing bleeding wounds that deal additional damage over time with a sword, or striking multiple foes with an axe).
Most skills have a governing attribute that determines its power and effect. These attributes are assigned using a number of attribute points similar to the point buy ability score generation system in Dungeons & Dragons.
Guild Wars skill system is often compared to collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering because of the way the different skills interact. While in a town or staging area, a character's skill and attribute selection can be freely modified to construct a "build". Once in a combat zone (such as an explorable area or a PvP arena), the build becomes immutable until the character exits the combat zone and returns to a staging area. Players generally either choose a specific build for a given area or role, or use builds that synergize with the builds of other characters in the party.
A player's ability to help the party is based on the way a player's "build" works. If the skills combine well, such as a hex spell that makes an enemy attack faster and then another one that makes him miss 75% of the time and take damage for each miss, then the build will work effectively.
In PvE, monsters that are slain will generate gold and loot which can be traded or sold to players or NPCs. Unique or rare weapon designs are often found from defeating powerful monsters, or by opening treasure chests.
In PvP, reputation in the form of "faction" is gained based on how well a player performs. "Balthazar faction" is gained by the number of wins that you and your team achieve, and for each unique kill. Most PvP in Guild Wars is fast-paced, while the transition period between games may take longer.
Co-operative gameplay Player versus Environment (PvE) missions of Guild Wars use several standard tropes of the MMORPG genre. Players explore the game-world, kill monsters, perform quests and complete missions to earn rewards and advance the story. Rewards include experience points, skill points, skills, gold, faction, reputation and items for the player character. Some of these rewards not only advance the particular character being played at the time, but also unlock features of the game account-wide.