Guild Wars (video game)

Did You Know?

• A rerelease titled Guild Wars Reforged, developed with former ArenaNet staff from the team 2weeks, launched on December 3, 2025, with upgraded visuals, audio, and controller support.
• Guild Wars Reforged includes all content from Guild Wars Factions and Guild Wars Nightfall, but the original expansion Eye of the North remains a separate purchase.
• The mobile version of Guild Wars Reforged was released on June 24, 2026.

Story

Player characters begin in the idyllic kingdom of Ascalon, a tutorial area with few aggressive monsters and simple quests. They meet the main protagonists—monk Mhenlo, warrior Devona, elementalist Cynn, and ranger Aidan—and interact with Prince Rurik, heir to the throne. After completing initial quests and choosing a secondary profession, the character joins the Ascalon Vanguard, an elite force fighting the Charr beasts. In the final tutorial quest, the Charr perform a ritual that unleashes a rain of fire and stone, breaching Ascalon's Great Wall and reducing cities to ruins. This event, called the Searing, transports characters to a post-apocalyptic world with no return to pre-Searing areas. ArenaNet cited the instanced design as allowing such world-changing stories. In the post-Searing world, Prince Rurik realizes the battle is lost and urges the king to abandon the kingdom. King Adelbern banishes Rurik, who leads refugees toward Kryta. During the journey, Rurik is trapped and killed by the Stone Summit dwarves, a xenophobic faction at war with the Deldrimor Dwarves.

Development

Guild Wars is the first game from ArenaNet, founded by senior developers from Blizzard Entertainment who had worked on early World of Warcraft. Development was announced in April 2003. The team aimed to create a game that took risks with design and business model, positioning it in a niche after EverQuest by offering unlimited play without subscription fees. ArenaNet believed players would not pay subscriptions for every online game and that fees forced a lifestyle commitment. Co-founder Jeff Strain stated that the free model with frequent content updates was the optimal paradigm for a lasting franchise. Open beta testing began in April 2004 at E3, where a downloadable demo tested networking. This was followed by preview events and beta weekends. Closed alpha servers ran continuously, staffed by employees and volunteer community testers under non-disclosure agreements. To support the fee-free model, server architecture minimized bandwidth costs, influenced by Battle.net experience. Updates are handled by a client that downloads a manifest of modified files, prioritizing core assets before allowing gameplay, with the rest downloaded in the background. This rapid update technology allowed on-demand changes and exploit fixes.

Reception

Guild Wars debuted at #1 on The NPD Group's computer game sales chart for April 2005 and ranked as the fourth-best-selling computer game of 2005 in the United States, with 540,000 copies sold and $26.1 million earned by August 2006. Edge ranked it the 23rd-highest computer game seller in the US since January 2000. It received a Silver sales award from ELSPA for at least 100,000 UK sales and a Gold award from the Asociación Española de Distribuidores y Editores de Software de Entretenimiento for over 40,000 sales in Spain in its first year. By September 2005, global sales reached 1 million units, with France accounting for 100,000. By August 2007, Prophecies and the subsequent campaigns Factions and Nightfall had sold over 5 million copies combined; by August 2010, the total was 6.5 million. Critics received the game well, especially its character designs, earning 89.67% on GameRankings and 89/100 on Metacritic. It won IGN's Best PC RPG and GameSpy's MMORPG of the Year in 2005. Computer Games Magazine awarded it Best Technology and Best MMO Debut, and named it the year's fourth-best computer game. PC Gamer US gave it Best Massively Multiplayer Game 2005 and Best Value 2005. At the 9th Interactive Achievement Awards, it tied with City of Villains for Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year.