Four years of Guild Wars: A retrospective

By Amanda Rivera
April 24, 2009 16:40 PM PST
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GamePro's RPG blog examines the success of Guild Wars, the one MMO that has succeeded in the shadow of World of Warcraft.

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On April 28, 2005, a new type of MMO was born. Guild Wars managed to balance two very different types of MMO players: the gentler Role-Players and the bloodthirsty PvP Players. After four years, Guild Wars continued to hold its title as the "MMO for everyone," providing episodic content that connected with MMO players across the globe. Known for co-op instanced gameplay and its innovative pay for the game, play for free business model, Guild Wars has today sold over six million units, and remains a classic in the MMORPG genre.

While the premise of the story was simple, it was the nature of the additional campaigns that added depth to Guild Wars. Prophesies, the original campaign, introduced players to Ascalon and pit them against the invading forces of the Charr, forcing them to struggle against ultimate destruction in a world devastated by the Searing.

Factions opened up the continent of Cantha for players a year later, a world rich in Asian-inspired lore and themes, and pitted them against the murderous Shiro Tagashi and his mad desires for domination over the Canthan Empire. In the third campaign, Nightfall, players traveled to arid Elona, and joined the ranks of the Sunspears in order to help prevent the opening of rifts into a hellish dimension from whence only death and destruction could come. When the latest expansion, Eyes of the North, released in August of 2007 players received new content for each of the three campaigns and learned that this would be the conclusion of the original Guild Wars tale.

Guild Wars has been consistently known for conquering the challenge of giving players a rich single-player story in an online game. It was the first online game to give us a strong instanced type of gameplay that provides the players with story progression as they move through the story missions. This sort of storytelling mechanic has influenced many successors to the MMO crown, including games like Dungeons & Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online, and will continue to make its mark on the industry for years to come.

We got the opportunity to get in touch with ArenaNet's Curtis Johnson, who has been a Designer on Guild Wars since the beginning. He was kind enough to answer some of our questions about this immensely popular game and what this fourth anniversary will hold for the Guild Wars community.

What separates Guild Wars from the MMO pack?

I think Guild Wars brings a solo RPG feeling to the online world, and does so with a business model that is non-threatening. We really tried to break out of the mainstream in graphics, gameplay, and player choice, and I think we accomplished that. Each campaign has a story that the character can follow, alone or in groups, from one end of the continent to the other. At the same time, we still kept much of the community, competition, and free roaming exploration of a global online game.

What is it that keeps people playing Guild Wars four years after its release?

I think what keeps people playing is a combination of things. Some continue to play new characters, exploring the hundreds of combinations in the Guild Wars dual profession system, tweaking their skill selections to make a character that really feels like their own. That sense of ownership can mean a lot. Others are still perfecting their first character, exploring unusual corners of the world and getting that "just right" look, or filling out their Hall of Monuments in anticipation of Guild Wars 2. There's also a lot of great competition going on in monthly Hero and Guild versus Guild tournaments, and a community to hang out with, watch the action in Observer mode, and chat it up in some of the social hubs. Finally, it doesn't hurt that after all this time, the graphics still look amazing. I really feel our artists and technical wizards knocked it out of the park and made Guild Wars a fantastic place to hang out. There's just no downside to players sticking around or coming back to visit.

What impact has Guild Wars had on the industry?

Probably the biggest impact is that we've proved a company can put out a great online roleplaying experience without a monthly fee. Also, Guild Wars has shown there is a demand for competition-level play in the fantasy genre, and that an online exploration game can have an over-arching story that moves at the player's speed. We've been able to put our own spin on things, to surprise the player every once in a while and say it's okay to take an old idea and do it in a new way.