Guild Wars

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.

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.

Player characters begin the game in the fictional idyllic kingdom of Ascalon, which serves as the tutorial content for new characters. The setting is friendly, with few aggressive monsters and a number of easily completed quests. New characters are introduced to the main protagonists of the multi-campaign Guild Wars story: the monk Mhenlo, the warrior Devona, the elementalist Cynn and the ranger Aidan. Player characters also interact with Prince Rurik (voiced by Robin Atkin Downes), the heir apparent of the kingdom.

After completing a number of initial quests and selecting a secondary profession, the character is then inducted into the Ascalon Vanguard, an elite force led by the prince himself who are fighting the armies of the Charr beasts who are planning an invasion of Ascalon. During the final quest in this tutorial world, the Charr complete a ritual to unleash a rain of fire and stone upon the world, breaching Ascalon's defensive Great Wall, and reducing most of its cities to ruins. This in-game event, referred to as the Searing, transports the characters into a post-apocalyptic world of constant strife, with no way of returning to the pre-Searing areas. The mechanic employed in the Searing is often cited by ArenaNet as a primary benefit of the instanced design of Guild Wars, which allows world-changing and time-advancing stories to be told individually to player characters instead of requiring the game-world to be static and timeless.

Guild Wars is the first game created by developer ArenaNet. Senior developers from Blizzard Entertainment, some involved in the early development of World of Warcraft, left to create ArenaNet to develop a game which took risks with game design and business model.

Guild Wars development was first announced in April 2003.

Guild Wars debuted on The NPD Group's computer game sales charts at #1 for the month of April 2005. NPD ultimately ranked Guild Wars as the fourth-best-selling computer game of 2005. In the United States, it sold 540,000 copies and earned $26.1 million by August 2006. At the time, this led Edge to declare Guild Wars the country's 23rd-highest computer game seller released since January 2000. It also received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom; and a "Gold" award from the Asociación Española de Distribuidores y Editores de Software de Entretenimiento, for more than 40,000 sales in Spain during its first 12 months.

By September 2005, Guild Wars had sold 1 million units. France accounted for 100,000 copies of this figure. As of August 2007; Prophecies and the two subsequent campaigns Guild Wars Factions and Guild Wars Nightfall have together sold more than 5 million copies. The game had sold 6.5 million copies by August 2010.