Guild Wars: Encyclopedia II - Guild Wars - Overview

Guild Wars - Overview

Though often referred to as an MMORPG, ArenaNet coined the term CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game) to describe Guild Wars. This title describes the competitive PvP-oriented (Player vs. Player) design of the game, as well as serving to differentiate it from the standard, subscription-fee-based, MMORPG genre. Guild Wars does not support hundreds of players in combat, instead having large towns where people form groups of eight or fewer players who then fight in their own unique instance of the game world. "Guild Wars is not an MMORPG," said Jeff Strain, producer of the game.

The cooperative PvE campaign can take "more than 100 hours" to complete with one character, though it can be done much quicker if the player wishes. PvP involves multiple 4 player or 8 player groups fighting to achieve typically FPS-style gameplay objectives such as deathmatch, king of the hill, or capture the flag. The small player groups, lack of subscription fee, and low number of hours required to play the game are some of the reasons why Guild Wars tends to share more in common with the Diablo series of action RPGs than traditional MMORPGs such as Ultima Online, Runescape and EverQuest.

Guild Wars was the subject of the "E3 for Everyone" event in May 2004 which, held during the annual E3 expo and conference, attracted over 200,000 gamers from around the world to participate in the 5-day public beta testing. Special features in Guild Wars include silent streaming update technology (new content can be easily sent to the user while he or she is playing) and unprecedented player versus player combat that ArenaNet has designed to rely on skill rather than the amount of time spent playing, shunning the design of MMORPGs such as EverQuest where making a high-level character takes anywhere from several months to several years. ArenaNet plans on releasing expansions every six to nine months that will advance the game's story line as well as introduce new features. Expansions will not be required to continue playing, nor will they give a true advantage over non-expansion players.

Long before the game was officially released, a "World Preview Event" occurred on October 29-31 2004, similar to the E3 event, and attracted approximately 400,000 users. Starting in November 2004, ArenaNet held monthly Beta Weekends in addition to the closed Beta. Designed for large-scale testing, these events were open to those who pre-ordered as well as people who got free one-time passes from various sources such as Friend Passes, magazines, or giveaways from sites like FilePlanet.

Guild Wars was released on April 28, 2005 in North America and Europe. Unlike many MMORPGs, the launch of Guild Wars went very smoothly.

A new Guild Wars expansion pack called "Factions" is being released in Spring 2006. This will include the two new professions "Ritualist" and "Assassin" and an expanded storyline.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Overview", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki