Guild Wars

Guild Wars is a free-to-play (or F2P) MMORPG produced by ArenaNet.

ArenaNet

ArenaNet was founded by three influential ex-Blizzard employees. Information about the company can be found on its respective wiki entry.

Guild Wars

The game features third-person realtime combat in the MMO style, which is slower than its ARPG counterpart. While the quest hubs are persistent, with many players accessing the npcs and interacting with each other, each portion of the game that is played outside of a questing hub is instanced, and unique to the players who inhabit that particular instance.

The PVE gameplay consists of teams, although the player has the option of hiring NPC party members to help out when other players are not available or otherwise unwanted. As opposed to the potion spamming health system of the original two Diablos, or the health orb system of Diablo III, Guild wars featured a regenerating health system. The player's health would slowly regenerate over time, including during combat, and the regeneration rate could be heavily influenced by skills and equipment.

The PVP aspect of the game is also heavily team-based, and it is balanced by being a seperate character from a PVE character. There are restrictions to how many skills you can bring into a PVP match, and the player will naturally focus on filling their niche within a team.

Reception

Guild Wars was generally well-received by both the players and the media, earning (to date) a metacritic (media) score of 89, which is fairly high.

Subsequent content patches and expansions only increased the popularity of the game, and ArenaNet is currently in production on the sequel, titled "Guild Wars 2".