Guild Wars

Guild Wars was released in 2005 by the newly founded studio ArenaNet, which presented the game from the start as a "CORPG" - a game for large numbers of players without a classic monthly fee, which was, at a time of subscription-based MMOs dominating the market, a markedly different and, for many players, more appealing business model. Instead of a vast shared open world where hundreds of players roam at once, the game combined public towns and hub areas used for meeting and trading with instanced missions and battle areas that each group of players goes through in its own copy of the world, belonging to them alone.

The combat system was built on a combination of professions and the careful selection of a limited number of skills from a much wider pool, which placed emphasis on tactics and party composition rather than long level grinding - characters reached the maximum level relatively quickly, and further development went more into equipment, skill combinations, and strategy than into simply accumulating experience. The game also offered a robust PvP component with its own tournaments and competitive environment, which attracted players interested in competing against one another, regardless of how long they had played the game. Visually, the game still holds up well today thanks to the distinctive art style of its individual regions and continents.

Guild Wars became an influential example of an alternative to the MMORPG subscription model and inspired a number of later titles in their approach to free-to-play and purchased expansions instead of monthly fees. The game was gradually released as three standalone campaigns and an expansion, each bringing a new continent, a new set of professions, and its own story, and it laid the groundwork for the successful sequel Guild Wars 2, which further developed many of its concepts, moved them into a more open world, and made them accessible to a much wider audience without abandoning the core idea of a game without monthly fees.

Why play: For players tired of monthly fees, this is an influential alternative with purchased expansions instead of a subscription, featuring three campaigns and their own stories that paved the way for the successful Guild Wars 2.