INTRODUCTION
Guild Wars is an episodic series of multiplayer online role-playing games developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. Three stand-alone episodes and one expansion pack were released in the series from April 2005 to August 2007.
Guild Wars provides two main modes of gameplay a cooperative role-playing component and a competitive player vs. player (PvP) component. The games depict the history of the fictional fantasy world of Tyria. A player creates an avatar to play through the cooperative storyline of a campaign, taking on the role of a hero who must save Tyria from episode-specific antagonists. Players can group with other players and non-player characters, known as henchmen or heroes, to perform missions and quests found throughout the game-world. PvP combat is consensual, team based, and limited to areas designed for such combat.
ArenaNet hosts official Guild Wars tournaments where the most successful players and guilds may compete for the chance to play live at gaming conventions and win prizes up to 100,000 USD.