{"id":1613882,"date":"2026-06-22T10:27:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9Mn2BMjqbowANBD6iLsxPo"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:27:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:27:39","slug":"guild-wars-devs-tried-to-escape-the-mmo-branding-in-2005-citing-all-the-things-that-would-become-genre-staples-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/guild-wars-devs-tried-to-escape-the-mmo-branding-in-2005-citing-all-the-things-that-would-become-genre-staples-20-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Guild Wars&#8217; devs tried to escape the MMO branding in 2005, citing all the things that would become genre staples 20 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/mmo\/guild-wars-3-guide\/\">Guild Wars 3<\/a>&#8216;s on the horizon\u2014and as part of that release, developer ArenaNet got a little nostalgic in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.guildwars3.com\/en\/news\/our-guild-wars-philosophy\/\" target=\"_blank\">news post last week<\/a>. It shared a healthy handful of details on its incoming MMO, including an aim to fix something that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/mmo\/guild-wars-3-hopes-to-solve-the-problem-that-made-me-quit-guild-wars-2-after-thousands-of-hours-with-the-series\/\">shook PCG&#8217;s own Lauren Morton<\/a> off the second game. <\/p>\n<p>It <em>also <\/em>shared an interesting tidbit about the first Guild Wars game. Namely\u2014try as they might, ArenaNet couldn&#8217;t shake off the MMO tag: &#8220;Guild Wars Reforged is, at its core, a game about a small team: a player and their assembled team of henchmen or hero NPCs or other players they want to bring along with them, overcoming challenges in a predominantly instanced game. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Unless you invited them along, you never saw other players except in the game&#8217;s social hubs. When we released the original Guild Wars, we branded the game as a CORPG (cooperative online RPG); however, the branding never stuck, and everyone informed us we&#8217;d released an MMORPG.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I suppose I&#8217;m guilty of doing the same\u2014though it makes sense, given I&#8217;m a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/final-fantasy-14\/\">Final Fantasy 14<\/a> fan, and that also happens to be a set of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/final-fantasy-14-is-a-400-hour-plus-epic-you-can-share-with-your-friends-and-im-not-sure-well-see-anything-like-it-again\/\">basically single-player RPGs<\/a> that just so happens to share an online world. Granted, there&#8217;s plenty you can team up for, but the same goes for Guild Wars 1. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s particularly interesting because the things that ArenaNet determined as setting it apart from other MMOs are actually more popular in modern MMOs than they&#8217;ve ever been. FF14 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/mmo\/world-of-warcraft\/\">World of Warcraft<\/a> both have systems where you can fill out your party members with NPCs, and a higher emphasis on soloable content as the years have gone on.<\/p>\n<p>It was a point of contention for Raph Koster (who worked on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies) when I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/mmo\/ultima-online-and-star-wars-galaxies-vet-tells-me-the-theme-park-assembly-line-mmo-just-isnt-viable-anymore-especially-as-dev-costs-spike-we-hit-the-wall\/\">spoke to him earlier this month<\/a> for our MMO column\u2014observing that open-world sandbox MMOs, the type Guild Wars 1 sought to set itself apart from, fell out of favour in exchange for instanced theme parks with social hubs.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, when you describe a game where you rarely interact with players outside of social hubs, you can describe a ton of modern MMOs depending on how strict you&#8217;re being\u2014sure, I&#8217;ll see players occasionally divebomb a mob in my periphery in WoW or join a mob of particle-effect flinging adventurers for a public event, but I&#8217;m not exactly talking to anybody.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, ArenaNet eventually leant in: &#8220;We even won multiple MMO-of-the-year awards! We gave up on the CORPG angle since it didn&#8217;t stick with players, and we simply embraced what everyone told us: we&#8217;d shipped a unique kind of MMORPG.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"product\"><a data-dimension112=\"81f480d5-5bcc-4c82-b0e5-1e2e61f4a679\" data-action=\"Deal Block\" data-label=\"Best MMOs\" data-dimension48=\"Best MMOs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><\/p>\n<figure class=\"van-image-figure \" >\n<div class='image-full-width-wrapper'>\n<div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:316px;\">\n<p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:100.00%;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"UjCJY9gjRfatHZjCuGMrhR\" name=\"elden ring square cheer.jpg\" caption=\"\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/guild-wars-devs-tried-to-escape-the-mmo-branding-in-2005-citing-all-the-things-that-would-become-genre-staples-20-years-later.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"middle\" fullscreen=\"\" width=\"316\" height=\"316\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" credit=\"\" class=\"\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/the-best-mmos\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-dimension112=\"81f480d5-5bcc-4c82-b0e5-1e2e61f4a679\" data-action=\"Deal Block\" data-label=\"Best MMOs\" data-dimension48=\"Best MMOs\" data-dimension25=\"\"><strong>Best MMOs<\/strong><\/a>: Most massive<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/the-best-strategy-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best strategy games<\/strong><\/a>: Number crunching<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/best-open-world-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best open world games<\/strong><\/a>: Unlimited exploration<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/the-best-survival-games-on-pc\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best survival games<\/strong><\/a>: Live craft love<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/best-horror-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best horror games<\/strong><\/a>: Fight or flight<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/mmo\/guild-wars-devs-tried-to-escape-the-mmo-branding-in-2005-citing-all-the-things-that-would-become-genre-staples-20-years-later\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guild Wars 3&#8216;s on the horizon\u2014and as part of that release, developer ArenaNet got a little nostalgic in a news post last week. It shared a healthy handful of details on its incoming MMO, including an aim to fix something that shook PCG&#8217;s own Lauren Morton off the second game. It also shared an interesting tidbit about the first Guild Wars game. Namely\u2014try as they might, ArenaNet couldn&#8217;t shake off the MMO tag: &#8220;Guild Wars Reforged is, at its core, a game about a small team: a player and their assembled team of henchmen or hero NPCs or other players they want to bring along with them, overcoming challenges in a predominantly instanced game. &#8220;Unless you invited them along, you never saw other players except&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/guild-wars-devs-tried-to-escape-the-mmo-branding-in-2005-citing-all-the-things-that-would-become-genre-staples-20-years-later\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1613883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[336],"tags":[748,135],"class_list":["post-1613882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc-gamer","tag-games","tag-mmo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Guild Wars&#039; devs tried to escape the MMO branding in 2005, citing all the things that would become genre staples 20 years later | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Guild Wars 3&#039;s on the horizon\u2014and as part of that release, developer ArenaNet got a little nostalgic in a news post last week. 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