Gameplay

The game world of Tyria is presented as a number of instanced zones accessible through staging areas known as towns. These staging areas are fully navigable 3D maps where the player avatars may interact with each other or with NPCs that provide services such as merchanting or storage. From a town, players can enter instanced gaming areas either by crossing the border of the town or by initiating a storyline mission. Each instance is allocated freshly for the adventuring party that enters it. As the characters progress in the story or explore the game world, they gain access to additional towns. Players can transport their characters instantly between towns using the game-world's map.

Player characters in Guild Wars are controlled from an over-head third person perspective in a 3D game environment (but with only two degrees of freedom: characters cannot move vertically; first person perspective is available, but usually too cumbersome to play). For every new character, the player can choose to create a role-playing character that begins in low level areas, or a PvP-only character at maximum level and the best equipment. Both modes encourage teaming up with other players or AI controlled NPCs known as henchmen.

The six core professions.

Player characters have a fixed primary proffesions, determined at creation time, which dictates their appearance, certain primary attributes, and the kinds of armor available to them. The warrior profession, for example, has access to the primary Strength attribute that increases their effectiveness with martial weapons, and is able to wear heavy armor providing the highest protection of all professions. Elementalists, on the other hand, wear weaker armor, but can use their primary Energy Storage attribute to have a much greater energy pool than other professions. Player characters can also choose a variable secondary profession that gives them access to all the skills and secondary attributes of that profession. A Warrior/Elementalist (abbreviated in-game as W/E), therefore, is a warrior who may use spells in combat, similar to the Spellsword archetype from RPGs.

All player characters have a maximum character level of 20 that is reached fairly early on in the co-operative story. Armor and weapons also have fixed maximum stats and a fixed variety of modifiers, and these items at the highest stats are easily attainable. Most of the gameplay is balanced around a party of eight level 20 players sporting items with maximum stats. The choice of armor and weapons determine the character's health points. Unlike most RPGs, Guild Wars has no healing potions; instead, the party's health is managed by a number of healing skills in every class. In addition, a character regenerates health if he or she sustains or deals no damage for a certain period. The primary profession and attributes determine the character's energy, which also regenerates (at a fixed profession-dependent rate).

Players may customize their character appearance from a fixed palette of face and hair models, skin color, height of the avatar, and by their choice of armor. All armor and weapons in the game can be dyed to further differentiate the characters. Finally, characters may display their guild affiliation and, optionally, a title they have earned for in-game achievements. The most prestigious titles often require significant investment of time and often in-game money.

ArenaNet originally intended that co-operative characters would continue to competitive content as the end-game for a player. The co-operative and competitive modes of the game were therefore closely linked, sharing nearly all gameplay mechanics. The few differences that exist are limited to a collection of PvE-only skills that are not balanced for competitive use. However two communities of gamers have formed around each game type: those who play Guild Wars strictly as a co-operative RPG and those who play it as a competitive PvP game;^] updates to the game after the release of Prophecies allowed this division to continue further.