Guild Wars 3 developer ArenaNet believes its upcoming MMO will provide one thing genuinely new within the style, which it believes has develop into “stagnated.”
One of many greatest bulletins at Summer season Recreation Fest 2026 was Guild Wars 3, the sequel to the massively standard Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Talking to IGN at IGN Stay, ArenaNet studio head Colin Johanson mentioned Guild Wars 3 will observe within the footsteps of its predecessors by going towards the grain within the MMO house.
Guild Wars 1 got here out in 2005 and was notable for not having a subscription price at a time when most MMOs had one. Guild Wars 2 adopted in 2012 with a singular strategy to providing content material referred to as “horizontal development.” And Guild Wars 3, Johanson mentioned, will provide one thing distinctive for MMOs as soon as once more.
“We really feel like proper now, the style that we make our recreation in, within the MMO style — and we have constantly heard this from all of you too — that you just really feel like this style is prepared for one thing new, that it’s stagnated, that we have all been enjoying the identical video games for probably the most half for over a decade,” he mentioned. “And I believe that is when ArenaNet’s at its finest, once we problem ourselves and say, ‘Let’s go resolve for the issues and innovate.’
“And it is dangerous. It is a difficult factor to do. We may journey and fall flat on our face by attempting to invent new concepts after which wrap our recreation round these. However I do not assume recreation genres transfer ahead until individuals are prepared to do this. And so we’re going to fearlessly cost ahead and check out a bunch of latest concepts. And we actually hope individuals love them and we’ll discover out over the subsequent couple of years.”
So, how precisely will Guild Wars 3 obtain this? Johanson spoke concerning the significance of “the enjoyment of motion,” which it’s pushing in Guild Wars 3. The developer is hoping to deliver among the parts you’d historically discover in motion video games into an MMO, with momentum enjoying a key position. In Guild Wars 3 your momentum transfers between all of the completely different belongings you do, which ought to really feel distinctive for an MMO given how static motion can usually really feel in different video games within the style. Elsewhere, Guild Wars 3’s fight system appears like it is going to be distinctive for an MMO, and given Guild Wars 3 is coming to console in addition to PC, these motion RPG parts shall be entrance and heart.
This all ties into the concept Guild Wars 3 shall be an MMO for anybody and everybody. It’s set 1,200 years earlier than Guild Wars 1, simply earlier than the primary Guild Struggle breaks out, and simply after one of many gods has been deposed. Resulting from this, all gamers are coming in on a comparatively equal footing, given there’s a small quantity of recorded historical past about this timeline within the lore. So, there shall be loads of mysteries to resolve in what looks like one thing of a reset second for Guild Wars.
However past recreation mechanics and the plot, ArenaNet is totally rejecting subscription charges and battle passes for Guild Wars 3. Whereas no subscription price isn’t notably stunning given how the earlier video games have labored, no battle passes is definitely information at a time when so many video games — MMOs included — have embraced them.
“It’s a must to take into consideration questions like that essentially from the very starting as you assemble your recreation,” Johanson mentioned. “And I believe we’ve a really lengthy historical past at ArenaNet. Once more, if you begin with fixing for participant issues and making video games for gamers first, it forces us to ask a number of these questions. How will we make a recreation that gamers can play as a lot or as little as they need? I believe there’s a number of challenges with the MMO house proper now, the place there is a notion for gamers — and I am certain lots of you’ve got felt this — of like, hey, someone tries to inform you to go play this subsequent nice MMO and your first response is, ‘I haven’t got time for that.’ It is like a second job, and you need to mainly surrender a piece of your life to have interaction with many MMOs.
“And I believe that notion and fixing for that notion is one thing that we have at all times needed to proceed to resolve for at ArenaNet. We began it with no subscription charges. Our idea of horizontal development, the place you may play our recreation for some time, take a break, go play different video games. That is okay. We do not have something that is holding you hostage to maintain enjoying. After which come again if you see one thing cool you wish to play once more. All of that inspiration and idea is being utilized to Guild Wars 3 as nicely.”
“I believe there’s develop into a contemporary model of the subscription that we have seen evolve over the previous couple of years and even longer than that, in battle passes and paid battle passes, the place it is mainly a subscription type of hidden and wrapped with different stuff round it,” Johanson continued. “We have challenged ourselves to ask the identical query: can we make a recreation like this that does not have a subscription price and does not have a battle go price buried in it as nicely? As a result of we expect gamers are sick of these, too.
“So this shall be a recreation, you should purchase it. You may play it as a lot or as little as you need. We are going to respect our gamers’ time. And in the event that they adore it, we’ll produce other stuff that they’ll purchase from us sooner or later. However we’re not going to carry their time hostage and we would like them to have the ability to go play different video games.”
Guild Wars 3 goes into beta on the finish of subsequent 12 months, so it’s early days. There shall be far more to study its mechanics and content material supply between at times, so we’ll get a clearer concept of what to anticipate earlier than the beta goes stay. Within the meantime, ArenaNet has introduced that it plans to proceed to help Guild Wars 1 and a couple of “far into the longer term.”
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.