In 2005, ArenaNet released Guild Wars, the first part of a game series that remains very popular today thanks to Guild Wars 2. However, the player count for the first part has tripled in recent years. Therefore, new servers are now being launched in Korea.
What about Guild Wars 1?
- Guild Wars 1 released its last expansion in 2009. Afterwards, the content updates became smaller until Guild Wars 2, the successor, was released in 2012.
- In the first years after release, the first part of Guild Wars still received regular balance adjustments and smaller patches, but support was gradually scaled down.
- In 2018, a fire occurred at the game’s servers, and they were subsequently completely moved to Amazon’s cloud. However, this significantly worsened the ping for players from Asia.
- The Game Director of Guild Wars 1 has now come forward and provided insight behind the scenes. The player count is said to have more than tripled since 2018, which is why some adjustments are now being made.
New servers in Korea and the upcoming anniversary in April
What is changing? On April 26, Guild Wars celebrates its 17th birthday. In conjunction with this, a local data center for players from Asia was opened on April 14. The location is Seoul, Korea. This aims to reintroduce Asian players to the old title.
For years, the developers at ArenaNet have emphasized that Guild Wars 1 will not be shut down anytime soon. This new step reinforces that statement.
The YouTuber TheLazyPeon took a closer look at Guild Wars 1 again in 2021:
Are there really no more updates? Yes, there are. In 2019, there was a surprising patch that made some “Quality of Life” changes. It brought new graphics adjustments, a master volume slider, a clock, and a borderless window mode that had not existed before.
In April 2020, new elite skills for PvE were introduced for the 15th birthday that are simply meant to be fun (via GuildWiki.) They can only be earned during the birthday event, which will also start at the end of April this year and last for two weeks.
Whether there will be a new feature for the birthday in 2022 is currently unknown. However, some on reddit hope for it due to the good player numbers in recent years.
Guild Wars 1 has a strong class system, but lack of content makes it unattractive
Should you still start Guild Wars 1 now? Maybe. It is clear that this game will not receive major content updates anymore. So it is not an MMO that you will play for years.
However, Guild Wars can especially impress with its cool build system. Each class has over 250 abilities, and you can also have a “secondary class,” which then provides access to an additional 250 skills.
In the combat zones, dungeons, and PvP you can only use 8 of these abilities. Therefore, you need to prepare a suitable build in advance.
Guild Wars 1 offers a lot of content for little money with all 3 campaigns and the expansion (the Complete Collection costs around the official shop for about 40 euros):
- Just with the story quests and missions, you can spend over 100 hours of gameplay. Following that are numerous side quests and smaller stories.
- There are many different ways to enhance your characters visually and gameplay-wise.
- Some bosses and missions are really challenging and fun.
- The game offers you plenty of elaborate achievements with its title system, including exploring all maps at 100 % or defeating all enemies on all maps in hard mode.
Another special feature is that you can exchange earned accomplishments in Guild Wars 1 for skins and achievement points in the successor Guild Wars 2 thanks to the Hall of Monuments.
More about the structure of Guild Wars 1 can be found in this special:
Why Guild Wars 1 is still interesting 15 years after its release
