Guild Wars

Guild Wars is a fantasy MMORPG that is free to play online once the initial software is purchased. 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.

Campaigns
The first campaign, Guild Wars: Prophecies (originally named Guild Wars), was released on April 28, 2005. The Prophecies storyline is situated on the continent of Tyria and revolves around the Flameseeker Prophecy, a prophecy made by an ancient dragon.

Prophecies was followed by Guild Wars: Factions on April 28, 2006, released exactly a year after Prophecies. Factions is situated on the small southern continent of Cantha that is separated from Tyria by a vast ocean. The events of the Factions campaign concern the return from death of a corrupted bodyguard named Shiro Tagachi. Factions features a global persistent war between the rival vassal nations of Cantha, the Luxons and the Kurzicks, and the notion of guild alliances.

The third campaign, Guild Wars: Nightfall, was released on October 27, 2006. Nightfall features the arid continent of Elona, joined to southern Tyria across a vast desert. Nightfall introduced heroes, advanced computer-controlled units that can be micro-managed by players, including the ability to customize their skill layout and equipment.

Scrapping their initial plans for a fourth campaign, ArenaNet has released an expansion pack, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, to the previous three campaigns on August 31, 2007.

ArenaNet announced in PC Gamer Issue 161 (May 2007) about their plans of releasing a whole new Guild Wars 2 that would not be fully compatible with the rest.

Characters
An extensive list of the main characters in the series can be found at Guild Wars characters.