Guild Wars 2 (2012)
Guild Wars 2 is a 2012 role-playing (rpg) video game made by ArenaNet and NCSOFT.
Tyria still carries the scars of an age of rising Elder Dragons, and ArenaNet drops you in as one more adventurer looking to matter. The pitch was buy-once, play-free: a persistent fantasy world with fast, dodge-heavy combat, dynamic events that flare up in the open world, structured and world-versus-world PvP, and no monthly bill. Five playable races and eight professions shape how you fight and where you belong. Handcrafted zones reward wandering, and public events pull strangers into the same battle without a party invite. An MMORPG built for exploring first and grinding second.
Quick answers
What is Guild Wars 2 about?
Tyria still carries the scars of an age of rising Elder Dragons, and ArenaNet drops you in as one more adventurer looking to matter. The pitch was buy-once, play-free: a persistent fantasy world with fast, dodge-heavy combat, dynamic events that flare up in the open world, structured and world-versus-world PvP, and no monthly bill. Five playable races and eight professions shape how you fight and where you belong. Handcrafted zones reward wandering, and public events pull strangers into the same battle without a party invite. An MMORPG built for exploring first and grinding second.
When was Guild Wars 2 released?
Guild Wars 2 was released on 25 August 2012.
Who made Guild Wars 2?
Guild Wars 2 was made by ArenaNet and NCSOFT.
Similar games
Explore Guild Wars 2 guides
A few thoughts on Guild Wars 2
The dragon-haunted high fantasy sits close to House of the Dragon and the warring-realm sweep of Game of Thrones. For a soundtrack to long expeditions across Tyria, the choir and horns of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack match the scale. Readers chasing the same dragon-and-rider fantasy can pick up Brisingr and the rest of Paolini's Inheritance cycle.
Fantasy worlds where dragons decide who survives
Tyria's Elder Dragons force every race and faction in Guild Wars 2 to pick a side or get swallowed, and these carry the same scale. House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones both turn a dragon's presence into a fight over the whole realm, Brisingr follows a rider bound to a dragon amid a rebellion, and Oathbringer piles war after war onto a world that keeps cracking further.
Open-world fantasy games built for exploring before grinding
Guild Wars 2 was pitched around wandering handcrafted zones and stumbling into public events, not chasing a checklist, and these share that priority. The Witcher 3 and Skyrim both reward players who wander off the main quest, Red Dead Redemption 2 slows travel down until the landscape becomes the point, and God of War lets its Norse world sit quietly between battles.
Fantasy adventures where the world is worth exploring for its own sake
Guild Wars 2 hands you five races and eight professions and then just lets you wander Tyria, and these comics carry the same wonder-first approach. Made in Abyss sends explorers chasing a bottomless unknown, Inuyasha splits its cast between two worlds worth getting lost in, Saint Seiya builds a whole mythology around wandering warriors, and Fullmetal Alchemist treats its own magic system as a place worth mapping.