"Guild Wars" celebrates its 20th birthday and I feel old

Debora Pape

5.12.2025

Translation: machine translated

Pictures: Debora Pape

The MMORPG "Guild Wars" is celebrating its 20th birthday and the developer is giving the game an update after many years. I want to take a look at it and come across an obstacle - which makes me reminisce.

The loading bar in the update screen of «Guild Wars Reforged» is at 20 per cent and is filling up at a snail's pace of 28 kilobits per second. 42 megabytes are already done, 160 are still missing. Yep, that can take a while. I'm waiting to start a new adventure in «Guild Wars» with the mesmer I've just created. Loading times like this are simply part and parcel of an MMORPG from 2005. But I don't know why the game still penalises me with such waiting times today.

«Guild Wars» is currently celebrating its 20th birthday. That scares me, I realise how old I am. For the developer studio Arenanet, the anniversary is an occasion to revitalise the long-dormant game «with system improvements» (it's not a remaster, say the FAQ) and now call it «Guild Wars Reforged».

Back to the loading screen. Actually, I just wanted to have a look at the game and then write a little birthday post. But now I'm condemned to wait and am forced to let my mind wander.

I rummage through my hard drive and memories

«Guild Wars». It's been a long time. The loading screen music loop and the visuals bring back many memories of my 20 years younger self. The me who, in 2005, couldn't afford a monthly subscription to the brand new «World of Warcraft» that everyone was hot for.

«Guild Wars» didn't require a plan and the gaming magazines praised the fantasy game to the skies. So I scraped together the 45 euros and shortly afterwards held the thick «Guild Wars» box in my hand. It's so thick because it comes with two comprehensive manuals that describe the game world, the character classes and their abilities in detail. Full of anticipation, I studied the book while I waited - as I did today - for what felt like hours until the game was installed.

The loading bar is now at 65 per cent. There's still enough time to scroll through 20-year-old screenshots that have survived several hard drive moves. I can see my dewy level 3 ranger posing next to a pretty watermill in the starting area.

Suddenly I remember things that I hadn't remembered for years: conversations in in-game chat, thoughts and even smells from that time. What a difference a soundtrack on the loading screen and a few screenshots can make!

Escape to the virtual land of Tyria

It's been a difficult year for me. A separation, a move, a professional standstill. I buried myself in games even more than I always had. And «Guild Wars» became the game that made me forget everything else.

The 2000s were the time when games became really graphically beautiful. To speak of photorealism would be an exaggeration, but particle and lighting effects turned a functional, three-dimensional environment into a beautiful game world.

The autumn-themed starting area of «Guild Wars», where all new characters begin their virtual lives, offered the most beautiful graphics I had ever seen. In the area around the city of Ascalon, I took my first steps in the game, completed my first quests and gained my first skills. And oh boy, this is a beautiful starting area! An idyllic ideal, a never-ending autumn day in the countryside (with a few beginner-friendly monsters, but they're part of the game).

It's just a shame that the scenery is irretrievably destroyed after a short time in the game by the progressing background story and transformed into a barren moonscape. Only then does the game really pick up speed. But because I loved the peaceful landscape before the catastrophe so much, I later created more characters with whom I wandered through the innocent idyll again and again.

Of course, the rest of the huge game world is also beautiful for the most part. The snowy mountains with the natural hot springs come to mind. And how I used to imagine walking through the snow flurries myself, lying in the warm water and listening to the wind blowing across the landscape. «Guild Wars» was like going on holiday for me.

More regions were added with the three subsequent DLCs. In the game, the world is my oyster: Mountains, deserts, jungles, the sea with turquoise waters and white beaches, dark forests with cathedral-like buildings, another sea with solidified waves of jade, a city like something out of 1001 Nights - and me as a Ranger, Mesmer, Assassin (and much more) right in the middle of it all.

When things weren't going well in real life, «Guild Wars» helped me to go on adventures with my game character and discover the world. It was a virtual world, but it made no difference to me.

A Phoenix from the Ashes?

While «World of Warcraft» is regularly updated with new content to this day, «Guild Wars» has been largely dormant since 2012, when its successor «Guild Wars 2» was released. I too have turned my attention to many other games and «almost forgot about Guild Wars».

Instead of shutting down the servers and letting the game die for good, the developer now wants to revive it with «Reforged». And why not: there is plenty of content, or in Arenanet's words: «an enchanted world of limitless adventures, a deep and flexible skill-based combat system, PvE and PvP challenges of all kinds and much more». The developer is even planning to release new content.

Now the loading bar is full. My newly created Mesmer spawns in Ascalon, the capital of the starting area. I'm back after all these years. The landscape is a little barren by today's standards, the textures are muddy, but thanks to anti-aliasing there are at least no staircase effects at the edges of the model. The «Reforged» update does not make «Guild Wars» a cutting-edge game. You can tell how old it is. But it is definitely playable.

And what pleases me the most: there's life in Ascalon! There are other people running around asking 20-year-old questions in the chat. For example, how to get a guild cape and whether anyone wants to kill a boss together. Reopening an old game and finding other players there feels like travelling in a time machine. That's really nice.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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