Guild Wars 3 is the First MMO for Fans with ‘Real-Life Schedules’ - Polygon.com

The genre hasn't changed in 20 years. ArenaNet wants to fix that

Colin Johanson is annoyed with MMOs, though you wouldn't necessarily know it. The studio director at Guild Wars developer ArenaNet is well known for his beaming grin; he seems youthful for someone who's been making online games since the 1990s. Demoing the upcoming Guild Wars 3 over Discord to a bunch of games media (including Polygon), he maintains an enthusiastic, upbeat demeanor at all times — even when he cheerfully rips into the genre of massively multiplayer online games that he's spent most of his career working on. The problem? MMOs have gone stale.

"We've seen very few new MMOs in the last decade, and the overwhelming majority of us are still playing the same games from 10 to 20 years ago," Johanson says, citing Guild Wars 2 (2012), The Elder Scrolls Online (2014), World of Warcraft (2004), Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011) and Final Fantasy 14 (2013). "There's been very little new in the last decade, and a lot of those games either don't exist anymore or were canceled in development. We see MMO fans constantly clamoring for something new, saying this genre desperately needs something new to move it forward right now."

Johanson is unsparing about where he feels the genre has fallen behind. "Minute-to-minute game play in an MMO has stagnated, and it is very much the same types of game experiences we've been having for a very long time," he says, meaning the slightly detached, action-bar-focused RPG gameplay of most MMOs. So movement, combat feel, and "quicker, more rewarding gameplay moments," are a major focus for Guild Wars 3.

Something else that frustrates Johanson is the (not inaccurate) assumption among many gamers that they simply don't have time to play MMOs: "MMOs are like second jobs. There's no way that I can engage with that," as Johanson puts it. He calls out the "perceived preparing to have fun window" that sees every game session begin with admin like inventory, quest, and character build management, or syncing up with friends. "If you don't have a couple of hours available, you're just not gonna play an MMO," he says. "One of the most fundamental questions that we focused on with Guild Wars 3 is how do we make this genre have a limit on 'preparing to have fun' and be much more approachable, while also still having the depth of an MMO." Johanson wants players to be able to progress their characters and do meaningful things within the game in the space of a 30-minute lunch break.

Johanson isn't done yet, though; he's prepared to touch the third rail of MMO design, which is that most of these games (especially the ones that charge subscriptions) are intentionally designed to lock their players into exclusive, time-consuming hamster wheels. "Having a healthy relationship with an MMO is an area that we got into with Guild Wars 2 that we want to double down on in Guild Wars 3," he says. "You could set this game down and go play a bunch of other games and come back when the next expansion comes out, and that's OK. That's a totally healthy relationship to have with the game, and we don't need to demand that you be in this game 24/7 to stay relevant and to stay up with everybody else."

For Johanson, this "foundational player problem" is an opportunity to make MMOs more approachable, not just for a broader audience, but for jaded and overwhelmed MMO fans with "real-life schedules" and other games to play. And this is what Guild Wars 3 is all about.

It's quite a manifesto. Johanson isn't the first to say it, although as game director for the relatively spry and streamlined Guild Wars 2, he has the bonafides to back it up. Based on a short demonstration of pre-alpha gameplay, Guild Wars 3 goes much further in its attempt to move MMOs out of the 2000s.

Guild Wars 3 is in development for PC and PlayStation 5, using the ubiquitous Unreal Engine 5 game engine, with a beta planned for fall 2027. ArenaNet describes it as an "action-adventure MMO," and the studio has clearly taken inspiration from single-player games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and God of War (2018). It's set 1,000 years before the first Guild Wars game, exploring the origin of the gods — a "great entry point" for new players.

Johanson says he'll have much more to say about all the different ways Guild Wars 3 is tackling the obsolescence of MMOs in the future, but today's demo is squarely focused on combat and what ArenaNet calls "the joy of movement." Fluid traversal is key to Guild Wars 3, with Zelda-style climbing and paragliding, and action-game parkour staples like mantling and wall-running.

What really fuels the physicality of the movement and the combat is the way the game handles momentum. Building momentum as you move and using this to enhance attacks is key in Guild Wars 3; a warrior's ground-pound attack, for example, is much more effective if you preface it with a run and a glide, building up speed, and then execute the attack from midair. Movement and combat are designed for gamepad play, and seem quite far removed from the very digital and segmented gameplay style of most MMOs, which was largely enforced by the limited capabilities of servers and internet connections in the 2000s.

Environmental positioning plays a big part in combat — you can knock enemies into terrain and stun them, or kick them off cliffs — while multiplayer gameplay feeds on discovering skill combinations between the different classes. The warrior can launch other players into the air from their shield, enhancing momentum and lines of sight, while the ranger can create a Polar Vortex that adds ice damage to the skills of any player that enters it. Monsters don't have momentum, but they have unique traversal and combat skills that alter according to where they are in the environment.

ArenaNet's designers are consistently looking for ways to make MMO combat less rigid and more dynamic. Johanson gives the example of status effects, which in a traditional MMO are either applied or not, but which in Guild Wars 3 might move through phases. Enemies affected with cold might begin slightly sluggish, get slowed further by every cold-based attack, and finally freeze in a block of ice that, when critically damaged, explodes and does damage to other surrounding enemies. ArenaNet is working hard to minimize the often crowded UI of MMOs and make as much information as possible readable in the action and animation on the battlefield.

Build customization has always been an important component of Guild Wars, and this might be Guild Wars 3's most traditional element. ArenaNet isn't ready to go into specifics on it, but Johanson said that at the moment, the game will allow players to tinker with their builds freely in most scenarios, swapping out skills and talents to suit the enemies at hand.

Given all this, it's reasonable to wonder how much of an MMO Guild Wars 3 will really be. The first Guild Wars was a small-scale, party-based action-RPG that, you could argue, only just scrapes into the "massively multiplayer" class. Guild Wars 2, by contrast, was focused on huge in-world events that could draw hundreds of players.

Guild Wars 3 is trending smaller; Johanson says ArenaNet's aim is that "each player on screen really matters," and he thinks a maximum of around 20 is the sweet spot for combat. In town, you might see much more than that. The game rejects old-school MMO server architecture, using dynamic overlapping instances that will prioritize bringing friends, guildmates, and friends of friends into your game. Guild Wars 3 is "infinitely spinning up and spinning down maps" based on who's online, a task made much more complex by ArenaNet's determination not to have any loading screens in the game. But the end result should be simple and seamless, Johanson says: "Everyone can always play together."

Visually, the early build of Guild Wars 3 I saw looked like a contemporary, if not cutting-edge, fantasy action-RPG. Like its predecessors, its art style is crisp and colorful: neither as exaggerated as Warcraft, as filigree as Final Fantasy, nor as realistic as The Elder Scrolls, but with elements of all three. The solidity of the models and fluidity of the animation are definitely a cut above what MMO players will be used to.

One reason MMOs have stagnated is that developers have found it's better to keep old games running than try to migrate their communities to new sequels. ArenaNet, which doesn't charge subscriptions for its games, doesn't really think like this; last year, the studio released Guild Wars Reforged, a modern update of the first game, and Johanson hopes to run all three Guild Wars games alongside each other. Maybe this isn't how you dislodge WoW and FF14 from their extremely well-established thrones. But maybe it is how you bring MMOs kicking and screaming into the 2020s.