Guild Wars 3 Convinced Me With Just Two Words

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Before we get into Guild Wars 3, I’m going to be potentially annoying for a minute. This is probably a sentiment you’ve heard regularly for the last 14 years: I love the original Guild Wars, but could not get into Guild Wars 2. This was painful for me in 2012, after I had just gotten a new laptop with the express purpose of playing the sequel, having put thousands of hours into the original. My chief disappointments with Guild Wars 2 were the broad structure of quests and missions, and the game’s new take on build crafting.

14 years later, I have already been convinced to play Guild Wars 3. When its reveal trailer dropped at Summer Game Fest, I said out loud, “Holy shit, they’re actually making Guild Wars 3.” It kind of felt like GW2 would go on forever. Nearly a decade-and-a-half of support convinced me that Guild Wars had changed for good. The trailer didn’t immediately dispel my doubts about the series’ direction, but I’ve since been convinced by just two words: skill collection.

Skill Collection Is A Major Pillar Of Guild Wars 3

Guild Wars 3 concept art showing characters looking at a fantasy farm, which is situated under a huge stone arch covered in vines and other foliage.

As so many announcement trailers do, Guild Wars 3‘s tells us almost nothing about the game itself. Take a look at the Guild Wars 3 website, though, and ArenaNet has laid out something of a mission statement. “Guild Wars 3 is an action-adventure MMORPG” – sure, makes sense – “a modern evolution of the genre” – we’ve heard that before – “that blends rich action-combat, character building, and skill collection” – okay, I’m in. “Skill collection” is music to my ears.

For the uninitiated, collecting skills to craft specialized character builds is a major component to the original Guild Wars. It is relatively easy to get your character up to the maximum level of 20, but to really cement a role for yourself in the party, you need the right combination of eight skills. There are more than 1,300 unique skills in Guild Wars, each one specific to a profession. The crown jewel of any build is an elite skill – only one can be equipped at a time, and each needs to be earned by tracking down and defeating a certain boss.

Meta builds predictably arose, and some were so effective that they were in high demand for both PvE and PvP, but there is a lot of fun to be had from tinkering with skills. Especially when you can change your character’s secondary profession, opening up access to another group of skills, the combinations and specializations are almost endless. The prospect of Guild Wars 3 having a similar system alone has convinced me to check it out.

Guild Wars 3 Can Combine The Best Parts Of Its Predecessors

Guild Wars 3 concept art showing various characters at a medieval fantasy market.

I won’t pretend Guild Wars 2 is without merit – it’s just not what I wanted from the sequel to the MMO I dedicated so much time to. It was, at the time, a crucial modernization away from the original Guild Wars‘ rather typical framework, and has gone on to be much more successful. I hope for a similar leap from Guild Wars 3, that it will borrow from both previous installments to make something new while simultaneously revamping the series’ beloved aspects.

It’s a promising sign that a video from the ArenaNet developers (above) promises continued support for both Guild Wars 2 and the original’s remastered version, Guild Wars Reforged. Like other long-running MMOs, Guild Wars has decades of history behind it, and the developers seem keen on not just preserving it, but actively contributing to it. There’s still a long way to go before Guild Wars 3 even enters closed beta next autumn, but it has already secured my attention.