It has been almost 12 months ago that I stopped power-playing Guild Wars. Back then, I would sign in about every day to explore the wide worlds of NCsoft's MMO with some companions: either real-life buddies or heroic NPCs. I was never much into PvP, but also not into PvE either. I somehow resented the idea to fight through each mission. There were other ways in Guild Wars to advance that I grew fond of: running right through the middle.

As leader of a professional runners' guild I rather avoided confrontations with enemies. We used our skill bar for defensive purposes instead, and to increase our running speed. We made a lot of money from transporting "passengers" from point A to B, A being some starter town and B a place where you could buy better armor, but that was heavily guarded by high-level enemies. Achieving all this without ever touching the enemies' health bars had a certain appeal. Running has become a competitive sport in Guild Wars, one with which you can still make a lot of in-game money (running builds can be found about everywhere). And it is the usage of skills over your character level or equipment (combined with no monthly fees) that kept Guild Wars so attractive to me over the time. I tried other MMOs (Ultima Online, Archlord, World of Warcraft) but the concept of level-grinding (time investment over true skill) was never what I longed for. Whether it's running, PvP-ing or solo-fighting through missions: Without the selection of proper skills and their on-time usage you are likely to fail in Guild Wars whether you are involved in PvP or PvE.

More than 5 million units of the Guild Wars franchise were sold. The more I thought back to the fully inhabited game world I have known, the more I was shocked to finally return to the game now and see near-empty servers. In my active Guild Wars career, until one year ago, servers stacked up to seven districts or more in any given major town. Now you don't see more than one active district in most towns. Most players inhabit the world of the highly-acclaimed Nightfall and Eye of the North. There you can still find the highest player concentration. When I asked my old-time comrades about it, they all replied in the same way: most Guild Warians are playing World of Warcraft now! While NCsoft has been feverishly working on Guild Wars 2, which has been delayed to 2009, at best, the challenges and content of Guild Wars 1 stagnated, and the last expansion pack Eye of the North wore out.

Obviously, many MMORPGs sprout like mushrooms out of practically nowhere. But apparently, more and more go down as well (see our news on Age of Conan). To be fair, Guild Wars has lasted over three and a half years now. It's done its duty well.