Published:
“The MMO space is desperately crying for someone to do something new; something innovative,” ArenaNet studio head, Colin Johansen says during our live Guild Wars 3 Gamescom demo. “There’s not been a lot in the last decade that’s meaningfully moved the genre forward,” he continues. “There weren’t a lot of new ideas; it felt like it had stagnated a lot.”
Johansen isn’t wrong. We’ve seen countless MMOs come and go in the past few years – first it was Amazon’s New World, then the explosive collapse of Ashes of Creation. Riot Games’ mysterious League of Legends-inspired MMO remains locked behind closed doors; Greg Street’s Fantastic Pixel Castle has bit the dust. MMOs are expensive, but perhaps more importantly, they require time to create – time that, in today’s modern videogame era, simply doesn’t exist.
And yet, players want a new MMO. World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Final Fantasy 14, and Guild Wars 2 remain staples of the genre, but beyond that, there’s not much to choose from. They each do things well – FF14 lets you fluidly change classes, while World of Warcraft’s prestige and storytelling draws players back with each new expansion. These are by no means ‘bad’ games, but they do feel somewhat tired, and in many ways impenetrable to new players.
Guild Wars 3 hopes to solve all of these issues. Johanson says that the team asked itself “what are the player frustrations with the genre? What are the weaknesses? What are the opportunities?” then spent “two years just playing and trying to find solutions.” He claims Guild Wars 3 is that solution; that “modernization” of the MMO. And, after watching a half-hour of gameplay, I believe him.
At Gamescom 2026, I caught a glimpse behind the Guild Wars 3 curtain, with Johansen and Lead Combat Designer Kevin Stocker showcasing gameplay movement and combat. First off, I was relatively shocked by just how ‘clean’ the UI was – MMOs are synonymous with colossal ability bars and myriad damage trackers; Guild Wars 3, by comparison, has very little of that. Johansen notes that, given GW3 will also be launching on console, the team had to accommodate for the “lean in experience on a monitor and the lean back experience on a television.” It’s something that I suspect will divide a lot of MMO veterans straight off the bat, but as someone who suffers from both a tremor and self-induced choice paralysis, I’m very okay with it.
The core focus of the presentation was the game’s ‘Momentum’ systems. In MMOs you’re relatively used to clicking to make your character move. They get to their location, stop for a moment, then move to the next one. It’s perhaps not as start-stop as I’ve said here, but there’s a general sense that, when you’re fighting mobs or firing off attacks, you remain in the one place, or simply rotate around a central focus. That’s not the case in Guild Wars 3.
Momentum does exactly what it says it does: it adds speed and fluidity. You can wallrun, scale trees and sheer rock faces; you can dive down from above to increase your velocity and, subsequently, your damage. In combat, you can push enemies if you’re going fast enough, or launch them into walls and stun them. It’s dynamic – in some ways reminiscent of the way that League of Legends makes its terrain reactive. It feels very action game, but in the best possible way – it’s explosive, and genuinely exciting.
Mounts have also been completely reworked. Similar to ground movement, in other MMOs it feels like your mount arrives, you get on it, it flies, you land, you get off of it, all in that order. Guild Wars 3’s mounting is fluid, and leans into the Momentum system by letting you bomb down on your foes for extra damage. It’s the smoothest MMO traversal has looked, and perhaps the biggest deviation from the genre’s current formula.
Johanson consistently says that Momentum is a “first” for the MMO genre, so I ask the simple question: why? “It’s an incredibly hard problem to solve,” he replies. “That’s a big part of why we haven’t seen it as much.” “It’s a really big technical problem to get action combat feeling really good in multiplayer,” Stocker agrees.
“We wanted to make a more 3D world,” Johanson continues. “MMOs are traditionally laid out like box and canyon worlds – even though it’s 3D, it’s very 2D in level design. We wanted to break out of that, so we started out early on experimenting with stuff like climbing and wallrunning, and how we could have more playable 3D space.”
The duo engage in combat against a troop of spiders which, as expected, have spun a series of webs throughout various caves, making them impenetrable. Lobbing a fireball at them or, in this case, setting your weapon on fire, will ignite the webs, setting the entire area ablaze. Again, it’s obvious that a lot of thought has been put into how best to actually utilize the environment and that aforementioned 3D space, versus just having it as a pretty set piece.
Momentum, and ArenaNet’s more action-esque approach more generally, is something that I suspect will also divide players. On one hand, the slow, methodical approach to MMO combat does feel like it’s become a core part of the genre. On the other hand, it isn’t the most dynamic system – the starting and the stopping does feel and look dated. For longtime MMO players, GW3 will likely be a shock to the system, and perhaps a little too actiony for their liking. For me, however, I like the speed and the feel of Momentum – it’s a systemic overhaul and modernization that I think MMOs sorely need.
Momentum is equally as important in combat. Guild Wars 3 continues to champion teamplay (as almost every MMO does), but in other, currently active titles, it often feels like you’re a solo, damage-dealing cog in a wider boss-killing machine. ArenaNet has worked incredibly hard to improve the interactivity of battle situations with Guild Wars 3: you’ll now be able to chain together different combos, either by yourself, or as a group. In the example we’re given, you can bounce off of a character’s shield and crash down on your foes, using Momentum both to get you into the air, and to increase the damage of your meteor-style crash landing. It’s impressive but, most importantly, it looks fun.
You can pull your mount in here, too. Have them drop you on the shield to, once again, increase your height and the associated damage upon impact. It ties what often feels like disparate MMO systems together to create a really cool, flowing chain that I can’t quite say I’ve seen in other games. Sure, there will always be abilities that, if cast together at the right time, can dish out huge damage or stunlock foes, but there’s still that sense of being one player casting a spell at the right time, versus actively working with other players and their models in real time.
It’s not a huge change to how MMO combat works on paper – it’s familiar enough to not be terrifying, but innovative enough to feel new. I’d argue it’s easily a step up for the genre, and one that I hope will improve team synergy rather than confuse it. It also opens up hundreds of new build pathways and potentially broken combinations which, let’s be real, is any hardcore MMO enthusiast’s dream come true.
Guild Wars 3 has one, clear goal: “modernize” the MMO. From what I’ve seen, albeit just brief chunks of gameplay and combat, I think it’s well primed to do so. While there are a lot of action elements here, the game still feels close enough to the core MMO fantasy to feel like, well, an MMO, just leveled up. It’s genuinely exciting and does feel like the innovation that the genre sorely needs.
“We’ve got 20 million plus Guild Wars fans – they’re the most important group [to us],” Johanson says. “First and foremost, [Guild Wars 3] is for our Guild Wars fans. But, just as important, it’s for MMO fans that are looking for something new. There’s a heck of a lot of them out there who have played MMOs over the last 20 years – some might not have played them for a long time, some might still be playing them today. But we’d love all of them to come and see: here’s a new take on an MMO, come and be part of it.
“We’re really hoping that it also speaks to people who have said, up until now, that ‘I won’t play MMOs and I don’t want anything to do with that.’ We want them to say ‘this is the game that made me fall in love with MMOs.'” Based on what I’ve seen, I think Guild Wars 3 has the capacity to do just that.
