Party

A party is a group of players who get together to form a temporary cooperative playing unit in Guild Wars. Parties are also called "groups", especially in various abbreviations such as "Looking For Group (LFG)" and "Group Looking For (GLF)". The word "team" is also used, particularly in PvP matches, which often pit the Red Team against the Blue Team, and sometimes a few other-colored groups.

Parties must be formed in towns or outposts and cannot be formed while in a quest, mission or explorable area — in fact, the only way to see another player character in these areas is to join a party before entering those instances.

Party composition
Party members are listed in the Party Window in order of invitation to the party. The player whose name appears at the top of the window is the leader.

In addition to players, a party may contain henchmen and heroes, which are AI-controlled characters that act as players. Henchmen must be added to the party by the leader, and are always under the leader's limited control. Heroes may be added by any player who has access to them, and will be under the control of that player. Ranger pets are also listed in the party window, in the "Pet" section for their owners and in the "Allies" section for others. Important quest and mission NPCs also appear in the Allies section.

A party may consist of a single player; a player must even face certain quests alone. In PvE campaigns, the maximum party size starts at two or four, and progresses to eight at a rate dependent on the campaign. Two of the elite missions allow twelve. These are The Deep and Urgoz's Warren. PvP matches require parties of four or eight, or in the case of an Alliance Battle: three parties of four.

Party management
All regular party management must occur inside a town or outpost. Here, an individual player can invite other players to join up. If both players are solo or leaders of same-sized parties (heroes included), the player who sent the invite will become the leader of the new joined force; otherwise the leader of the larger party takes the lead.

A leader can remove a member from the party by clicking on their name in the party window or other way targeting them in the outpost and using the "kick" button; in the same case, a member can voluntarily press the "leave" button or map-travel and accept the "you will leave your team" warning.

While in a town or an outpost, the leader can transport the entire party via map-travel, pressing the 'enter mission' button or by speaking to certain NPCs with travel or mission options; a ten-second countdown will appear in the case of map-traveling or entering a mission, with the leader being given the option to cancel this action. Moving a party to a different outpost is only possible if all of the party members have the target outpost available and the target outpost's size restriction is larger than or equal to the current size of the party. If both conditions are not met a warning will appear, similar to the one gotten by party members attempting to map-travel.

Any member leaving any area through a zone portal will transfer the entire party through that portal regardless of their location; this is both the basis of running and a major annoyance if other members were performing errands in the previous location.

In the field
When in the field, leave and kick buttons are no longer available. This may be to discourage ragequitting, as well as leaders kicking members before they can complete some task they've put considerable effort into.

Players can still leave via map-travel (with a warning dialog), including the leader. The party map-travel will not work outside of a town or outpost, so warping to an outpost will require some coordination and reforming the party.

Players who map out or quit the game will show grey health bars in the party window; these grey bars will be removed from the party window upon changing areas together with the heroes owned by players that left. Any heroes controlled by an absent member will be assigned to the party leader, albeit with only henchman-style control (managing skill use and specific flagging is not possible; however, it is possible to flag them all at once). If the leader abandons the party, the member immediately below the leader in the party window will become the new leader.

If the party is in a PvP match, players leaving via map-travel or game exit might be penalized under the Dishonorable Combatant System.

The party can safely return to the last town or outpost they visited if every party member resigns. This will kill all living party members in the resigned team, effectively causing a consensual wipe, but will not be considered a death for the members killed this way; however, in some cases it might. A team resign can also be used to forfeit and concede defeat in a PvP match.

An entire team can be automatically relocated via a regular party wipe; the exact consequences vary depending on the situation.