Zone

A map zone, or "spawn" as they are called internally by some ArenaNet members, are a technical entity in the game world of Guild Wars.

They consists of a number of variables.
 * A name, which is not always unique.
 * A region to which they belong.
 * A 'Terrain block' that is used as the underlying territory.
 * A number that determines whether the instance is a staging or a combat area &mdash; staging areas are persistent, massively multiplayer, and can have multiple districts; combat areas are instanced and contain only the player characters that entered at creation of the instance.
 * A set of objectives in some of them (see mission.)
 * A long list of entities that are to 'spawn' in them.
 * NPC creatures.
 * Map objects, interactive or not.
 * Portals, one way of movement to another zone.

Quests can further affect the entities that spawn.

Zoning
Refers to moving into a new zone. Rezoning refers to leaving a zone and immediately reentering. This has the following effects:


 * Health and energy are fully restored
 * Any dead party member or pets are resurrected.
 * All bundles are removed.
 * Any minions are destroyed.
 * Both zones are are recreated (which re-populates foes, redistributes bosses and chests, and resets any unfinished quests).


 * All effects (hexes, conditions, ...) are removed from all characters, with two exceptions:
 * Morale Boosts and Death Penalty are retained (when entering a new combat area).
 * A character in a Siege Devourer will remain with it (when traveling to another zone in the Charr Homelands).

There are several ways to zone:
 * Using a portal, from another zone.
 * Via map travel to a town or outpost.
 * Through an NPC's dialogue option, which can be used to continue a quest, start a mission, or enter an otherwise restricted area.
 * Waiting for a timer to expire, when starting a mission, completing certain missions, defeating a dungeon boss or boss-like foe, or ending a PvP match.
 * By using the /resign emote, which, when used by all players in the party, allows the leader to return the group to the last-used staging area.


 * There are various types of zones:
 * Staging area - a place you can meet other random players, divided into districts
 * Town
 * Port
 * Outpost - including those for Cooperative Missions, Competitive Missions, Challenge Missions, etc.
 * Hidden
 * PvP location - staging area before entering the arena to fight
 * Guild Hall
 * Instanced area - a place where your party gets a unique instance of the game
 * Explorable area - a map instance where you can kill monsters, vanquish, or complete quests
 * Mission area/instance - Some missions have an exclusive map, other missions share the same terrain with explorable areas.
 * Quest instance - while most quests simply take place in an explorable area with additional NPC/monster/objects spawned, some quests creates a completely new instance sharing only the terrain of the explorable area (similar to missions).
 * Dungeon
 * Arena

"To Zone"
"To zone" means to travel through an area boundary or using the map to go to a new zone. Example: "Everybody ready to zone in?", "Just zone, all the dead players will come back to life." This has the same general meaning as the term rezone, with slightly different usage.