Territory

Guild Wars game servers are divided into territories that correspond roughly to areas of the real world. Every account has a home territory. There is also a global "International" quasi-territory that allows players from all territories to play together. It is common for Heroes' Ascent pick-up groups to form in International Districts.

Territories and guilds
Every guild also belongs to a single territory, set at its creation time to the territory of the guild's creator. Guilds may recruit members or guests from other territories, and alliances may have member guilds from other territories as well.

Every ranked guild has its territory listed on the Guild Ladder. The top guilds in each territory participate in official tournaments and championships.

Territories
Players in the American, Asian and European territories may switch between these three territories using the District List.

Players from other parts of the world may choose either America or Europe. Some early copies of Guild Wars sold in Australia default to Europe, but most recent copies default to America.

In the future players from all the different territories will have access to all the others.

Mainland Chinese version
The mainland Chinese version of Guild Wars was launched in April 2006 by The9 under a three year agreement with NCsoft. Unlike the standard version of Guild Wars, the Chinese version runs on a completely different server hosted and maintained by The9. As such, players of the Chinese version cannot interact with international players at all. The deal with NCsoft ended prematurely, and The9 has shut down all Chinese servers permanently by March 31, 2008.

Use of International Districts
Many players in the American territory intentionally use International Districts, due to less server traffic, and smaller crowds, creating less lag and strain on video processors.