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[edit]
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.
Territories[edit]
| Territory | Current language districts | Opened | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current territories | |||
| America | English | April 28th, 2005 | Relates to North/South America. |
| Asia | Korean, Traditional Chinese | April 28th, 2005 | Formerly Korea, presumably renamed in the January 17th, 2008 update. |
| Europe | English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish | April 28th, 2005 | Relates to the countries around Europe. |
| International | N/A | April 28th, 2005 | Not technically a territory. |
| Japan | Japanese | January 26th, 2006 | Travel restrictions were dropped in the October 9th, 2008 update. |
| Former territories | |||
| Taiwan | Chinese | February 6th, 2006 | Encompassed Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Due to legal changes, the territory has been shut down, and accounts were migrated to the North American servers in the April 10th, 2008 update. |
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[edit]
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[edit]
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.
PvP server Assignment[edit]
The game decides the regional server on which a PvP match will be played, based upon which region the majority of accounts are assigned to. Where there is a tie, such as 8 European and 8 North American, a server will be selected at random. Whether a match is played on the German, American, or Korean data center is significant because latency plays a major role in PvP game balance.
Using a VPN you can create a Korean account and buy the game directly from ArenaNet. This was most recently tested in December 2024. "When you buy the game from ANet Korea, the key will then set the game in Korean. In options you can change it back to English." Home territory can not be changed for existing accounts.
