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Guild Wars 3 Promises Momentum-Driven Movement and Smaller-Scale Combat

ArenaNet plans a late-2027 beta on PC and PlayStation 5 to trial evolved megaservers and four-player party systems.

Overview

  • ArenaNet confirmed Guild Wars 3 is built on Unreal Engine 5, has been in development for about four years, and will support PC and PlayStation 5.
  • The studio is redesigning traversal around momentum — fast, fluid moves like gliding and wall‑running that affect combat and rely on new networking and sync work.
  • Combat will use new contextual skills and stackable cooperative effects so players can combine conditions like freezing to change enemy behavior.
  • Open-world combat encounters will be deliberately smaller, capped at roughly 20 players to keep fights readable, while social hubs will support much larger populations via evolved megaservers.
  • ArenaNet says it will keep updating the original Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 after GW3 launches, and the smaller combat scale may push players who want massive battles to continue playing GW2.