Apropos monatliche Grundgebühr: In nicht allzu ferner Zukunft, "in the second half of 2004", das heißt auf Deutsch etwa Mitte 2005, soll so ein Multimassivteil rauskommen, das keine monatliche Gebühr kostet, Guild Wars. Das Spiel soll vom Prinzip so eine Art Mischung aus Diablo 2 und "klassischen" Online-Rollenspielen wie (z.B.) Ultima Online werden:
Guild Wars has some similarities to existing MMORPGs, but it also has some key differences.

Like existing MMOs, Guild Wars is played entirely online in a secure hosted environment. Thousands of players inhabit the same virtual world. Players can meet new friends in gathering places like towns and outposts where they form parties and go questing with them. Unlike many MMOs, when players form a party and embark upon a quest in Guild Wars, they get their own private copy of the area where the quest takes place. This design eliminates some of the frustrating gameplay elements commonly associated with MMOs, such as spawn camping, kill stealing, and lines to complete a quest.

Guild Wars takes place in a large virtual world made up of many different zones, and players can walk from one end of the world to the other. But Guild Wars eliminates much of the tedium of traveling through the world. Players can instantly return to any safe area (town or outpost) that they've previously visited just by clicking on it in the world overview map.

Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience. Success in Guild Wars is always the result of player skill, not time spent playing or the size of one's guild. As characters progress, they acquire a diverse set of skills and items, enabling them to use new strategies in combat. Players can do battle in open arenas or compete in guild-on-guild warfare or the international tournament. But engaging in combat is always the player's choice; there is no player-killing in cooperative areas of the world.

Finally, unlike existing MMOs, all characters in Guild Wars inhabit the same virtual world -- they are not divided onto different servers or shards -- so players can always team up with or compete against any other player in the world.
Vom Ansatz hört sich das schonmal nicht schlecht an - weniger ödes Gerenne und kein Gedrängel an den besten Jagdgründen...