Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 is the MMORPG ArenaNet built in 2012 to push back against several genre rules, and it still carries that personality today. Its signature is fast, mobile combat where dodging, repositioning and chaining skills matter more than standing still to grind out a rotation. The open world runs on dynamic events and a cooperative design with no fighting over loot or objectives: bumping into another player almost always helps and rarely competes. You can check the game and its current state on the official site or its Steam page.

A big part of its identity is horizontal progression: you reach max level (80) fairly quickly, and from there the game stops treating that number as a race. Top-tier gear is reachable without brutal time gates, so coming back after months away doesn't leave you obsolete overnight. On top of that sits a healthy obsession with cosmetic customization: much of the long-term content is collecting skins, dyes and building your own look.

On the large scale, its flagship is World vs. World (WvW): battles of hundreds of players split across three sides fighting over persistent maps for days on end. For group PvE there are fractals, raids and strikes; for the competitive crowd, separate structured PvP arenas. Not everything shines equally —the main story starts weak and picks up with the expansions— but the variety of ways to play is real, and each mode has its own community.

The model is Buy to Play, no subscription. The base game has been free since 2015 and there's never a monthly fee. What you pay for are the expansions, each a one-time purchase: the Starter Pack on Steam runs about USD 19.99; classic bundles like Heart of Thorns + Path of Fire and End of Dragons sit around USD 29.99; and the recent ones —Secrets of the Obscure, Janthir Wilds and the sixth, Visions of Eternity— cost USD 24.99 apiece. If you'd rather grab it all at once, the Elder Dragon Saga Complete Collection bundles the bulk for roughly USD 99.97.

The rest of the monetization lives in the gem store and is almost entirely cosmetic or convenience: skins, dyes, inventory expansions, appearance changes. There are no aggressive loot boxes and no gameplay locked behind an extra paywall, which makes it one of the most wallet-friendly MMOs around.

GW2 is alive and actively supported. Its current expansion, Visions of Eternity, launched on October 28, 2025: it takes the action to the island of Castora and adds new elite specializations, graphical upgrades and the homestead housing system. Its content rolls out across four quarterly drops through 2026, and the first major update —set for February 3, 2026— unifies raids and strikes, adds a new raid and introduces fashion templates.

In June 2026, ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 3 (PC and PS5, with a beta planned for autumn 2027) and made clear that GW2 isn't being abandoned: after the Visions of Eternity cycle wraps, there'll be a roughly 18-month pause in expansions to modernize old systems and introduce the Hall of Monuments that will link both games, with expansions resuming after GW3 ships. The player base backs it up: on Steam, recent reviews are Very Positive (81%) and all-time reviews are Very Positive too (88%).

It's a great entry point if you want a living-world, cooperative MMO without the pressure of a monthly fee, and a comfortable home if you value exploration and cosmetic collecting over grinding numbers. The honest downsides: the storytelling is uneven —especially early on—, the tangle of systems can overwhelm at first, and WvW has carried balance and queue problems for years. If none of that scares you off, few MMOs let you get in for free and stay this long without asking for your card every month.