Players are piling in to the Guild Wars remaster, and it's giving the servers trouble: 'Demand for Guild Wars Reforged blew past our projections'

There's still nothing quite like the original Guild Wars. It came out before World of Warcraft had crystallized the face of the modern MMORPG, and was as inspired by Magic: The Gathering as it was by Everquest or Ultima. It turned out as more of a co-op ARPG with shared town hubs, dual-class deckbuilding, and a cutscene-driven narrative—and that unique confluence of inspirations may be why it's still popular today. So popular, in fact, that it's even a surprise to developer ArenaNet.

The game's recent remaster, Guild Wars Reforged, launched Wednesday as a free update for existing players and an inexpensive way to get in for newbies. While most Guild Wars fans are on to the game's more traditionally MMO-ish sequel, Reforged still brought the game's concurrent player peak on Steam up to over 5,000 at time of writing, according to SteamDB.

That may not sound like a lot, but it's floated for the last several years at around 200-600, and since the game came to Steam relatively late in its life, there's likely a big contingent of people playing on the standalone client available on ArenaNet's website (anecdotally, that's how I play both Guild Wars games when the mood strikes).

The population surge was met with surprise from ArenaNet, which shared a post on X saying, "Demand for Guild Wars Reforged blew past our projections, causing long downloads for some non-Steam players. We’re adding servers & exploring new options to fix this before the weekend. Thanks for your patience!"

Mercifully, it doesn't sound like anything game breaking or even unexpected when an online game gets such a sudden spike of players. If anything, I'm just happy to see people diving into the original Guild Wars; the remaster doesn't look like a huge iteration on the original game, but the chance to see pre-Searing Ascalon abuzz with novice players once again is a tantalizing prospect indeed.