The endless online battle of Guild Wars is about to spill over the borders of the MMO genre. Having only just announced Guild Wars 3 earlier this month, ArenaNet and its parent NC has revealed that it’s also taking the series into an entirely new genre, through an official Guild Wars card game called Mistbound.
Mistbound is licensed by ArenaNet and developed by NC with the involvement of bilibili—the Chinese equivalent of YouTube.
“We felt it was time to give Guild Wars fans a new way to play together, inspired by the card game roots of the franchise, where they could compete in a competitive PvP arena in a CCG game space,” said ArenaNet studio head Colin Johanson in a statement. “Having all those experiences they love of the characters and creatures and the sounds of the world of Tyria brought to life in CCG.”
By “card game roots” Johanson is referring to the fact that Guild Wars was inspired by Magic: The Gathering, specifically in how character attributes can be modified to create bespoke builds. Mistbound’s twist on the digital CCG formula is basically to give you cards that can move around. Its key feature is a dynamic 5×3 tactical grid where units and commanders—which are deployed as cards—can then reposition turn-by-turn in response to enemy movement.
Apparently, this system—which NC calls “dynamic movement gameplay” is intended to make the inherent complexity of a card game like Magic a bit more intuitive.
“One challenge with pursuing deep strategic combinations in card games is that the cards themselves can easily become overly complex,” said Mistbound producer Hwang Sunwoo. “Rather than placing that complexity on individual cards, we wanted to express it through the battlefield.”
During battle, players will be able to exploit numerous mechanics like knockbacks, pulls and flanking. Alongside standard units, familiar Guild Wars characters can step onto the battlefield as commanders, bringing unique abilities and tactics for you to take advantage of. You can also expect a soundtrack with contributions from Guild Wars’ original musicians, and voice performances for all those Guild Wars regulars.
The bilibili angle of this seems to be on the community development side. The press release says that development of Mistbound is being guided not just by the developers’ design knowhow but by “direct, high-quality player input”. I also imagine NC is looking to build an audience for Mistbound out of the game, possibly with a mind to the game becoming an esport a-la Hearthstone.
There’s no release date for Mistbound as yet, but I doubt this will launch much before the end of the year, and we’re most likely to see it sometime in 2027.