It’s here at last – the MMORPG that’s meant to be the dawn of a new age. Picture the offices of games publishers around the word – the makers of EverQuest and World of Warcraft in particular – as they’re sitting in their leather office chairs looking at each other and praying furiously that Guild Wars won’t work. Because if it does works, they’re all going to be in trouble.

The reason for this, as you most probably know by now, is that Guild Wars is daring to take a different approach to massively-multiplayer online gaming, the most radical avenue of which is the fact that there’s no monthly fee. If ArenaNet and NCSoft make money out of their baby, the industry is wondering whether all those players of EQ and WoW and City of Heroes are going to suddenly think, “hang on – why am I still paying for this every month when I bought it ages ago?”