Guild Wars is an online role-playing game franchise developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSOFT. The games were critically well received and won many editor's choice awards, as well as awards such as Best Value, Best Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), and Best Game. Guild Wars was noted for being the "first major MMO to adopt a business model not based on monthly subscription fees", its instanced approach to gameplay, and the quality of the graphics and play for computers with low specifications. In April 2009, NCSoft announced that 6 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold. The sequel and fourth major entry into the series, Guild Wars 2, was announced in March 2007 and released on August 28, 2012. It features updated graphics and gameplay mechanics, and continues the original Guild Wars tradition of no subscription fees. The Guild Wars series had sold 11.5 million copies by August 2015 Publications Related works The NCSoft crossover game Master X Master featured Rytlock from Guild Wars 2 as a playable character. Guild Wars subseries (2005-2007) The original subseries consisting of the Guild Wars Prophecies, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, and Guild Wars: Eye of the North games coexist within a unified game world. The games provide two main modes of gameplay—a cooperative role-playing component that is specific to each campaign, and a competitive PvP component that is shared across all campaigns. Three stand-alone campaigns, one major expansion pack, and several "mini"-expansions were released in the series from April 2005 to April 2013. The games depict the fictional fantasy world of Tyria; each campaign focuses on events in disjointed sections of the world at roughly the same time. A player creates an avatar to play through the cooperative storyline of a campaign, taking on the role of a hero who must save Tyria from its antagonists. Players can group with other players and non-player characters, known as henchmen and heroes, to perform missions and quests found throughout the game-world. PvP combat is consensual, team based, and limited to areas designed for such combat. Players are allowed to create characters at maximum level and with the best equipment specifically for PvP play, which is unusual for MMORPGs. Historically, ArenaNet hosted official Guild Wars tournaments where the most successful players and guilds competed for the chance to play live at gaming conventions and win prizes up to