A territory refers to an area of the real world which forms a gaming community within the game world of Guild Wars. Each game account belongs to one territory. It is assumed that a player joins the territory he/she is living in (or which fits best to his/her actual location), but this is not mandatory.
The affiliation to a territory affects a few things:
- The territories reflect the technical server structure of Guild Wars. These servers are ideally optimized to service people in that territory. Playing in a territory that is hosted far from the players actual location may cause lag while playing.
- Players may access the districts of their home territory while in a town. Players can not enter the districts of another territory, but there is the international district, which is neutral and does not belong to any of the territories. It can be accessed by all players.
- Players in the same territory will most likely speak the same languages and use the same character set for names and messages.
- Players in the same territory will be around in the game at roughly the same time of day.
- Only players from the territory that has the Favor of the Gods have access to all the benefits of that favor.
- Territory plays a major part during the qualification stage of official tournaments like the GWWC.
List of territories
At time of release, there were only three territories in the game:
Europe
Korea
North America
With their launch early 2006 two new territories joined the world of Guild Wars:
Japan- Taiwan, Macao and Hong Kong (collectively referred to as Taiwan by Guild Wars officals)
Further territories will join the game once they are recognized by ArenaNet.
Choosing a territory
If you play in either the North America or Europe territory, when the game is first installed it will ask you to configure this, and you can also change to the other from the game's startup screen after login (click Edit Account then choose Change Territory then click Next). Newer accounts can only change territories four times; older accounts have five changes allowed.
For other territories, you need to register on the respective territory's NC website to obtain your account. There is no way to change your territory.
Visiting the international district does not count as a change of territory, all accounts can access international districts regardless of territory.