ArenaNet has confirmed that Guild Wars 3 will ship with four playable species, ending months of community speculation that followed the game’s announcement trailer. In a new dev blog, the studio named three of them — Humans, Asura and Kodan — and withheld the fourth.
The studio also confirmed a change in terminology: Guild Wars 3 uses "species" rather than the "races" of its predecessor. Of the unnamed fourth option, ArenaNet wrote that it is "a new species whose story connects deeply to Orr’s past but has been lost to history," and said players would have to wait for further details.
Built to add more later
A significant part of the blog covers why Guild Wars 2 never added a playable race after launch. ArenaNet described doing so as "a major cross-disciplinary undertaking" if the result was to match the quality of the original set, and said the sequel is being built from the start to avoid that constraint.
To help tell the stories we want to tell in Guild Wars 3, we are approaching development from the beginning with the goal of adding more playable species in the future.
The studio said animation systems, rigs and clothing are all being examined so they can be extended later, and that it is establishing shared technical foundations and deliberate constraints to make adding armor, clothing and animation support for new species practical. ArenaNet stopped short of promising any specific addition, and singled out one limit: species requiring an "extreme body silhouette," such as playable Forgotten, are not planned.
The launch story is a unified one across all four species, with player characters operating under the Vaelwarden banner across Orr. ArenaNet also confirmed that species will not carry stat differences, leaving the choice a purely visual and narrative one. The studio said further species reveals and deep dives begin next week.
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