This guide is intended for Guild Wars players who have ascended at least one character in the PvE portion of the game. Preferably, you have made it past all the storyline missions and unlocked almost all the skills for at least 2 professions. You may have played a little bit of Arena and got beaten senseless about Guild Wars Gold. I am going to assume you have enough clue to look up what a skill does if you do not know about Guild Wars Gold.

If you just bought Guild Wars and were hoping to be able to jump right into PvP as soon as you open the box, you are going to be disappointed. Go play the PvE part of the game to get the hang of it. Do not bother doing missions with only xp rewards, concentrate on skill unlocking. If you are not used to the tons of jargon which comes with any MMO-type game and will certainly show up in this guide, you may want to consult a glossary. Additional common terms you may see in-game not featured in that glossary:

You may well have been thinking that you were going to play that same PvE character you have been playing for the last zillion hours about Guild Wars Gold. For this reason, always keep 1 character slot for PvP characters.

There are some cases where PvE characters will be better than a PvP character you created inside 5 minutes. However, it is normally going to involve a horrendous amount of grinding to get there about Guild Wars Gold. The result will usually be that the advantage you gained will be lost in the next month or two when the items in question are rebalanced. The "high-end" of PvP is Guild vs. Guild and to a lesser extent, Heroes Ascent, both of which are 8v8. You will not be ready for those for a while. Concentrate on building up your skills as a player first. It is much better to learn to walk before you run about Guild Wars Gold.