There will be no subscription fee for Guild Wars 2, and players just buy the game and play it online without paying a monthly fee. A character can be used to play any game mode available in Guild Wars 2: PvE, Structured PvP and World PvP. A player may still have multiple characters.

Improvements to the engine include true 3D environments, enhanced graphics and animations and the use of the Havok physics system and this will do justice to the concept art for the game and concept art will be integrated into the way the story is told to the player. Polygon counts and texture allowances have been increased and the game will support DirectX 10, but not require it to play.

Guild Wars 2 is trying to deal with that issue by using a system with a high level cap once that could be set to 100 or even boundless. But the magnitude of the level cap raise is still unknown. There will be a plateau of power, where each level no longer adds as much to the power of the character. A side-kick system has been mentioned which would allow characters of a lower level to play with high level characters without disadvantage. The sidekicking system, similar to that used in "City of Heroes", will be be introduced allowing high-level characters to transfer their powers to lower-level characters and entry to e-sport type PvP will grant access to all skills, items and provide a fixed level. In a departure from the high number skills present in Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 will focus on quality of skills over quantity and will also reduce the overall number of game modes to reduce balancing complexity.

The skill system will be modified. There will be fewer, less complex skills which may behave differently in different situations. A system similar to the limited 8 skill system will be used.

The professions are being designed to be viable for both solo and group play. A primary and secondary profession system will be used. It is currently not known if any professions from the original Guild Wars will return, and the profession count is unknown.

Besides these significant changes to the game, Guild Wars 2 will also introduce plenty of smaller ones, like the ability for your characters to do things like jump, swim, even climb trees.