Afterlife vs Reforged
Reforged is the $19.99 base game with three campaigns; Afterlife is the $23.99 DLC that requires it and adds one region, one dungeon and one mode.
Guild Wars Afterlife is an add-on to Guild Wars Reforged, so the comparison is not "which game should I buy" but "what does the second purchase add to the first". Reforged is the 2005 game with its three campaigns, ten professions and everything that has accumulated since. Afterlife is one island, one dungeon, one combat mode and one story, sold separately, requiring the base game.
Put side by side, the split is clean: Reforged is the world, Afterlife is a mode that lives inside it. If you own neither, Reforged is the obvious first buy at $19.99. If you own Reforged, the question is whether the mode is worth $23.99 to you.
The two products, feature by feature
| Guild Wars Reforged | Guild Wars Afterlife | |
|---|---|---|
| Release | December 3, 2025 | January 13, 2027 |
| Price | $19.99 | $23.99 pre-purchase, $29.99 at launch |
| Type | Base game | Downloadable content |
| Campaigns | Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall | None — one new region |
| Professions | 10 | Adds none, drafts from all 10 |
| Regions | Tyria, Cantha, Elona | Xotecha, in the Mists |
| Dungeon | Includes a new dungeon | the Unformed, changing per run |
| Combat | Fixed skill bars, secondary professions | Skill drafting across professions |
| Progression | Full campaign progression | Stripped inside the dungeon, restored on exit |
| Platforms | Windows, iOS, Android | PC, Steam, App Store, Google Play |
| Steam Deck | Verified | No separate rating |
| Requires | Nothing | Guild Wars Reforged |
The row that decides most purchases is the last one. Afterlife is not an alternative to Reforged and cannot be played without it.
What Reforged gives you that Afterlife does not
Three campaigns is the headline. Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall are three parallel storylines with their own continents, missions and professions, and they represent hundreds of hours of content. Afterlife adds one region by comparison.
Ten professions, fully playable, with the primary/secondary system intact. Afterlife lets you draft skills from all ten but does not let you build a character in them.
The base game's economy: storage, costumes, account upgrades, titles, holiday events. Afterlife's rewards feed back into this, but the systems themselves live in Reforged.
Steam Deck Verified status. Reforged is rated Verified; the DLC has no separate rating on its store page, so the safe assumption is that the base game's rating is what you get.
What Afterlife gives you that Reforged does not
A mode that resets. Nothing in the three campaigns strips your progression and inventory for the duration of a run. That is genuinely new for Guild Wars, and it is the reason the DLC exists rather than being another campaign.
Cross-profession skill drafting. In the base game your bar is limited to your primary and secondary professions. Inside the Unformed, the offer pool is the whole game's skill list.
Per-run variation. The campaigns are fixed; you can replay them, but the maps do not change. The Unformed assembles maps, encounters and bosses per trip.
A new story in the Mists. Twenty years of Guild Wars lore has been building an afterlife; Afterlife is the first product to set a campaign-scale story there.
| Your priority | Buy |
|---|---|
| The most Guild Wars for the least money | Reforged |
| A reason to keep playing an existing character | Afterlife |
| A new campaign to level through | Neither — Afterlife is not that |
| To play on a phone | Reforged first, then Afterlife |
| The new story and the new dungeon | Afterlife |
Who should buy which
New players. Reforged first, without question. It is cheaper, it is the prerequisite, and it contains years of content. Afterlife can wait until you know whether you like the game — and if you decide you do before January 13, 2027, the pre-purchase price is the cheaper way in.
Returning players with characters. Afterlife is aimed at you. The announcement is explicit that you bring existing characters and that permanent rewards apply to them, which means the DLC is designed as a new activity for an account that already exists.
Players who want a campaign. Neither product is a new campaign. Afterlife adds a region and a dungeon, not a Prophecies-style march. If that is what you want, wait and see what the first year of updates brings.
Mobile players. Reforged first, because the mobile app is the base and Afterlife attaches to it. The Google Play listing shows 100K+ downloads and a 3.8-star rating from roughly 3,470 reviews, which is a reasonable picture of the mobile experience.
The price comparison that matters
$23.99 for Afterlife against $19.99 for three campaigns is the number that makes people pause. It reads as expensive until you compare it to what it actually is: a repeatable mode rather than a one-time story.
The honest framing is hours, not content volume. If you run the Unformed twenty times, the DLC is cheap per hour. If you run it twice and go back to the campaigns, it is expensive. That is a decision only you can make, and it is the question the next page tries to answer.
Checked 2026-11-05 against the Steam store pages for Afterlife (app 5149500) and Reforged (app 29720), ArenaNet's announcement (Steam news, 2026-11-03) and the Reforged Google Play listing.
Next in the dossier
- Release date and platforms — January 13, 2027, four storefronts, nine languages.
- Price and pre-purchase — The 20% discount and the real total with Reforged.
- Vestments of the Order — What the bonus is, and the NPC step people miss.