A weapon is a piece of equipment that can be equipped in a player's primary weapon or off-hand inventory slots. Weapons are visible in your character's hands when the player is outside of a town or outpost (for example in an explorable area or mission).

Although items such as shields and focus items are technically not weapons, uses of "weapon" on this wiki usually encompasses these items as well.

Guild Wars fans turned out in droves for NCsoft's recent Design-A-Weapon Contest, forcing the company to redesign the contests prize system to properly reward the huge number of excellent entries it received.

Of course, the true goal for contest entrants was the chance to "serve as inspiration to the Guild Wars Art Team" for weaponry and items created for the game in the future, but free swag is always appreciated.

You can find a full gallery of the top submissions at the Guild Wars official site, but before you click over we'd like to point out a few of our favorites (and before you ask, yes, that bow is festooned with naked ladies).