Power creep

Power creep is the gradual unbalancing of a game world in a role-playing game (not just Guild Wars) due to the accumulation of power by the players. Power creep usually describes the greater advantages of later sagas of any kind of periodically released game, such as sets in Magic the Gathering. This term is used in discussions where the balance of the game world may be at stake due to the advantage of using newer content over old. An example, in the context of Guild Wars, would be a newer set of skills obviously being more powerful than older skills, making those older sets obsolete.

ArenaNet constantly balances the metagame of Guild Wars, to combat power creeping, through updates, such as an end-of-season skill balance update or nerf.