Today is the anniversary of the launch of Guild Wars 2. It’s been an incredible year for ArenaNet. We’ve hit a ton of milestones, including 3.5 million games sold, which earned us the title of fastest-selling MMO game in history. Guild Wars 2 is the most regularly updated MMO game right now, with an average of only 18.9 days between each game release. Other MMO games release content a couple times a year or every few years, so Guild Wars 2‘s schedule is unique in this sector of the games industry. This rapid pace is a challenging environment in which to work, but it’s also been a lot of fun working with a great bunch of people. I’m looking forward to the next year, the years ahead, and the challenges they will bring.
Guild Wars 2 Released!
We released Guild Wars 2 today to retail stores. Yes, the game is live! Even before the game was available on stores, pre-purchasers bought over 1 million copies, paying the entire amount for the game before the release date today. In another milestone, during the three-day early access period the game reached over 400 000 simultaneous players online. There’s been some nice news coverage, both in the gaming press and in the mainstream media. I’m proud and honored to be a part of this team and humbled by this amazing response from gamers and media alike. These are exciting times.
Guild Wars 2 is Coming
Guild Wars 2 is launching on August 28. That’s two months from today.
It’s been quite a journey. I started working at ArenaNet in 2008, a year after we’d announced development on Guild Wars 2 in 2007. This is unusual, as most companies never announce that they’re working on a new game until it’s ready to show off. However, given the fact that we would no longer be working on the orginal Guild Wars and would be shifting development to Guild Wars 2, we owed it to the fans to let them know why we were “going dark” for a few years. In 2010, we unveiled the Guild Wars 2 design manifesto. Since then, we’ve been releasing loads of information and showing off the game regularly through interviews, videos, convention appearances, and blog posts. I’ve been privileged to work at a company that has been this open during a game’s development and the fans have been with us through this whole process. We’re almost there.
I think this is going to be the shortest and longest two months I’ve ever experienced, and I can’t wait.