ArenaNet Blog Launches, Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto
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This week we're celebrating the 5th anniversary of the release of Guild Wars. Coincidentally, this year also marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of our company. We founded this company because we wanted to shake up a risk-averse industry, and show that game companies don't have to just keep making the same games over and over again to be successful. We believe that gamers want to try new things, new experiences, and that they'll reward the companies who can bring them something new.
So five years ago we released Guild Wars, which was really a new thing. It was an RPG, but it also had elements of a strategy game; unlike most RPGs it was inspired more by M:tG than D&D; it was an online world with no monthly fees. We called it a CORPG but the '˜net raged with debates about whether or not it was an MMORPG. However you categorized it didn't matter; it was a fun, new, different experience. We thought we could sell a million copies, and we ended up selling over 6 million.
We're not going to rest on our laurels now. We started this company to innovate and bring players new experiences. Guild Wars 2 is the perfect game for Guild Wars players, but it's not just the same game repeated again. We took this opportunity to question everything, and we have some exciting answers for you today.
The first thing you should know about Guild Wars 2 is that, this time around, there's no question that it's an MMORPG. It's an enormous, persistent, living, social world, filled with a wide variety of combat and non-combat activities. There's so much depth here that you're never going to run out of new things to discover.
So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn't fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn't suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn't make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn't have a monthly fee.
