ArenaNet announced earlier today that the price for Guild Wars 2 would be dropping
slightly to $49.99 for the standard edition and $69.99 for the digital enhanced
version. While some fans and players have expressed a little enthusiasm for what is
perceived to be a small drop in price, ANet’s Colin Johanson feels that it’s just
what the game needs to bring in another round of players.
“We’re getting more aggressive to make it more compelling. We haven’t ruled out
expansions but, for now, we like the content turn around that we’re providing to our
players. We can’t promise that we can always maintain this schedule but we like the
cadence and we’ve put the procedures and technology in place to keep it up if
possible.â€
“Guild Wars 2 is in a solid place. The drop in price aligns almost exactly with what
we did with Guild Wars 1. It held its value over a long period of time and we feel
that Guild Wars 2 will do the same. We don’t feel we need a big price drop. The game
is in a really good place with consistent, steady growth.â€
When asked about perhaps taking Guild Wars 2 into the free to play market, Johanson
responded that, while nothing is ruled out completely, the team doesn’t feel that
this is a market that has to be jumped into at this time.
The team is completely focused on making the core game solid and to provide players
the best live service available, according to Johanson.
Johanson also let us know that there is no announced timeline for those roll outs but
he did tell us that the first closed beta event in China took place about a week and
a half ago. He said people interested in Chinese and Korean releases of Guild Wars 2
will want to pay close attention to the ChinaJoy convention later this summer when
more information will be released.
Johanson then dropped some interesting statistics and information for the future:
Over three million copies of Guild Wars 2 have already been sold
WvW populations are going up. In fact, the numbers are nearly equal to those the game
featured in October.
PvP populations have risen by 3% each weekend over the past several weekends.
Johanson then went on to say, “We’re committed to growing core and PvP communities.
We want to offer strong support for the PvP community and then we’ll look into other
options for how the PvP game plays out for the entire community. There are lots of
exciting things in store for PvP down the road.â€
Part of that excitement comes in the form of API development where the community can
work directly with the Guild Wars 2 team to create some exciting features for
players. Within just a day of the announcement, several sites have cropped up to
track WvW battles and boss battles in real time. You can find out more about API
development on the Guild Wars 2 forums.
Lastly, Colin was asked about the possibility that GW2 might be ported to consoles.
“At this point, we’re dedicated to great PC development. We don’t rule out
anything, of course, but not right now. In fact, we still have regions of the world
that are MMO hotbeds in which to roll out the game. China and Korea, for instance.â€
