14 DAY TRIAL // Developer ArenaNet already has long term plans for its upcoming MMO Guild Wars 2 and is ready to deliver more content in order to keep gamers occupied, creating a service rather than simply launching a game with medium-term support.
Randall Price, the senior vice president in charge of Guild Wars 2 development at ArenaNet, told Eurogamer that, “We have development plans in our back pocket for literally years to come. We today know a number of the high-level features that we’re going to do, and expansion content for years to come.”
He added, “It’s not drilled down in a way that is – it’s all at the five-thousand foot level and above, from a big picture. But every month we go through time, we get closer and it gets down and, OK, now we’re actually creating content for it.”
Long-term support for Guild Wars 2 was not a given because ArenaNet is not relying on monthly subscriptions in order to derive revenue from the MMO.
Players who are interested in the game will be able to pay in order to buy retail packages for the core game and any expansions that are launched and will then be free to enjoy the content as long as they want without spending any more money.
ArenaNet is currently working on the beta stage of Guild Wars 2, looking at the feedback that the players are giving and tweaking the core mechanics in order to deliver a better experience on launch date.
The company is also preparing a number of pre-order offers for dedicated fans.
After launch, the development team will create a dedicated system that will allow it to quickly deploy both patches and content updates.
Guild Wars 2 is expected to launch later during the year, although no clear date has been yet confirmed.