14 DAY TRIAL // With all the scandal around NCsoft, the Korea Times and the question whether Tabula Rasa is a success or a bust, it is fairly easy to overlook news about another NCsoft product. The Guild Wars series, made up of the original game, campaign add-ons Factions and Nightfall plus the recent expansion called Eye of the North, has recently gone over the sales mark of 5 million.
This is especially important because the series is not based on the classic subscription model that most MMOGs adopt. When you buy Guild Wars, you get the right to play the game for whatever stretch of time you want, whenever you want. So, no monthly subscription. And the game is designed so that add-ons and expansions are not required, although they are recommended for a more immersive experience. It's a unique business model that makes direct boxed sales much more important than the actual number of monthly players.
Guild Wars is original in other areas, too. Its quests are almost all instanced. That means that every raid and every quest goes down in an area that is different for different parties and different players. Because new instances are the norm you can even have NPC characters help you in your quest, as they don't have to stand in the same place all day, giving quests to other players. The characters' development is also somewhat innovative. The level grind is not that important and levels caps are rather low for someone coming over from WoW. Guild Wars relies on skills and capabilities to make each character markedly different from the other. And there's a focus on guilds of players who are constantly at war that emphasizes the PvP element of the game. As far as content goes, that game is reasonably long, longer than most single player RPGs and it also has a certain replayability value, if only to try out some new classes and skills for PvP.
Last April, NCsoft began talking about Guild Wars 2. While essentially a refinement of the concept, the sequel will allow for some new ideas. More races will be available and the world will be more persistent and allow players to build up reputations with several groups and stronger relations with other players.
With the game series being, as NCsoft says, a real success, both in terms of player reaction and financially, we are eagerly expecting to hear more about Guild Wars in the future.