Guild Wars far exceeded our expectations for its success

Guild Wars went on to become relatively successful, selling over 6 million copies so far, according to an announcement by ArenaNet in April of 2009. But a couple years back, the developers had a choice to make; either continue spending their time and money on the original game, or devote the majority of those resources to a sequel.

“Guild Wars far exceeded our expectations for its success, and we supported it through follow-up campaigns and an expansion pack,” O’Brien said. “In 2007, we announced that we wanted to stop making follow-up campaigns for Guild Wars I, and instead, focus on a sequel for the game. Guild Wars 2 Gold. And the reason that we decided to that was because we wanted to be ambitious and do things in the game that we couldn’t do with the existing engine, or with the existing infrastructure of the game.”

Unlike most game companies, ArenaNet announced its Guild Wars 2 extremely early in the sequel’s development, since it felt obliged to let its customers know why new content for the original game would be slowing down.

“Normally in this industry, if you’re working on a new game, you just keep it secret until you’re ready to talk,” O’Brien said. “With Guild Wars I, we had been releasing content regularly, [so] we had to tell our fans we’re going to stop working on new campaigns for Guild Wars I and do Guild Wars 2 instead now. Cheap GW2 Gold. So we announced it before we even started working on it. It killed us to have to be developing in the dark, because obviously we’re making cool stuff and we want people to see what we’re working on. But we wanted to get the game to the point where it really shows what it is.”