The Guild Wars franchise of online games has sold over five million copies across Europe, North America and Asia, publisher NCsoft has boasted.
The series, developed by ArenaNet, consist of Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North and Guild Wars: Slipper of the East. We might have made one up, there.
Guild Wars came out in 2005, bringing numerous innovations to the MMOG market. Chiefly, it was free, and it heavily relied on instancing in order to tell a story.
ArenaNet is currently in development of Guild Wars 2 (read our interview with the lead designer here) and all signs point to it repeating the success of its predecessor.
5 million sales is great but how many accounts is that spread across? I'd be interested to know how much of that 5 million is made up of people who have all 4 of the games. I and my 10 guildies (it's a small guild!) have all four games, making a total of 44 sales, but only 11 accounts.
Anyway, In my opinion GW is in a bit of a lull at the moment, and the population is at an all time low - or maybe everyone is just hiding?!
The sooner GW2 comes out the better I reckon or ANET face losing their player base, as I know several longstanding GW players who have eloped to other MMOs over the past 6 months.
Who cares how many copies they sell. Seriously, who still plays this game? The serious PvPers have all left and gone with a very small reminisce of seasoned players remaining, but even that is dying daily. GW is over 2-years old and no new content is expected in the immediate future. ArenaNet is doing everything they can to keep people playing until Guild Wars 2 is released, but no firm dates have been released. According to the Official ArenaNet Guild Wars Wiki (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features), GW2 estimated release is 2009/2010.
Me, it's probably one of the best PC games ever. I still play one of my ten characters on and off all the time. Some of my characters are coming up to their third birthday, and I don't play PvP.
Why do I still play? Because it's one of the best PC games ever. Oh, and no monthly fee. Not that it matters as I've bought every expansion, even the skill packs just so my heroes had access to all the skills.
Quality game, and there's still plenty of players, not that it matters, I prefer to use the heroes & henchmen, they're far more reliable
Who cares how many copies they sell. Seriously, who still plays this game? The serious PvPers have all left and gone with a very small reminisce of seasoned players remaining, but even that is dying daily. GW is over 2-years old and no new content is expected in the immediate future. ArenaNet is doing everything they can to keep people playing until Guild Wars 2 is released, but no firm dates have been released. According to the Official ArenaNet Guild Wars Wiki (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features), GW2 estimated release is 2009/2010.
And going by your name we can surely expect a fair and balanced point of view, eh ?
GW was (and still is) a good game, it offers a hell of a lot of content and you can pick up any of the titles for a good price nowadays. I bought all 4, and thoroughly enjoyed playing them. But I've not played for a long time, since getting LOTRO, in fact, since things in the GW world seem to have stagnated while they work on GW2.
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