#GW2 HOLD THE LINE FREE#

Guild Wars 2 is a lot of content - it's a really big game that maybe other people would try to piecemeal - we're just givin' it, you know, we're making it free.Įurogamer: To be clear, the free Guild Wars 2 experience, that's the complete and unrestricted game? Gliding to the bandit raid boss. The Gem Store is the same Gem Store that it always was. 'Well are you going to monetise the game differently? Does this change the Gem Store?' No, none of that. I know the things that people in their minds are. We're already bundling the base game - why not take it so that anybody who wants to try Guild Wars 2 can try Guild Wars 2? With a buy-to-play business model, when you start releasing expansion packs, you get to make this choice: you get to say do we want it to be that every time a new player comes into the game we get to sell them the base game and each expansion pack, and there's all these pre-requisites? Or do we keep it simple? It was always the case that buy-to-play meant you buy one thing and you can play the game. Really it comes from a place of figuring out what we want the complexity of the business model to be. Obviously the response to Guild Wars 2 has been fantastic - we have a lot of new players coming into the game right now as we're getting ready for the release of Heart of Thorns. Mike O'Brien: We have been championing the buy-to-play business model for more than a decade, and it's really working for us. Can you give people some reassurance about what you actually are doing? The top portion is about being free, the bottom part about raids.Įurogamer: When I read 'play for free' I panicked because of the connotations suggested by a different arrangement of those three words. Their announcement was streamed earlier on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. I spoke to ArenaNet co-founder and leader Mike O'Brien, and Guild Wars 2 game director Colin Johanson, ahead of the company's PAX Prime announcement today. New raids will be regularly added to Guild Wars 2 in the future. The first raid will open shortly after Heart of Thorns arrives (2015 but date still TBC), with subsequent 'wings' to open thereafter. Buying the upcoming Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion removes all restrictions.ĪrenaNet also announced 10-person raids are coming to Guild Wars 2, and that they represent the most challenging content in the game. There are some small restrictions placed on free accounts to prevent abuse from the gold-farming black market. Guild Wars 2 never had a subscription fee, only a charge for the game itself - and it's that charge that's being removed. There's big news in the Guild Wars 2 camp today as ArenaNet announces the original game will be available for free, right now and for evermore.ĭo not interpret that as 'free-to-play'.

Gw2 hold the line