Guild Wars 2 will avoid expansions

Written by David Hing

July 4, 2013 | 11:59

Tags: #expansions #guild-wars-2 #mmo

Companies: #arenanet

The developers of Guild Wars 2 have no plans and no intentions to release any expansion packs for the MMO.

Talking to Eurogamer, lead content designer, Mike Zadorojny, said the team was 'not really looking at expansions as an option'. Instead, the team is focusing on its Living World strategy to provide more regular bursts of monthly content.

'It's something that's on the table, but it's not something we're focused on,' added Zadronjy. 'Our idea here is that with Living World, we can do what expansions would have done but do it on a more regular basis,'

The Living World strategy involves four teams of developers, each spending four months developing one month's worth of content, allowing for the game's world to be changing and updating more frequently. Guild Wars 2 players will already have seen an early test of this strategy with one of the content updates at the beginning of the year.

Other technical updates, such as an upcoming looking-for-group tool, will also be included through Living World updates further on down the line and there are options for the team to include significant additions, for example a new character profession, in the patches.

Guild Wars 2 launched in August 2012 and uses a hybrid free-to-play model whereby players are required to buy the game but are not required to pay a monthly subscription, much like its predecessor.

In game, players are also quietly reminded that they can make additional micro-transactions if they wish, largely on cosmetic items. The original Guild Wars kept its revenue stream going with the release of three expansion packs during its lifespan but didn't have such a focus on micro-transactions at its release, introducing more options later on in its cycle.

As of January, Guild Wars 2 had sold three million copies. It has a Metacritic score of 90% and is notable for living up to a remarkable amount of its pre-release hype in terms of dynamic quests and interesting moment-to-moment gameplay.
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