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“You read that right: Guild Wars Campaign 4 is canceled – and so are all future Guild Wars campaigns. Finished. Done. Gone for good.” After the “rousing success” that was Nightfall (the third campaign) and over 3 million in sales, you start to wonder why. But don’t start to panic, I haven’t finished the story, welcome the first Guild Wars expansion – Eye of the North – and the first sequel – Guild Wars 2. Why you ask? According to PC Gamer magazine, it is because the developers aren’t able to make the games as great as they want too while trying to stick to the six month schedule. It is also mentioned that because the campaigns need to be a standalone game and an addition, they have been getting harder to just pick-up and play. ArenaNet Co-Founder Jeff Stain says that they are “battling against complexity. [They] don’t want to make complicated games. [They] want to make fun, easy-to-grasp games that are easy to get into and not frontloaded with complexity.”

Eye of the North, the first Guild Wars expansion, is expected to be resealed this holiday season. It will require one of the previous Guild Wars games and will add to the stories as well as be a link between Guild Wars 1 and 2. Eye of the North will have no tutorials or new professions, and it will cost less than a full-sized campaign (>$49.99).

Guild Wars 2 is set hundreds of years after the events of the original Guild Wars games. At this time only a few of the new professions have been released (Charr is one of them). I’m not going to go into to much detail on what GW2 has to offer, so here is a quote from Mike O’Brien (ArenaNet Co-Founder) that summarizes it nicely, “Guild Wars 2 is everything we love about Guild Wars, improved. That mainly means large persistent areas, an overhauled environment and character control system, redefined PVP play, and a retooled NPC companion system.” By “large persistent areas” he means open like WoW, but not to worry, it will still have the option to play the original instanced areas (each player/group has their own copy of the map). By adding persistent areas large group activities and dynamic events can occur. Player’s actions involving these events will directly effect an entire chain of events. ArenaNet describes one possibility as a dragon flying overhead. If players ignore it, there is a possibility it could swoop in and take out a bridge (cutting of a route until it is repaired). It players decide to take it down, all involved in the slaying will be rewarded. The final piece I will mention is that “ArenaNet is planning a very high (100-plus), or possibly no level cap.” Oh, did I mention GW2 is still subscription free?

So as you can tell, I am a fan of Guild Wars, although not . I enjoyed following it trough the early betas, but never got around to purchasing the campaigns. Guild Wars 2 sounds like a good point to re-enter the series.

If you want more information, I got all of my info from the May 2007 edition of PC Gamer magazine (#161, Vol. 14 Num. 5).

(Side note the issue comes with an exclusive Guild Wars mini pet (GW1) of one of the new GW2 playable characters that is introduced in the EotN
expansion. Mine also contained a Lord of the Rings Online Beta key)

Links:
PC Gamer
ArenaNet
Guild Wars