guild-wars posts

Earlier this month we reported that NCsoft and developer ArenaNet were planning on some special celebrations for the fourth anniversary of Guild Wars, their popular quasi-MMO/action-RPG. Today NCsoft announced as part of those celebrations that the Guild Wars lineup of games (Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, and Guild Wars: Eye of the North) has now sold over six million copies since the first game's release.

As we previously mentioned the game's players are now taking part in special in-game celebrations for Guild Wars' fourth birthday. ArenaNet has added a new explorable area to the game along with new quests. They are also giving players ways to redesign and rename their characters. You can find out more about all the new content and features at the game's official web site.

Valve's PC gaming download service Steam continues to add to its list of participating developers and publishers. Today, NCsoft announced that a number of their titles will be made available to Steam customers for the the first time along with future releases.

Starting today, NCsoft's MMO games in the City of Heroes, Guild Wars and Lineage series will all be available to download via Steam. That includes the just released Mission Architect version of City of Heroes. In addition, the upcoming fantasy MMO title Aion will also be made available for purchase and download via Steam. Aion is currently scheduled for release in the US in late 2009. At the moment you can get Guild Wars: Game of the Year Edition on Steam for a 10 percent discount and Lineage II for a 50 percent discount.

Besides City of Heroes, the only other succesful Western game from NCsoft has been the Guild Wars series of free-to-play multiplayer action-RPG games. While we are still waiting news, any news, on Guild Wars 2, the team at developer ArenaNet is preparing to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the original game's release on April 28.

In fact the celebrations begin a few days earlier on April 23. The game's official web site gives some of the details including special in-game events, rewards and unique in-game items including cupcakes that "start dropping from creatures across Tyria, Cantha, and Elona." If there's one thing we love, it's cupcakes that are dropped from creatures. Yum Yum.

We are just one week away from "Black Friday" and more and more retailers are revealing what specials they will have on the single biggest shopping day of the year. Blackfriday.info has revealed what game retailer Gamestop will have on sale on that day and it includes some PC game titles. It's admittedly not much of an offering compared to all the console game titles but it's better than nothing.

Crysis - $19.99
Guild Wars Trilogy With Free Eye Of The North - $49.99
Guild Wars With Free Eye Of The North - $19.99
Lord of the Rings Online - $29.99
World Of Warcraft Battle Chest - $19.99
World Of Warcraft - $9.99

This the full PAX 2008 video of the ArenaNet panel discussing Guild Wars and the three years its been online. One of the biggest hightlights is the beginning montage, which features the orchestral music and graphics from all four games. Be aware that the video is very long (approx 51 minutes), so a streaming version could not be made available.

Download HD Three Years of Guild Wars Video (1.77 GB)

Last week MMO publisher NCsoft announced restructuring plans that would move its US headquarters from its current Austin, Texas base to Seattle, Washington (the home of its Guild Wars developer ArenaNet) under the new name NCsoft West. Many people assumed that the Austin, Texas offices would be cut significantly. However, company president David Reid says that they have plans to actually expand the 250 member Austin offices.

In a new chat with Edge Online Reid states, "We really do believe that Austin is going to grow at a fairly dramatic pace over the next few years." Currently the offices hold the Tabula Rasa development team along with QA and customer support personnel. Reid states that Austin will grow thanks to upcoming launches of their fantasy MMO Aion in the US along with other unnamed projects. Tabula Rasa has been rumored for months to be shut down due to reported poor sales but Reid stated the game is still going strong, although he declined to give subscription numbers.

MMO game developer NCsoft has announced some major changes to its US and European operations today, as they plan to consolidate their many different offices into one major organization called NC West. The new structure will include NC Interactive, MC Europe, NC Austin and Guild Wars developers ArenaNet. NC West is expected to open up new central offices in ArenaNet's city of Seattle by the end of the year.

Chris Chung, formerly CEO of NC Interactive, will become the CEO of the new NC West with Jeff Strain, the co-founder and former president of ArenaNet, now listed as president of NC West. David Reid, who joined NCsoft just a few months ago from GameTap, will now be NC West's president of publishing while Patrick Wyatt, another co-founder of ArenaNet, will be NC West's new chief technology officer.

There is no official word yet on any layoffs at NCsoft as a result of this reorganization. As we reported on Tuesday, rumors are that NCsoft could cut more jobs at their Austin, Texas offices and shut down their sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa while a number of people at the company's UK offices could also lose their jobs.

Update: In a chat with Kotaku, new NC West president Reid stated that 12 out of the 250 people in the company's Austin, Texas offices will be laid off and he also confirmed cuts to be made in Europe. Tabula Rasa is safe for now with no plans to shut down the game, according to Reid. They also plan to concentrate on making large scale MMO titles and planning to move into console development. Small scale MMOs such as Dungeon Runners are no longer a priority although Reid declined to say whether Dungeon Runners would be shut down.

We have seen many games get adapted and expanded into prose novel form over the years. We have seen a number of novels based on all of Blizzard's games over the years and other novels based on Halo, Command and Conquer and Doom, among others have been released.

Our sister site Massively, reporting from the Penny Arcade Expo, has revealed that ArenaNet's Guild Wars series of games will be getting their own series of novels. The three book series will be published by Pocket Books and are intended to fill in the story gap between the end of the original Guild Wars series of games and the upcoming full sequel Guild Wars 2, scheduled to launch sometime in 2009. No author or release dates for the novels were revealed.

With the rumors of NCsoft planning to either shut down or cut their operations at their Austin, Texas offices, the MMO game developer/publisher announced their latest financial results for the quarter that ended June 30. Revenues were $78.6 million for the quarter, up 7 percent for the same time period a year ago. However, the company recorded a profit of $5.9 million for the quarter which was down 42 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

As per usual, the majority of NCSoft's sales came from its home country of Korea via its Lineage ($27.2 million) and Lineage II ($33.6 million) game titles. City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars brought in $5.5 million and $4.9 million in revenues, respectively, while Tabula Rasa only brough in $1.9 million for the quarter. NCsoft's only major new game launch for 2008 will be the fantasy MMO Aion which will be released in Korea late this year.

Big Download's sister site Massively reports that an update applied to Guild Wars on August 7 has brought about major changes to the free MMO's GvG (Guild-versus-Guild) gameplay.

"The key component to the GvG changes involves the complete removal of the Victory or Death finale effect," explains Massively writer Shawn Schuster. Specifically, the change entails Guild Battle NPCs no longer being required to trek to the flag stand, in addition to the Guild Lord's health being reduced to 1680. When a team attains a morale victory, the Guild Lord will receive 380 health.

"What does this all mean for GvG?" asks Schuster. "Basically, previous strategies will need a complete revamp" in order to still be considered effective.

A full list of changes can be found on the official Guild Wars website.