ArenaNet announced earlier today that the price for Guild Wars 2 would be dropping slightly to $49.99 for the standard edition and $69.99 for the digital enhanced version. While some fans and players have expressed a little enthusiasm for what is perceived to be a small drop in price, ANet's Colin Johanson feels that it's just what the game needs to bring in another round of players.
"Guild Wars 2 is in a solid place. The drop in price aligns almost exactly with what we did with Guild Wars 1. It held its value over a long period of time and we feel that Guild Wars 2 will do the same. We don't feel we need a big price drop. The game is in a really good place with consistent, steady growth."
When asked about perhaps taking Guild Wars 2 into the free to play market, Johanson responded that, while nothing is ruled out completely, the team doesn't feel that this is a market that has to be jumped into at this time.
The team is completely focused on making the core game solid and to provide players the best live service available, according to Johanson.
"We're getting more aggressive to make it more compelling. We haven't ruled out expansions but, for now, we like the content turn around that we're providing to our players. We can't promise that we can always maintain this schedule but we like the cadence and we've put the procedures and technology in place to keep it up if possible."
Johanson then dropped some interesting statistics and information for the future:
- Over three million copies of Guild Wars 2 have already been sold
- WvW populations are going up. In fact, the numbers are nearly equal to those the game featured in October.
- PvP populations have risen by 3% each weekend over the past several weekends.
Johanson then went on to say, "We're committed to growing core and PvP communities. We want to offer strong support for the PvP community and then we'll look into other options for how the PvP game plays out for the entire community. There are lots of exciting things in store for PvP down the road."
Part of that excitement comes in the form of API development where the community can work directly with the Guild Wars 2 team to create some exciting features for players. Within just a day of the announcement, several sites have cropped up to track WvW battles and boss battles in real time. You can find out more about API development on the Guild Wars 2 forums.
Lastly, Colin was asked about the possibility that GW2 might be ported to consoles.
"At this point, we're dedicated to great PC development. We don't rule out anything, of course, but not right now. In fact, we still have regions of the world that are MMO hotbeds in which to roll out the game. China and Korea, for instance."
Johanson also let us know that there is no announced timeline for those roll outs but he did tell us that the first closed beta event in China took place about a week and a half ago. He said people interested in Chinese and Korean releases of Guild Wars 2 will want to pay close attention to the ChinaJoy convention later this summer when more information will be released.
So what do you think of the price drop and the information we received from Colin? Let us know in the comments!
