Arenanet is looking back on 2022, saying that this year was "one of the best years for Guild Wars 2 in recent memory”. They’ve also revealed that the next expansion is in early development.
In a year in review devblog, the team noted that End of Dragons released in late February, and went on to outsell Path of Fire, the last expansion, by April. Guild Wars 2 celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, and also made it over to Steam. “In the background, we’ve been working quietly on our next content update, and we began early development on our fourth expansion,” marking the first real comment since announcing a fourth expansion would happen.
The return of Living World Season 1 was also one of the highlights, since not only did it bring back content that had been unplayable for eight years, but it made that content free and permanently available. This meant that those who started later could get a glimpse of what this story content was all about, but having access now, even for those that were around for the original release, meant being able to complete achievements and more options for content and instances.
In April, when announcing End of Dragons’ success, they noted that the active player count had more than doubled over the past several years. Yet with this year in review, the picture is looking even brighter.
“This year we’ve already seen more players venture into Tyria for the first time since 2015— the year we made the base game content playable for free and launched our first expansion, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.”
So what’s next? More End of Dragons content. They promise an update on Q1 plans in early 2023, but previously mentioned stuff, like the WvW restructuring and the DirectX 11 transition, are coming.
Head to Guild Wars 2 to read the full team blog.
