One of these that players latched onto most fervently was the promise that there would be no “gear treadmill” a common feature in MMOs akin to a carrot on a stick, where increasingly powerful gear is regularly added for players to chase after, with new sets coming every few months.

Before the game released, ArenaNet made a manifesto video (which you should definitely check out, if you haven’t already) setting out guidelines the company hoped to adhere to when making and maintaining the game. It’s something where we definitely had growing pains for those first couple of months, understanding how to do that and how to make live content and how to be successful in that model.” One of the most prominent of these growing pains was the Ascended Gear debacle. Johanson explains, “To transition 300 people from operating one way to suddenly turning into a service company a week later is really hard to do. From the moment the game launched ArenaNet had to restructure itself from a company focused on development to one centred around services. That’s not to say there haven’t been issues though. The six weeks following Christmas saw increasing numbers of people eager to explore the world of Tyria, making Guild Wars 2 one of very few MMOs to launch, settle into its core playerbase and then actually start to grow again (EVE Online would be perhaps the only other prominent example of this unusual trend). Aside from managing to shift over 3 million copies in the six months since it launched, Johanson also informs me that Guild Wars 2 has bucked one of the main MMO trends by seeing player numbers continue to rise during what would usually be a post-launch slump. “The fact that such a gamble appears to have paid off not once but twice for ArenaNet is not something to be sniffed at.

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