Guild Wars 2 – 2022 Studio Update

With another year coming to a close, ArenaNet brings us this studio update for Guild Wars 2 featuring a look back at 2022. And by the looks of it, it’s been a good year for the MMORPG, with it getting a new expansion, restoring some of its lost content, and more than doubling its active player base. Which means a new expansion is already on the way.

More on that:

Before we head out for our annual holiday break and bid farewell to 2022, we want to take a few moments to celebrate the past year and extend our heartfelt gratitude to you, our players, for making it all possible.

2022 was a fantastic year for Guild Wars 2, and it started off with a bang. On February 28, we released our third expansion, Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons™, which brought a climactic end to the elder dragon saga (spoiler!). The team poured their heart and soul into bringing a reimagined Cantha to life, and in the end, we delivered an experience that we’re incredibly proud of.

But the expansion is just one part of this year’s story. Living World Season 1—which had previously been unplayable for over eight years—returned as a free and permanent addition to the base game. We delivered significant quality-of-life gameplay improvements for both new players and veterans, with more to come. We made considerable progress on long-term initiatives like the DirectX11 upgrade and WvW World Restructuring, and we renewed our focus on regularly refreshing key gameplay systems like combat. And we released Guild Wars 2 on Steam, putting Tyria on the map for an entirely new group of gamers.

We’ve also reinforced our commitment to being transparent and communicating regularly with all of you, with regular studio updates, quarterly roadmaps, and balance preview livestreams. In the background, we’ve been working quietly on our next content update, and we began early development on our fourth expansion. In the midst of everything, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Guild Wars 2‘s original release—an achievement only made possible by the support of our community.

All of this paid off in a big way. Back in April, we reported that our active player count had more than doubled over the past few years and that Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons had already outsold our previous expansion, Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire™. Today, we’re excited to share a new accomplishment. 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™. This has been one of the best years for Guild Wars 2 in recent memory, and we’re eager to keep building on that momentum.

We’ll be back early next year to talk about our Q1 plans, which include wrapping up the DirectX11 transition, continuing work on World vs. World, upgrading our in-game browser technology from Coherent to Chromium Embedded Framework, and of course new Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons content. We’re also looking forward to sharing our long-term vision and plans for the game.

Thank you all for a fantastic 2022. Let’s do it again next year.

Have a wonderful Wintersday!

—The Guild Wars 2 Team