A recent interview with Mike O’Brien, founder of ArenaNet, in Forbes:
“Guild Wars beat all of our expectations and our company grew as we put out four expansions and we came together as a team and learned how to build content,” said O’Brien. “We got to a point where we wanted to see what we could accomplish next, so in 2007 we announced to our fans that we were going to start working on Guild Wars 2 and we’d be quiet for a while.”
That long wait is finally coming to a close with an open beta test this coming weekend, where fans will get their first tour of the new Tyria, set 250 years after the events of the first game.
“We’re in it to win it this time,” said O’Brien. “We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO. I think we have something unique here and players are going to see it and understand why dynamic events are a way better content model than people have experienced before in online worlds. Word-of-mouth will get people to understand that we really are doing something new and different. The sky’s the limit once this game is out. Online worlds have a networking effect. People will bring friends to Guild Wars 2. We hope all the people who play the beta weekend will tell their friends about it.”
