Guild Wars 2 sold 3.5 million in first year

Guild Wars 2 is celebrating its first anniversary, and has released some stats to mark the occasion. It sold 3.5 million in its first year, and hosted 460,000 players concurrently at its peak.

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Guild Wars 2 is coming up on its first anniversary, and ArenaNet is celebrating with some hearty back-slaps regarding its progress so far.

Guild Wars 2 has sold 3.5 million copies so far, which a handy new infographic claims makes it the fastest-selling MMO in history. It reached a peak count of 460,000 concurrent players. The infographic also breaks down stats like the race and profession percentages, and the top crafting disciplines.

One point of pride for president Mike O'Brien is the frequency of updates. The MMO is now updating roughly every two weeks. In the full year (which includes the time before updates were so frequent), it has reached an average of 18.9 days between releases.

"If you ask me what stands out most about our first year, I'll tell you, I think the number one thing we accomplished was reorienting our company to be able to update the game so much," O'Brien wrote. "In the first eight months after launch we shipped eight major releases, and then in the subsequent four months we shipped eight more major releases. We're releasing new content every two weeks. Think about the power of that. We're now updating Guild Wars 2 about five times as often as the typical MMO."

The next update, scheduled for September 3, will bring back the Super Adventure Box gag from April, along with a few other additions.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 28, 2013 1:30 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Guild Wars 2 sold 3.5 million in first year.

    Guild Wars 2 is celebrating its first anniversary, and has released some stats to mark the occasion. It sold 3.5 million in its first year, and hosted 460,000 players concurrently at its peak.

    • reply
      August 28, 2013 2:01 PM

      And NCSoft shut down a couple hundred thousand people playing City of Heroes at the same time! Happy Anniversary!

      • reply
        August 28, 2013 2:02 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        August 28, 2013 8:09 PM

        And NCSoft shut down a couple hundred thousand people playing City of Heroes at the same time! Happy Anniversary!

        FTFY ;)

        • reply
          August 28, 2013 8:41 PM

          You're mean. Are you Korean? Do you work for NCSoft?

        • reply
          August 29, 2013 5:42 AM

          CoH was profitable and had over a hundred thousand people paying monthly for it. If you want to be a pompous sarcastic jerk, go back to whatever "superior" game you're into. "Mission accomplished."

      • reply
        August 28, 2013 8:26 PM

        Sounds like you're confusing concurrent players with unique users per month. Doubt CoH had that many players, and if it did, too many were freeloaders.

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          August 28, 2013 8:39 PM

          Nope. "The shutdown" at the same time as "original release of GW2"

          • reply
            August 29, 2013 1:49 PM

            I don't see how that refutes what I said? If CoH had a million people per month paying $15 for example, the game would probably still be running.

      • reply
        August 28, 2013 8:32 PM

        they need to invent a new word to describe how butthurt you are. butthurt doesn't even begin to describe it

        • reply
          August 28, 2013 8:39 PM

          I'm still pretty mad! As long as there are NCSoft games in the news, no one else is gonna forget. :)

          • reply
            August 29, 2013 5:31 AM

            I won't forget br0. I loved me some CoH.

        • reply
          August 29, 2013 5:45 AM

          And you wouldn't be if a financially profitable game you enjoyed was shut down for no other reason than freakin' corporate politics?

          No, your liberal tears would be all over the floor.

          • reply
            August 29, 2013 9:38 AM

            paragon studios was not profitable when ncsoft shut it down. ncsoft isn't stupid

              • reply
                August 29, 2013 12:26 PM

                i said paragon studios was not profitable. they had another game in the works. and ncsoft tried shopping the game around but nobody wanted to pay for it

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                  August 29, 2013 12:28 PM

                  and the figure in that slashdot link is for revenue, not profit. does not take operating costs into account. you can confirm this by reading ncsoft's public financial disclosures on their website (seriously, do it -- they have easy-to-read summaries at the beginning). this revenue was a mere 3% of what ncsoft takes in. not really worth keeping a whole studio alive

                • reply
                  August 29, 2013 1:04 PM

                  Went through some old emails that validate this:

                  "It’s sad that it got shut down especially when it was in the black as a game. Conjecture is that the studio itself may have been in the red with two secret projects in development? That or NCSoft needed to make an example that they would do the tough management things as they are currently courting a Japanese equity buyer."

                  Hearsay, but... enough of this.

                  Best wishes.

    • reply
      August 28, 2013 2:44 PM

      Just got it after last weeks Free Weekend.

      • reply
        August 29, 2013 5:47 AM

        I wound up picking it up back in April after a FTP weekend. It's nice and I like Arenanet. I still don't care for NCSoft, but WildStar does look interesting.

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      August 28, 2013 3:13 PM

      how many still play tho? i played for about 2 months and bailed

      • reply
        August 28, 2013 5:18 PM

        ~460k concurrent according ot the infographic anet put out for the 1yr anniversary.

        The game is still pretty bumping, even low-level areas have at least 25-100 people running on them.

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          August 28, 2013 5:33 PM

          I hop on usually when I need a break from Internet spaceships

      • reply
        August 28, 2013 8:42 PM

        Same here. It feels like FARMVILLE IMHO. To each his own. But thats it for me.

      • reply
        August 29, 2013 5:12 AM

        Considering there is no monthly fee I would assume they don't care as much as long as people will buy the expansion

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          August 29, 2013 5:14 AM

          The more people play, the more likely they are to buy the expansion.

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            August 29, 2013 5:22 AM

            I would guess financially the best case would be if people bought the game and expansions and only played each for five minutes. I always though anet was really great and generous with their model and I'm happy it worked out for them, although I burned out on gw2 way faster than 1. Probably because it's so much more like the classic eq / wow formula.

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            August 29, 2013 1:52 PM

            I know people who quit WoW but come back every time an expansion is released, so this may or may not hold much truth. Sure, someone who plays continually is a lock in to purchase an expansion, that's why GW2 releases content updates every 2 weeks now instead of once a month.

        • reply
          August 29, 2013 5:28 AM

          And buy stuff on the store so they can continue releasing new stuff every 2 weeks. :)

      • reply
        August 29, 2013 5:30 AM

        I play for a little bit every couple weeks.

      • reply
        August 29, 2013 5:48 AM

        1197 hours so far

      • reply
        August 29, 2013 5:55 AM

        a shitton

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