Guild Wars developer ArenaNet is taking a new approach to game add-ons. While there were two stand-alone, continent-adding retail expansion packs released for its predecessor, Guild Wars 2 will be having none of that.
“At this time we don’t plan to continue with the standalone expansion model,” lead designer Eric Flannum told GamerZines in no unclear terms.
“We felt that this model split our player base unnecessarily and also caused us to focus development effort on things that were redundant with the original release of the game such as tutorial areas and duplicates of already existing skills.”
That of course doesn’t mean there won’t new new content released for the MMO. In fact, expect “the kinds of things” included in the first game to pop up on the sequel’s in-game store. Flannum didn’t get more specific than that for now though.
A closed beta for the game will be launching in the second half of the year. No launch dates just yet.
