Guild Wars 2 Goes Free to Play (kind of)

August 31, 2015 8:08 ( F2P News ) 0

Guild Wars 2 Goes Free to Play (kind of)

Unexpectedly, ArenaNet has announced that, from now on, the core version of Guild Wars 2 is free to play. ArenaNet co-founder and president Mike O’Brien and Guild Wars 2 game director Colin Johanson revealed it during a press conference this past weekend.

Nearly three years to the day after the game launched as a buy-to-play title without subscription, the popular MMO will be now available for all those who wish to play it. However, while the core is free to play, the upcoming Heart of Thorns expansion will launch as buy-to-play.

“We believe the buy to play, subscription-free model for MMOs is good for players, and it’s good for developers,” said Mike O’Brien, co-founder and president of ArenaNet. “It gets a little tricky when a buy-to-play MMO introduces an expansion pack, leaving new players guessing about what they need to buy in order to start playing with their friends. As we get ready to release our first expansion for Guild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep a simple business model where new players can play the core game for free, while all players need only purchase one thing – Heart of Thorns – to get access to all of our new and future content.”

ArenaNet has also released a new trailer, which you can watch right here:



The core version features some restrictions for free to play users. For example, players will be able to create only 2 characters, they can't send gold or items, they have no access to the guild bank and they can't talk in map chat.

Some kind of a trial version, perhaps. Very soon this core version will face our F2Pmeter, so we'll know. Stay tuned.

Source: NCSoft press release.

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