Guild Wars

ArenaNet's first title, Guild Wars, was released on April 28, 2005. It was an instant No. 1 seller around the world, with more than 250,000 accounts created in the first week after the game's launch. In a little over two years, the franchise sold over 4 million copies and currently provides in-game translations to eleven different languages: Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. After the release of Guild Wars, ArenaNet developed two additional standalone games, called campaigns. Guild Wars Factions (released on April 28, 2006) and Guild Wars Nightfall (released on October 27, 2006), added to the over-arching Guild Wars saga with their own unique storylines, and expanded the world of Guild Wars almost three-fold with vast new realms to explore. While each new campaign functions as a standalone game, the games can be integrated into a larger whole, and players can move their characters freely between all campaigns they own. In addition, each campaign offers players the opportunity to complete a new set of missions and quests, as well as a chance to try out brand new professions, skills, items, and game features that expand the way they play the game. Sales of the entire Guild Wars franchise topped 4 million copies in August of 2007, a milestone that occurred just prior to the release of ArenaNet's first true expansion to the game: Guild Wars: Eye of the North. This expansion provided new content aimed exclusively at level 20 characters, giving existing fans more of what they wanted: skills, items, challenges, and story. Eye of the North returned to the lands of Tyria, the location of the original Guild Wars campaign, to continue such tales as humanity's war against the Charr, the Dwarven prophecies of the end times, and the disappearance of a lovely little girl named Gwen. In addition, Eye of the North introduced new races, the Norn and the Asura, a new threat to the world, and a new story to discover by playing through the game. Guild Wars: Eye of the North also provides a bridge to the upcoming release of Guild Wars 2, the new game that ArenaNet is currently working on. Guild Wars 2 will take place over 200 hundred years after the events portrayed in Guild Wars: Eye of the North, and is scheduled to go into public beta in the second half of 2008. We encourage you to visit the official game site, www.guildwars.com, for more information about Guild Wars.