Guild Wars 2 - Interview @ Eurogamer

Eurogamer has a new interview for Guild Wars 2 with Game Director Colin Johanson, and Lead Content Designer Mike Zadorojny.

Concern: Look at NCSoft's financial reports: ArenaNet sales are steadily dropping. There's no subscription fee to keep the bank-balance ticking over, no paid expansion on the horizon. Fewer sales means less investment means less new content means fewer sales, doesn't it?

"If you look at any game ever made, a year after release, sales are always dropping - that's just very normal," responded Colin Johanson. "We're also very happy with the rate the sales have been dropping down. It's actually dropped much less than we would have forecasted.

"Something people forget about a lot is that we're already the fastest-selling MMO in history, so even if sales are declining a little bit, that's on the fastest selling MMO in history. We don't really have a problem with that.

"And we are only available in Europe, North America and Australia. We haven't launched in China, Korea, Russia, Southeast Asia, Brazil - many of the world's biggest PC gaming hotbeds are places that the game is not yet even available.

"We're extremely pumped about adding to each of these regions - we think that that sales number is going to take off again, and we're going to see a resurgence in territories we are out in as more and more players from other parts of the world get invested. And also as some of the really big projects we're working on in the background come to fruition, we're going to see a spike again in users.

"Sales-wise we're just following what any game would naturally follow."

As for dwindling investment, it appears to be a myth: ArenaNet had a whopping 300 people when Guild Wars 2 launched, and now... now there are 350 and counting - ArenaNet is hiring.