Guild Wars 3 Is Really Real: How ArenaNet’s Series is T… — Transcript

It has been a long time coming, but we now know that it's really real. Guild Wars 3 was just revealed. The next MMO RPG from ArenaNet. And here to talk with us as much as we can about it is studio head Colin Johansson. How you doing, sir?

I'm great, thank you. It has been an incredible last couple of days.

Yeah, make some noise. Guild Wars 3. Thanks, everybody. So, to kick things off, just can you give us a top-level overview? What are some of the big new ideas driving Guild Wars 3?

Yeah, you know, we've announced that we're going to go into beta at the end of next year. And so we've got a lot of time between now and then that we're going to reveal most of the big ideas behind the game and kind of work our way through that. The two things so far that we've set out as core pillars for the game that we've announced, one of them is joy of movement.

I think one of the things that the Guild Wars franchise is known for, coming out of Guild Wars 1 in particular, is offering this really spectacular form of movement in an MMO experience. And we're really trying to push that even further with Guild Wars 3 and asking the question, can we take some of the elements that you would traditionally find in action games and bring those into multiplayer MMO experiences to create incredible new forms of joy of movement? And a lot of that is powered by momentum, which is a thing you don't see in MMOs. And so a lot of the movement in Guild Wars 3, your momentum transfers between all of the different things you do, which allows you to really express joy of movement in a unique way in an MMO.

And then the other one that we've talked just a tiny bit about, and I'm going to leave it at that today, is our combat system. And I think that MMOs often are viewed as very specific types of combat. And we really wanted to look at, especially with this game now coming to both console for the first time, and trying to create a new era of MMOs, we really wanted to ask how could we take some of the elements that you would find in action multiplayer combat games or even just action RPGs and bring those into the MMO space and extend them. And so, our combat system is really something very unique that extends out on some of those ideas as well. That's as much as I'm going to say right now.

Little bit of a tease. So we're actually, we got the trailer kind of looping here. Can you walk us through what we're seeing in the trailer and what were some of the things that you wanted to convey with this trailer?

Yeah. So one of the big things that you'll see there is we're depicting the land of Orr, which is an incredible historical place in the history of Guild Wars. The very first Guild Wars took place there. The gods that originated in our world. We've told many stories in our lore about them existing in Orr and then disappearing and leaving the world.

And we're setting this game 1,200 years before Guild Wars 1, just before the first Guild War breaks out, just after one of the gods has been deposed. And we see this as a really incredible opportunity to go back to a place in our world that there isn't a lot of written history about, but what there is is incredibly interesting. And there a huge amount of the mysteries and the stories behind the entire concept of Guild Wars all originate from this timeline.

The other reason that we picked it is we think all of those reasons are awesome for our existing fans and a reason for them to engage.

But we're inviting an entire new audience to join this game and to join the Guild Wars franchise for the first time. We're inviting players on PlayStation to come join us and play.

And console gamers have never been able to play a Guild Wars game before. We didn't ship Guild Wars 2 on Steam until 10 years after launch. We're going to ship Guild Wars 3 on Steam on day one when we launch this time. And we really wanted to send a message out to everyone that this is a game for everyone to come play Guild Wars right now. And you don't have to have played 20 years of this franchise to understand what's going on in Guild Wars 3. Everybody is coming in on relative equal footing.

There is just a small amount of recorded history about this timeline. And so all of our new players and all of our existing fans all get to discover the lore and the timeline and the stories all together.

And because there's very little that's actually recorded, even though it is set 1,200 plus years in the past, there's an incredible amount of stuff for people to discover and find out and mysteries to unravel that we think is going to be compelling for everybody. And so you're seeing some little pieces here of Orr, and some of the spirits that live in Orr, the gods that live in Orr. And those are just some little teases for more stories to come later.

All right. So you guys are announcing an open beta in 2027. I know that's a long ways off, but are there any details you can share about your approach to the gameplay this time around in anticipation for that open beta?

I appreciate that. I think I'm going to take that a little more high level and say one of the really unique things about ArenaNet is we have a very unique approach to making new games. And at most studios when they start making a new game, they think about what is the gameplay that we want to have? What's the story we want to tell? What technology or cool feature do we want to base this game on? And especially in the case when you're making like part two or part three of a series, oftentimes the question is what are all the things we're going to carry forward and then the new feature we'll add to make it cool.

And ArenaNet has never viewed making games that way. We start with player problems and, you know, we make MMO RPGs. So we start by asking what are all the player problems and frustrations in the genre at this time. And back when we were making Guild Wars 1, one of the big ones was that every online game had a subscription fee. So, we set out to make a game that would have no subscription fees, that anyone could play as much or as little as they want, and they could always play with their friends.

When we set out to make Guild Wars 2, we wanted to make a giant open world MMO, the scale of all these other games that were out at the time, and solve the problems that existed in those types of games. And so we made a world where players don't get put in conflict with one another, where it's easy to play with other players and other players actually make the game more fun.

And starting with those player problems as our core means every one of our games is very, very different. They take place in Tyria. They draw from the same core lore, but they're on different timelines and they're very different game experiences because they solve for different problems in the era of game that we're making it in.

And we feel like right now the genre that we make our game in, in the MMO genre, and we've consistently heard this from all of you too, that you feel like this genre is ready for something new, that it is stagnated, that we've all been playing the same games for the most part for over a decade. And I think this is when ArenaNet's at its best when we challenge ourselves and say let's go solve for the problems and innovate. And it's risky.

It's a challenging thing to do. We could trip and fall flat on our face by trying to invent new ideas and then wrap our game around those. But I don't think game genres move forward unless people are willing to do that. And so we are going to fearlessly charge forward and try a bunch of new ideas. And we really hope people love them and we're going to find out over the next couple of years.

I fully agree. Now I want to go back to that no subscription model point. But first, we actually have some exclusi-

And because there's very little that's actually recorded, even though it is set 1,00 plus years in the past, there's an incredible amount of stuff for people to discover and find out and mysteries to unravel that we think is going to be

compelling for everybody. And so you're seeing some little pieces here of ore, uh, and some of the spirits that live in ore, the gods that live in ore. Uh, and those are just some little teases for more stories to come later.

All right. Uh, so you guys are announcing an open beta uh, in 2027. uh are I know that's a long ways off, but are there any detail uh details you can share about your approach to the gameplay uh this time around in you know

in anticipation for that open beta? Uh I I I appreciate that. Uh I think I'm going to I'll take that a little more high level uh and say one of the really unique things about Arenaet is we have a

very unique approach to making new games. And at most studios when they start making a new game, they think about what is the gameplay that we want to have? What's the uh what's the story we want to tell? what technology or cool

feature do we want to base this game on? And especially in the case when you're making like part two or part three of a series, oftentimes the question is what are all the things we're going to carry forward and then a new the new feature

we'll add to make it cool. Uh and Arenaet has never viewed making games that way. We start with player problems and you know we make MMO RPGs. So we start by asking what are all the player problems and frustrations in the genre

at this time. And back when we were making Guild Wars 1, one of the big ones was that every online game had a subscription fee. So, we set out to make a game that would have no subscription fees, that anyone could play as much or

as little as they want, and they could always play with their friends. Uh, when we set out to make Guild Wars 2, we wanted to make a giant openw world MMO, the scale of uh all these other games

that were out at the time, and solve the problems that existed in those types of games. And so we made a world where players don't get put in conflict with one another, where it's easy to play with other players and other players

actually make the game more fun. And starting with those player problems as our core means every one of our games is very very different. They take place in Tyrion. They draw from the same like core lore, but they're on different

timelines and they're very different game experiences because they solve for different problems in the era of game that we're making it in. And we feel like right now the genre that we make our game in in the MMO genre and we've

we've consistently heard this from all of you too that you feel like this genre is ready for something new that it is stagnated that we've all been playing the same games for the most part for over a decade. And I think this is when

Arenaet's at its best when we challenge ourselves and say let's go solve for the problems and innovate. And it's risky.

It's a challenging thing to do. We could trip and fall flat on our face uh by trying to invent new ideas and then wrap our game around those. But I don't think game genres move forward unless people are willing to do that. Uh and so we are

going to fearlessly charge forward and try a bunch of new ideas. And we really hope people love them and we're going to find out over the next couple of years.

I fully agree. Uh now I want to go back to that uh the the the no subscription model point. But first uh we actually have some exclusive artwork that came through. If we can pull that up and if

you can just kind of walk us through what what's happening here. I can. So, so first off, uh, kudos to, uh, Kai, our one of our incredible concept artists who made this piece early on in development. Uh, and this is

really an inspiration piece going back to what are we trying to do with combat in this game. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, one of our goals is to take elements you would traditionally find more in action games and to try to

figure out which of those can make their way into an MMO experience. Uh we started from the very beginning having this game be playable both on a controller and mouse and keyboard and challenged ourselves. Can we make a

combat system that feels awesome on both which is generally not the case for MMOs. They tend to start as mouse and keyboard and then get ported to a controller later. And a lot of the great inspirations that we could find are

single player RPGs or multiplayer RPGs but not MMOs so much in that space. And so this combat this uh this concept art piece really is aspirational for us of this is the type experience we want to chase after. Can we make more action

combat in a in a way that you wouldn't have seen in an MMO before?

So going back to that subscription model, uh the first Guild Wars was notable for being, you know, one of the only, if not the only uh MMOs out there that didn't require a subscription.

you're continuing that with Guild Wars 3 and I wonder how does that influence how you build and design the game?

Uh, it's a, you know, it's a great question. I think I think you have to think about questions like that fundamentally from the very beginning as you construct your game. And I think we have a very long history at Arenaet.

Again, when you start with solving for player problems and making games for players first, uh, it forces us to ask a lot of these questions. How do we make a game uh, that players can play as much or as little as they want? I think

there's a lot of challenges with the MMO space right now where there's a perception for players and I'm sure many of you have felt this of like, hey, somebody tries to tell you to go play this next great MMO and your first

reaction is I don't have time for that. Uh it's like a second job and you have to basically give up a chunk of your life to engage with with many MMOs. And I think that perception and solving for

that perception is something that we've always wanted to continue to solve for at Arenaet. We started it with no subscription fees. our concept of horizontal progression where you can play our game for a while, take a break, go play other games. That's okay. We

don't have anything that's holding you hostage to keep playing and then come back when you see something cool you want to play again. All of that inspiration and concept is being applied to Guild Wars 3 as well. Uh, and I

think, you know, I will note I think there's become a modern version of the subscription that we've seen evolve over the last few years and and even longer than that, uh, in battle passes and paid battle passes where it it's basically a

subscription kind of hidden and wrapped with other stuff around it. Uh, and I think we've challenged ourselves to ask the same question. Can we make a game like this that doesn't have a subscription fee and doesn't have a

battle pass fee buried in it as well? Because we think players are sick of those two. Uh, and so this will be a game you can buy it. You can play it as much or as little as you want. We will

respect our players time and if they love it, we'll have other stuff that they can buy from us in the future, but we're not going to hold their time hostage and we want them to be able to go play other games. And hopefully, I

would highly recommend they should go check out Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars 1.

Uh, because we just announced this weekend that we're going to keep supporting those far into the future as well.

Well, there you go. Love to hear that. I have so many questions, but unfortunately that's all the time we have. So, thank you so much to Colin for joining us here at IGN Live to talk all about Guild Wars 3. You can wish you you

can wishlist it now for Steam, PlayStation 5, and register at guild wars3.com for a chance to start playing as soon as the beta begins in fall 2027.

We have so much more happening here around the summer of gaming, including interviews with the director of Control Resident. So, stay tuned to IGM Live.