ArenaNet’s been pretty quiet, outside of Guild Wars 2 promotion, for the last two months since it was rocked by the layoffs of 143 employees and cancellation of two other games in February. But at EGX Rezzed, Eurogamer chatted up Lead Living World Designer Linsey Murdock and Senior Game Designer Andrew Gray about how the studio is settling into its smaller but more focused routine.
The duo – apparently accompanied by PR – spoke glowingly about the studio and the way ArenaNet handled the layoffs, but when journalist Robert Purchese asked about the direct impact on Guild Wars 2 itself, both the handler and Murdock stuck to the party line: that the Guild Wars 2 core team was “impacted” – but not too much. “We also got a lot of people back,” Murdock says. “So in terms of quantity of people on the Guild Wars 2 team: not very affected. But some people who had moved onto other projects came back.”
Worth noting is that Murdock declares that “Guild Wars 2 is still going strong.” I’ve seen skepticism about this, but just know that it’s backed up by statements from our own sources as well: Guild Wars 2 was actually outperforming expectations.
“Any game, as it ages, has a natural, slow decline – I don’t think Guild Wars 2 is any different in that way – but we declined slower than anyone expected because there is still such interest both internally and externally for the game. We’re still bringing in great revenue with micro-transactions. It’s not going anywhere.”
And as for the canceled games? “We would prefer to think of them as shelved,” Murdock says.
