Just a few weeks ago, the MassivelyOP team gathered round to speculate on what the Classic Guild Wars anniversaries might look like (and what we’d wish them to look like). The game turns 19 this year and 20 next year, meaning that if ArenaNet is going to ramp up into something big to celebrate, now is most definitely the time.
Well, I don’t want to freak anyone out too early, but it does look as if ArenaNet is planning something, as earlier this week, Classic Guild Wars game director Stephen Clarke-Willson popped up on the official wiki to let fans know that he’s been shifted to working primarily on GW1.
“As many of you know, I’ve been part-time game director, programmer, janitor, etc., for Guild Wars since 2018,” he writes. “I’m happy to report that starting two weeks ago my time allocated to Guild Wars changed from 10% to 80%. I’m very excited to focus much more of my time on Guild Wars. I’d like to thank the studio leadership for working with me to figure out how to allocate my previous duties and roles to other staff. I’d also like to give a shout-out to other long-tenured staff in the company who have helped me with their knowledge of how and why things work the way they do in Guild Wars.”
In other words, we almost have an entire developer on Guild Wars 1 now. Laugh if you like, but this is more than we’ve had for years.
However, Clarke-Willson is extremely quick to warn players that the game isn’t leaving maintenance mode and new content isn’t on the way, which will dash a lot of our hopes as expressed in our team roundtable.
“I’d like to set your expectations appropriately – there is still a lot of work to do on our back-end systems so not everything I do will be visible to players. But I’m happy to say I’ve recently spent more time in-game and fixed some long-standing problems. The game is still in ‘maintenance mode’ and there are no plans for new content. That said, I hope to improve your overall experience with Guild Wars and I’ll see you in game!”
Still, “new content” doesn’t mean we can’t get a balance update or quality-of-life perks. Cross your fingers!
And of course, if you’re considering swinging back into the game, the anniversary celebrations are indeed underway through May 6th. Happy birthday, GW1!
