ArenaNet’s fantasy MMORPG Guild Wars 2 in 2012 continues to boast an active community of millions of players, with developers reporting over 16 million registered users by 2021. The game’s also seen three major expansions and several more minor content releases since going free-to-play in 2015, with a fourth expansion pack reportedly in development. However, one thing it didn’t have was a release on Steam.
This is about to change, with ArenaNet announcing Guild Wars 2’s upcoming Steam release in a new trailer on Tuesday. Players can jump into the game’s fantastical world of Tyria via Steam on August 23, just a few days ahead of Guild Wars 2’s tenth anniversary on August 28.
ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 2’s arrival on Steam with a new trailer that invites players to “Journey across Tyria,” “Be who you want to be,” “Play your way,” and “Begin your great adventure.” It showcases some of what players might encounter along the way, including epic vistas, giant monsters, and huge PVP battles. It also showed off the free-to-play MMO’s four playable Races and nine Professions from which players can build their characters. The former includes Humans, the intelligent but diminutive Asura, elf-like Sylvari, towering Norn, and disciplined, Minotaur-like Charr.
Guild Wars 2 takes place 250 years after the original Guild Wars trilogy and its shared Eye of the North expansion. While the earlier games function as a set of interconnected multiplayer RPGs, Guild Wars 2 was the series’ first true MMORPG. However, ArenaNet’s also wanted to make a game that accounted for what developers saw as problems with typical MMO game design.
This includes the game’s relatively low level cap of 80, which developers believe prevents late-game grind while still allowing players time to build their characters. Guild Wars 2 also limits players to only ten skills. This encourages players to think strategically when building out their characters while also improving game balance, which ArenaNet developers cited as a significant problem with many MMOs. Guild Wars 2 also scales player levels up and down as needed to keep the game challenging and prevent high-level players from having an unfair advantage in PVP. This also helps to keep the long-running multiplayer game friendly to new players.
Guild Wars 2 fans reacted positively to the trailer announcing Guild Wars 2’s Steam release. The top comment as of this writing also encouraged players new to the MMORPG, or those returning after a long time away, to reach out to other community members for advice. There’s, of course, no guarantee that the game’s Steam release will significantly boost Guild Wars 2’s already respectable player base. However, it’s not an unreasonable assumption either.
Guild Wars 2 is available for PC.