An hour ago ArenaNet dropped a Studio Update video on YouTube with a promise you do not hear often in live-service games. Studio Head Colin Johanson, Guild Wars 2 Game Director Josh Davis, and Guild Wars Reforged Game Director Stephen Clarke-Willson addressed the community from the ArenaNet office with a single commitment: all three Guild Wars games will be actively developed for years to come. No replacements. No sunsets. Three games, one Tyria, and a roadmap for each.
This was not a routine check-in. Guild Wars 3 was formally announced the day before, and the community reaction was immediate. If history repeats itself, the fear went, Guild Wars 2 would slowly starve while the studio pivoted to the new project, just as the original Guild Wars did when GW2 entered production. Johanson called that fear out by name. “We are not repeating the same approach as we did all those years ago,” he said. “If we did, we would have stopped development on Guild Wars 1 more than a year ago.”
Instead, ArenaNet has kept Guild Wars 2 in active development throughout GW3’s pre-production. The game launched on Steam and the Epic Games Store, shipped three expansions in three years, and maintained regular content cadences. At the same time the studio reinvested in the original Guild Wars, rebranded it as Guild Wars Reforged, and watched players return in numbers that made the case for itself. According to Johanson, about half of the Steam players in the first month played on Steam Deck. “When we support these worlds,” he said, “players show up, both returning veterans and entirely new fans.”
Guild Wars 3 Is an Evolution, Not a Replacement
Guild Wars 3 takes place in Orr, one of the most lore-rich locations in the franchise, and unfolds in a different era of Tyria. The studio describes it as a standalone evolution rather than a direct replacement for anything you are already playing. Johanson put it carefully: the three games “are intentionally very different in design, in experience, and where they sit on the timeline.” Whichever one you call home, the others are not going anywhere.
More details on the setting arrive Tuesday, when Johanson and Davis go live on Twitch and YouTube to discuss the where and when of GW3 and take questions from the community.
What Guild Wars 2 Gets: Four Major Initiatives
Guild Wars 2 gets the most news today, and it breaks into four pieces.
Hall of Monuments 2.0
Later this year ArenaNet launches a system that lets you earn rewards in both GW2 and GW3 by completing achievements across the entirety of Guild Wars 2. Veterans of the original game will recognize the concept: it is the Hall of Monuments, rebuilt for the three-game era. The difference this time is phase-based rollout. The first two releases target the core game, then each expansion follows in chronological order over roughly a year. More information on the system and its rewards arrives after the Visions of Eternity expansion wraps up in September.
The Year of Polish
After Visions of Eternity ships its final quarterly release in late summer, the GW2 team pauses expansion development for nearly a full year. Instead of building forward, they are going backward through every era of the game. Davis split the work into two halves: what you see as a player and what happens under the hood.
On the visible side, older content gets rebalanced to current design standards, long-standing bugs get addressed, the early game experience gets a pass, and the Zhaitan fight in the personal story gets updated as one of the few specific examples the team named. Under the hood, the engine gains physics-based rendering, a technology GW2 was never built for, and both client and server performance receive investment to ensure the game runs well as the art direction pushes beyond what the original tech supported. Davis acknowledged that a year is not enough time to do everything and opened a dedicated section on the official forums for players to flag what matters most. There is a space for the core game and a space for each expansion.
New WvW Borderlands Map
World vs. World players get the first new Borderlands map in over a decade. ArenaNet is developing it alongside the community using the same collaborative approach as the PvP push game mode: release a greybox prototype on live, gather feedback, and iterate. A beta test is planned for later this year as soon as the map reaches first playable. Davis cited the Desert Borderlands missteps as the reason for the cautious, iterative process.
Free Orr Open-World Map
A new open-world map set in Orr arrives as a core game addition, free for all players with no expansion requirement. It is designed as a bridge between the Tyria you know in GW2 and the Orr you will explore in GW3. If you or a friend are returning to GW2 to chase Hall of Monuments rewards, you will not need to own an expansion to check it out.
Guild Wars Reforged Keeps Growing
The original Guild Wars, now Guild Wars Reforged, continues to expand beyond what anyone expected for a game that launched in 2005. Steam and Steam Deck integration shipped already, and mobile is next. Clarke-Willson explained that the Steam Deck work, adapting the UI for a small high-resolution screen, laid the groundwork for bringing the game to phones. Mobile players join the same live servers as PC players, and existing PC players get mobile access at no additional cost. The team also shipped two new dungeons and, based on their success, has started work on “an entirely new type of content” that is now in early development. All campaign purchases have been consolidated: buy any one campaign and you own them all, removing a friction point that kept new players from experiencing the full game.
The Cost, Stated Plainly
The studio was upfront about what this plan costs. Visions of Eternity wraps this September. After that there is no new expansion for roughly a year, and GW2’s major content updates do not resume their annual cadence until after Guild Wars 3 launches. If you measure GW2’s health by the pace of expansions, the next 18 months will look quieter than the last three years. The studio is asking the community to measure differently: by what gets fixed, rebuilt, and modernized instead.
What Happens Next
The third quarterly release of Visions of Eternity arrives in late summer with new story, a new map, and more. Hall of Monuments 2.0 lands later this year. The forums are open now for Year of Polish feedback. Tuesday’s livestream will cover the GW3 setting, and the team promised additional conversations with the community “over the coming weeks and months.” ArenaNet is asking for patience on a timeline measured in years, not months. The studio spent the first ten minutes of this video making sure everyone understood that this time, the plan is different. Last time they moved to a new Guild Wars game, the original stopped getting new content entirely.
Exitializ will be covering Tuesday’s Guild Wars 3 setting reveal livestream. Follow us for updates.