ArenaNet, LLC is an American video game developer and subsidiary of NCSoft, founded in 2000 by Mike O'Brien, Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain and located in Bellevue, Washington.
[8][9] In October 2019, the remaining founder, Mike O'Brien, announced his departure and founding of a new studio called ManaWorks.
In Guild Wars, the advantages in battle will instead come from how well a player picks and uses the character's 8 skills (from a library of hundreds), an art that is hard to master.
This third chapter introduces a new world map, two new professions (the Dervish and Paragon), a new PvP mode, but its most remarkable new feature is the introduction of "Heroes" who travel with the character between missions and campaigns and are fully customizable by the player.
Released on August 31, 2007, it requires one of three earlier full campaigns, and introduces two new races—the Asura and the Norn—that would later become playable in Guild Wars 2.
It was intended to bridge the gap to Guild Wars 2 by means of a Hall of Monuments, a mechanism that allows transferring achievements in the original series to the sequel.
In an effort to resolve plot threads, ArenaNet has released a series of "mini-expansion" updates, collectively known as Guild Wars Beyond.
[12] Some of these scrapped Beyond-updates included: the Ebon Vanguards' withdrawal and establishment of Ebonhawke; the Lunatic Court and their attempts to free Mad King Thorn; expanding on the story of Palawa Joko and continue that plot thread, which was left dangling in Nightfall; and the disappearance of Evennia, last seen in Old Ascalon during the Krytan civil war.
The game is set around 250 years after the events in the original series and contains several new features, consisting of a more persistent world (as opposed to mostly instanced), dynamic questing, a personal branching storyline, and an updated graphics engine.
[21] After the release of Guild Wars 2 Arenanet initially spent their time fixing issues with the game; such as bugs and connection problems.
Once the game had become stable, they set their focus on further improving Guild Wars 2 and evolving the concept of a 'living world', by adding both temporary and permanent content in biweekly updates.
One of the most notable changes brought by this series of patches was the destruction of Lion's Arch, one of the game's major cities.
The lack of permanence and repeatability of the content brought by Living World led ArenaNet to change its approach in the summer of 2014, launching a new series of patches which introduced new maps to the game world, as well as repeatable story instances similar to those included in the base game.
Path of Fire introduces mounts, new open world maps in Elona (the same setting as Guild Wars: Nightfall), new 10-man raids, and another elite specialization for each of the game's professions.
As with Heart of Thorns, players who own the Path of Fire expansion have been given access to a series of post-expansion story patches with Season 4 of the Living World.
On July 5, 2018, founder Mike O'Brien announced that two game developers, Jessica Price and Peter Fries, had been fired from the company for "[failing] to uphold [their] standards of communicating with players" by attacking community members on Twitter.
[36][37][38] Farokhmanesh wrote that "ArenaNet’s swift action to fire both Price and Fries sends a disturbing message to its fans, and especially its most toxic ones: that their power is directly correlated to how loud they yell.
It’s a worrying precedent for anyone interested in working for ArenaNet, but especially those in marginalized communities that are more likely to face blowback and harassment from the worst parts of its fanbase".