Five Million Units Sold

[Red Dragon]

Ok so this isn't odd for an MMO. However I felt it was kinda great being a Guild Wars fan myself that I wanted to share.

Guild Wars franchise breaks major milestone in less than three years.



Bellevue, WA. February 26, 2008—NCsoft® and ArenaNet® have announced that the Guild Wars® franchise of online roleplaying games has surpassed five million units sold in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Published by NCsoft and developed by ArenaNet, the Guild Wars franchise consists of the original Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions®, Guild Wars Nightfall®, and the recently released expansion, Guild Wars: Eye of the NorthTM. The Guild Wars games have been commercial and critical successes since the release of the original campaign in April of 2005. Its award-winning content and innovative subscription-free business model have created a large and loyal following that is highly anticipating Guild Wars 2TM.

Read more here:

http://www.guildwars.com/events/pres...2008-02-26.php

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Five Million Units Sold

Is that five million units of the actual Guild Wars game, or five million units of Guild Wars, and each expansion as well, counting the game and each expansion as individual units or the actual game as a unit and the expansions extra?

Cause if it's the number of units sold of the game itself, and not the expansion, yeah, that's pretty impressive. But if it's counting each sale of the game as a unit, and then each sale of the expansions as a unit as well, then it's not nearly so exciting, but still a pretty good number.

I mean, World of Warcraft has like 9 million monthly subscribers at this point.

[Wavelength]

Re: Five Million Units Sold

To my knowledge, WoW has the highest number of units sold of any MMO ever, and Guild Wars is second. Given that the two have different business models, it's like comparing apples to oranges.

However, last I heard, WoW had over six million active accounts, making it far more impressive. Still, #2 in such a huge market is nothing to sneeze at. I love what GW brings to the table, so I'm really glad for its continuing success.

Big Rick: There have been four core Guild Wars "products" released; three are stand-alone campaigns that could all be considered "the game," whereas the final one is an expansion pack. You could purchase any of the campaigns (Prophecies, Factions, or Nightfall; the former was the "original" and at first it usually just went by "Guild Wars") and play the game.I didn't buy Prophecies until I had played Factions for about 6 months, for example. The business model is set up so that they often release products at retail, but there are no monthly or other recurring fees whatsoever. So although many hardcore fans have bought all four, inflating the numbers from one point of view, I'd say it's still a lot more impressive than if most of the numbers came from per-se expansions.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Five Million Units Sold

Ok, I didn't really know much about Guild Wars except that it had no monthly fees. Which is why I didn't just immediately attack these numbers. *shrug*