South Korean financial website Money Today reports that Guild Wars 3 recently received the green light from ArenaNet parent company NCSoft, which assessed in-house development resources and reviewed business feasibility.
It is unclear from the report whether development is literally just starting or whether actual production is now commencing. Despite some layoffs that took place in 2019, ArenaNet has been working on a new project for some time. In 2022, the developer was openly hiring for an unannounced triple-A game in pre-production, based on an ‘established fantasy online IP’ and to be made with Unreal Engine 5. Unless ArenaNet suddenly decided to license some other fantasy franchise, the most likely answer is they were already referring to Guild Wars 3.
The job ad also featured a decent overview of what the game might be like:
We have a bold vision for breaking free of certain vicious cycles inherent to content creation. Our studio strives to build both breathtaking narratives and a deeply interactive world. In this role, you will be building the pillars of our multiplayer storytelling experience, such as interactions, conversations, scenes, dynamic spawning, and emergent objectives.
It sounds a lot like the evolution of Guild Wars 2’s dynamic events. It’s been twelve years since ArenaNet tried to innovate the MMORPG genre with the release of its second game, and certainly, today’s technology could push that vision even further.
Even if Guild Wars 3 is now entering production, it may well be four or five years before it gets to the market. Thankfully, fans of the franchise can also look forward to ArenaNet continuously expanding the current live MMORPG. The latest free update, titled The Realm of Dreams, was released last month; another is slated in the coming months, ahead of a full-fledged new expansion coming later in 2024. In an interview with Wccftech, the studio hinted at a major PvE endgame feature coming with the next expansion:
I think fans will be pretty stoked when they hear about our plans for endgame PvE content in our next expansion!
