In just three short weeks, MMORPG.com will be heading to the New York Comic-Con at the Jacob Javits Center where ArenaNet will also be in attendance. Not only will ArenaNet be showing Guild Wars 2 and allowing those of us on the east coast to get our hands on the demo that was playable at GamesCom and PAX Prime, but ArenaNet will also be hosting their own “Building a Better MMO” panel featuring Guild Wars 2 designers Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson.


Guild Wars 2 is a perfect fit for our panel as ArenaNet is making some pretty bold claims about their game and is looking to break the mould. How will Guild Wars 2 fit into the future of online gaming? I’m curious to find out ArenaNet’s thoughts. The original Guild Wars was “buy to play”, where gamers would simply pay for the box and any other optional expansions that were released afterwards, but this was for a CORPG on a much smaller scale. I’m really itching to find out what makes them confident that their “B2P” model will work with a full-blown MMORPG such as Guild Wars 2, and how they plan on delivering regular content to voracious MMORPG gamers with only box sales to sustain the game. I’m not sure the campaign system used for the original Guild Wars expansions would work in Guild Wars 2; I imagine we’d be looking at new expansions in the vein of typical MMORPG expansions, but that’s all speculation at this point.