NCsoft previews third Guild Wars installment

Hot on the heels of Guild Wars and Guild Wars Factions, NCsoft announced at E3 this week that not one but two new Guild Wars campaigns were in the works. NCsoft and game developer ArenaNet offered a sneak preview of the third installment during the conference.

Mike O’Brien, founder and president of ArenaNet, said the new Guild Wars campaign will feature an "African theme." Indeed, the trailer for the game showed a vast landscape that looked like Africa’s Serengeti region. NCsoft would not allow any photography or video recording of the footage.

O’Brien said ArenaNet’s recent success with the first two Guild Wars titles has allowed the developer, which was acquired in 2002 by NCsoft, to expand and hire additional game development staff.

Last month ArenaNet and NCsoft offered a weekend-long preview of Guild Wars Factions and saw more than 500,000 players log more than three million hours on the new online role-playing game. The original Guild Wars sold one million copies in less than six months.

As a result of the developer’s expansion, ArenaNet is working on two new campaigns for its franchise. "It took us one year to release Factions after the first Guild Wars," O’Brien said. "But now we have two development teams working on different campaigns, and they’ll be out faster than you expect." O’Brien wouldn’t divulge an exact release date for Guild Wars 3.

Logic, however suggests that the title will launch prior to April of next year, since the first Guild Wars and Factions were release on April of 2005 and 2006, respectively.

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