ArenaNet

ArenaNet - located in Bellevue, Washington, USA - is the development studio that makes Guild Wars. Their mission is to "create a state-of-the-art, interactive game network and design premier multiplayer online games for dedicated game players."

ArenaNet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Korean company NCsoft, publishers of other MMORPGs such as Lineage 2, Lineage, City of Heroes, Blade & Soul and Aion.

Note: In colloquial chat, on forums and in this wiki, the name ArenaNet is often shortened to "ANet" or "A.Net".

History

ArenaNet was founded in 2000 by Mike O'Brien, Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain. All three of them came from Blizzard Entertainment and were previously involved in the development of multiplayer online games such as Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, World of Warcraft and the Battle.net gaming network.

The newly-formed business was originally called "Triforge", but was changed to "ArenaNet" shortly after.

ArenaNet was acquired by NCsoft in 2002.

Staff

Over the years, ArenaNet has grown to 250+ employees. Besides Mr. O'Brien, the former president of the company, there are several other staff members "visible" to the community, for example Stéphane Lo Presti and Rubi Bayer. A full list of the ArenaNet team can be found in the game credits.

NC West

On September 10, 2008 NCsoft decided to unite ArenaNet with NC Interactive, NC Europe and NC Austin under the management of a new organization, NC West, based in Seattle by the end of 2008.

Guild Wars

News and announcements

There are several outlets which ArenaNet uses to inform players about the game:

• On their website: The GuildWars homepage offers news about the game. For convenient reading, all of those are copied here on the wiki at GuildWars.com News.

• At the login screen: Short messages inform players about important updates while logging in. An archive of all login messages is at Login screen announcements.

• In the game: ArenaNet representatives sometimes use the Frog or the Monastery Scribe to talk to players ingame about new developments. Unofficial transcripts of these sessions are stored at the Frog Talk.

• On the wiki: Several ArenaNet employees use the wiki to release information to the players via the wiki:
  • The Community Managers maintain the Developer Updates page.
  • Game updates are usually directly reported onto the wiki by Stéphane Lo Presti upon the release of a new build.
  • Other ArenaNet employees use wiki pages or their own talk pages to inform about various aspects of the game related to their field of specialisation.

Player feedback

ArenaNet uses the wiki to give users a possibility to get into contact with the developers regarding various issues:

• Feedback:Main gives access to the bug report, skill feedback, and suggestion articles.
• Stéphane Lo Presti is the Wiki Community Liason for both GWW and GW2W, in addition to his role at NCSoft.
• Dr. Stephen Clarke-Willson is Vice President of IT at NCSoft, also serving as the present Guild Wars 1 Game Director.

Note: The the wiki is not a forum, and is generally not a good venue for reaching ArenaNet with comments and criticism regarding Guild Wars. Gameplay suggestions can be placed in the Feedback and User namespaces. General discussions on talk pages are subject to this policy.

External links

• ArenaNet website
• NCsoft website
• ArenaNet on Wikipedia
• ArenaNet on YouTube
• ArenaNet on Flickr
• ArenaNet on Twitter
• ArenaNet on Facebook