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On December 16, ‘MMORPG.com’, one of the biggest western gaming websites, announced its ‘Best of 2022: Players’ Choice’ where Guild Wars 2 won ‘MMORPG of the Year.’ What makes the achievement even more meaningful is that the award was voted for entirely by global gamers and it was Final Fantasy XIV that came in second.

MMORPG.com wrote, “It has been a year for ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2. Celebrating 10 years in 2022, releasing its latest expansion in years to widespread praise, as well as hitting Steam, ArenaNet has a lot to celebrate.”

Adding to the list, Guild Wars 2 was also awarded ‘Best Ongoing Game 2022’ by ‘PC Gamer’, another major video game website. This award recognizes a live service game of any genre that stood out the most with its updates and new content throughout the year.

Phil Savage, editor-in-chief of PC Gamer, explained reasoning behind the choice by praising the reintroduction of Season 1 of the game's Living World that opened up the game’s full story, and fast balance patches tailored based on the player feedback. He added, “ArenaNet announced new maps and even a fourth expansion—a clear statement that the studio wants to keep Guild Wars 2 alive beyond 2022, for many years to come.”

Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG developed by ArenaNet, US-based studio under NCSOFT, and the game celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. The RPG released three expansions so far since its initial launch in 2015 (Heart of Thornes (2015), Path of Fire (2017), End of Dragons (2022)) that have built up the unique and powerful lore and stories of the game ever since.

The game is thriving in what seems to be its second prime this year with the release of its third expansion ‘End of Dragons’ and joining the world’s largest platform by launching on Steam. ArenaNet wrote in its official blog posting on December 14 that “this year we’ve already seen more players venture into Tyria for the first time since 2015— the year we made the base game content playable for free and launched our first expansion, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™.”

The active users count of Guild Wars 2 doubled over the last three years and this strong momentum continued into the recent End of Dragons release. The studio also noted in the same posting that “Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons had already outsold our previous expansion, Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire™.”

Behind its consistent popularity is the active communication between users and developers, where the studio constantly interacts with players while striving to meet their long-term goals and promises. 

The Guild Wars franchise is NCSOFT’s key IP in North America and Europe, backed with its solid MMO fanbase and cumulative revenue exceeding 1 trillion KRW (700 million USD). As for Guild Wars 2, the number of user accounts created since its launch in August 2012 amounts to 16 million, with a cumulative playtime of 1.9 billion hours, all of which illustrates relentless love and support from players.