Yesterday was a grand day for Guild Wars 2. Five years since launch and still going strong, the game has just received its second full commercial expansion, Path of Fire, which I must admit to losing half of Friday to. Rare amongst MMOs, the launch was almost without issue, a situation unusual enough to be newsworthy itself. To commemorate the release of Path of Fire, developers ArenaNet are celebrating in the most MMO way possible; with a lot of very, very big numbers, all laid out in this towering infographic.
Guild Wars 2 is unquestonably one of the best MMOs around, and it’s among good company on PC.
As far as numbers go, it’s an impressive set of statistics. While the base game itself went free-to-play some time ago, 11 million players is not a number to be sniffed at. Each of those players has – on average – created just under 5 characters, although it should come as no surprise that the most popular combination is the plain vanilla Male Human Warrior. While I feel my giant-yet-sneaky Norn Thief stands out from the crowd, the least-played combination at present is a Female Charr Revenant. If you want to be unique, now you know what to play as.
Some of the later statistics are so enormous as to leave the mind reeling. The figure of 78,200,825,940,130 total experience points earned is almost meaningless in its enormity, although dividing that by the number of characters created gives us a far more interesting figure of 1,473,914. Cross-referencing that with the official wiki, it puts the average player character at just above level 68, out of a total cap of 80. Almost, but not quite Nice, as the internet is so fond of saying.
On a purely practical level, the penultimate figure given is one of the most relevant. Guild Wars 2 has received 61 major free updates since launch, with the six largest coming in the wake of the first expansion, Heart of Thorns. Guild Wars 2 has settled into an almost episodic release format, with expansions adding a decent chunk of content and some new gameplay features, but also setting the scene for major story updates and whole new zones being introduced every few months, and ArenaNet have promised to keep to this format with the release of Path of Fire.
Guild Wars 2 itself is free to play, with its two expansions Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire priced at £26/$30 each.