We interview ArenaNet president Mike O'Brien about Guild War 2's first year.

Mike was then asked by Richie Procopio of Massively to clarify how much of the world they can really change with the personal story possibly preventing ArenaNet from being able to change too much. With Orr for example, new players would still need to experience the risen through their story instead of an Orr cleansed through the Living World.

"At the beginning we steered away from things that would affect the personal story because we wanted to keep this clean and simple. There is no way it should be the case now that anything which is touched upon in the personal story isn't fodder for the Living World as that would go against what we want to avoid in Guild Wars 2, which is the world being too solidified that it can never change. So we are going to start changing that stuff."

Which MMORPG followed up with the question of whether the Living World is a sustainable model.

"Guild Wars 2 has this unique business model. We love our business model. You might have seen our earnings reports and can see that we have a stable revenue base. So we are funding the Living World through our revenue base."

Toward the end, Mike was asked about how many copies of the game they were expecting to ship in China, but was not able to give any detailed information. Other similar games that did well in North America and Europe went on to China to sell well and ArenaNet hopes for a similar outcome with Guild Wars 2. I followed up asking if the free trials have been successful for the game.

"Actually yeah, numerically they have. We are not going to get into numbers, but in general we have seen a really strong uptake in players trying the free trials and then purchasing the game.

Chris Lye: On the marketing side, we continue to see the number of people who come into our free trials grow over time. We have kept them discreet and focused over a single weekend, but we definitely plan to expand them in a number of ways. The free trial is a great way to get people into the game and we have found, speaking as someone who has done free trials for other projects, the conversion rate of free trial players to buying the game is very much higher than the industry average."

We want to thank Mike O'Brien and ArenaNet for taking the time for this interview. Check out the announcement reveal for next week's content, where ArenaNet kicks off year two with the return of the Super Adventure Box! ArenaNet also released an infographic showing off some statistics from the game's first year. Wonder which race is most popular or what monster has been racking up the most player kills? Check it out to find answers to these and more.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams

Followed by @MattstaNinja

Year 1 Infographic -->