Guild Wars hits 2 million sales worldwide

Korean MMOG publisher NCsoft has announced that its US-developed free to play franchise Guild Wars broken the two million sales mark worldwide in the wake of the launch of the second title, Guild Wars Factions.

The original game, Guild Wars Prophecies, launched in April 2005, with the more recent follow-up - which can be played as a standalone title or as an add-on to the original - arriving in May of this year.

Both games have performed well in the PC charts - with NCsoft noting that sales of Prophecies were boosted by the launch of Factions, a fact which it claims demonstrates that new launches are driving sales of the overall franchise.

"We're incredibly pleased with Guild Wars' performance in Europe," according to NCsoft Europe's sales and operations director Max Brown. "Guild Wars Prophecies was number one for 6 weeks when it launched in April 2005 now we are back with Guild Wars Factions which went number one all across Europe in its week of launch. The interesting thing we are seeing now is that Guild Wars Prophecies is back in the top ten, so the success of Guild Wars Factions is driving sales of Guild Wars Prophecies."

The Guild Wars franchise is being developed by ArenaNet, a US studio which was founded by a number of former Blizzard staff to focus on MMOG titles. The studio plans to launch new titles for Guild Wars on a six monthly basis, with a third game expected to appear by the end of the year.