Guild Wars 2 is a big hit in China
Worldwide sales effectively double.
There were questions asked of Guild Wars 2 and the Chinese launch has answered them.
Two months after launch there are 3.8 million people playing, suggesting as many sales of the game or thereabouts. That's according to a census translated and aired on Reddit.
Add that to the 3.5m sales Guild Wars 2 accrued in the West (as of August 2013 - last count) and the conservative worldwide sales total could stand at 'more than 7m'.
What's particularly impressive for Guild Wars 2 in China is that, unlike many other MMOs out there, GW2 isn't free-to-play - it retains the upfront, one-off game price as in the West. There's no subscription fee.
There had been concerns at the start of the year that, despite a record-setting launch, Guild Wars 2 sales had tailed off and income - without a subscription fee - was dwindling. Could NCSoft and developer ArenaNet really keep the considerable development pace up if the numbers were dipping?
"We are only available in Europe, North America and Australia," ArenaNet told me at the time. "We haven't launched in China, Korea, Russia, Southeast Asia, Brazil - many of the world's biggest PC gaming hotbeds are places that the game is not yet even available.
"We're extremely pumped about adding to each of these regions - we think that that sales number is going to take off again, and we're going to see a resurgence in territories we are out in as more and more players from other parts of the world get invested. And also as some of the really big projects we're working on in the background come to fruition, we're going to see a spike again in users."
The success in China means Guild Wars 2 is in a solid position for years to come, and ArenaNet - if it was ever worried - can breathe a sigh of relief and lay down big plans for the future. Finally, success to match the ambition of ArenaNet and investment of NCSoft - and with some significant global regions to spare.
