ArenaNet: Decision on retail expansions for Guild Wars 2 “yet to be finalized”

ArenaNet has said plans for "the delivery of future content – retail or otherwise – has yet to be 100 percent determined," despite an earlier report stating the firm was planning to skip out on releasing expansions at retail.

"The ArenaNet team is entirely focused on ensuring that Guild Wars 2 is delivered at the highest possible standard when launched, so plans for future expansions, campaigns or additional content have yet to be finalized," an NCsoft representative told VG247.

"While the topic of stand-alone retail expansions has been commented on by Eric Flannum of ArenaNet, the delivery of future content – retail or otherwise – has yet to be 100 percent determined. Once the team has firm information on content beyond the launch of GW2, we will share that information through our PR efforts and through the GW2 forums."

The statement was in response to an interview with GW2's lead designer Eric Flannum, who said there'll be no retail expansions for Guild Wars 2 following the MMO's release.

"At this time we don’t plan to continue with the standalone expansion model," Flannum told Gamerzines.

"We felt that this model split our player base unnecessarily and also caused us to focus development effort on things that were redundant with the original release of the game such as tutorial areas and duplicates of already existing skills."

Two expansions for Guild Wars 1 were released at retail. But despite getting rid of the boxed expansions, Flannum said that items sold in GW2 via the in-game store would be "the kinds of things" which was included in the first game.

Guild Wars 2 goes into beta in second-half 2011, with a full launch likely in 2012.