As you probably already have seen, Blizzard Entertainment has said in recent blue posts that in this new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, they would be releasing new content as quickly possible. So far, they have kept that promise and are now testing patch 5.1 though the Public Test Realm. But what about the other side of things over at ArenaNet? Are they going to be left in the dust by Blizzard, or are they going to fight back?

Fighting back is just what they are doing. Colin Johanson, a representative for ArenaNet, was promoting their stand on "Live Game Entertainment." In his recent article, he describes Guild Wars 2 to be a breathing, living, dynamic world. With that, ArenaNet has promised to keep their customers happy by promising to release content faster than any other gaming company has done before. They plan to do this through separate professional teams that are just focused on one part of the game, and that part only. Unlike with Blizzard, only having a few teams dedicated to the whole game and it's population, ArenaNet plans to have these teams to help players if they ever need assistance to the best of their ability. ArenaNet currently has 8 different teams working on particular portions of Guild Wars 2. They have a team for Live Security, Live Reponse, Living World, PvP/E-Sports, Holidays and Events, Mac & Performance, Bonus Teams, as well as the Commerce team. As stated above, they are all there to work on those particular sections only, which would possibly create faster customer service if you are looking into a problem that pertains to that section. You can read the whole article at this link: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/c...e-development/

Blizzard, on the other hand, is trying to compete with their new rivals. With the releasing of content even faster, they hope to keep their player base involved with the world of Azeroth. Mists of Pandaria undoubtedly brought back a large portion of the subscriptions of the player base, but can they keep their clients happy and keep a hold of them? Being that Dragon Soul was out for a year, and no real new content was being released, a lot of the player base did in fact cancel their subscriptions. Blizzard is starting to realize that long drawn out content actually looses sales, which is why they are promising the release newer content more quickly than in other expansions. Can their customer service change a bit? Probably. There is still a little bit of room for changing, but they are improving.

What about you Macintosh owners out there? Do you enjoy playing World of Warcraft on your Mac OS X operating system, or do you have to install Windows in order for the enjoyment of the game? For me being a Macintosh user, I am glad ArenaNet is dedicating a section just to the Mac development of the game. Playing World of Warcraft on Mac OS X isn't terrible, but you are limited on what programs and addons you can use if you like to customize your interface.

World of Warcraft players: After reading the article by Colin Johanson, would you consider trying out Guild Wars 2 if you already haven't, to see how their development compares to the current state of World of Warcraft? How about the Guild Wars 2 players, would you consider going to World of Warcraft if you've never played, or decide to go back to WoW if you quit? It will be quite interesting to see how these two companies fight for their player bases in the months to come.

See you next time!
-Teryaki