Mike O’Brien has announced that he will leave ArenaNet, the company behind Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. As the founder and president, he held the highest position in the studio. His new project is already known – and he has some friends in tow.
What happened? Mike O’Brien co-founded the development studio ArenaNet with Jeff Strain and Patrick Wyatt in March 2000. On October 3, 2019, O’Brien announced that he would leave the company after nearly 20 years.
O’Brien was the last remaining founder of ArenaNet. The highest position in the studio will now be taken by Mike Zadorojny. He took on the role of Game Director for Guild Wars 2 with the release of Path of Fire. He is now stepping up a position.
What is O’Brien doing now? Shortly after the news of O’Brien’s departure, the first players had already discovered what he will be working on in the future.
Together with other developers, he has founded a new gaming studio called ManaWorks, which he will now oversee (Here is the website of ManaWorks). The other employees are particularly interesting.
A new MMO from old Guild Wars developers?
What is ManaWorks? What exactly the new studio ManaWorks is working on is currently unknown. However, the brief description suggests that it could be an MMO:
Our goal is to create a world where you can live, discover skills, and share adventures with your friends.
More interesting than the motto are the employees of the company. Among them are many familiar faces, especially for Guild Wars fans:
- Brett Vickers – at ArenaNet since 2000
- Isaiah Cartwright – at ArenaNet since April 2004
- Tirzah Bauer – at ArenaNet since 2006
- Sarah Sperry – at ArenaNet since April 2013
- Elvir Bahtijaragic – at ArenaNet since November 2014
- Kirill Federspiel – works at ArenaNet, duration unknown
Every single employee of the new studio was already part of ArenaNet, and almost all of them still list ArenaNet as their employer on LinkedIn as of now (October 3rd, 11:30 PM).
It seems that the group left the studio together with Mike O’Brien to pursue a new project.
What will happen with Guild Wars 2? The departure of O’Brien will not have any major impacts on Guild Wars 2, at least regarding content. The Icebrood Saga will continue as planned.
The departure of six developers from partially different areas is unlikely to affect the game, despite layoffs in February.
The interesting question is whether Mike Z. can and will change the overall structure of Guild Wars 2. After all, he now holds the scepter and wants to continue “the journey of the MMORPG” according to his own statement.
Update 4.10, 2:00 PM: It later became known that O’Brien had been working with a small team on a “Guild Wars” project. One source claims that this could have turned into a Guild Wars 3. More on this in our article.
On September 17, the prologue to the new season of the Living World was released. We have summarized our experiences:
