Guild Wars 2 Game Director Colin Johanson Departs; ArenaNet President Mike O'Brien To Take His Place

One of the most well-known faces at ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2 Game Director Colin Johanson, has left the company. ArenaNet President Mike O'Brien -- who'll be taking over Johanson's role and looking to hire a replacement for himself -- broke the news on Reddit earlier today, while also kicking off an AMA and letting folks in on some of the happenings with the company.

While there were no exact details on why Johanson left the company, O'Brien did state that he departed "on good terms," while reminding players that there were still a goodly number of people dedicated to working on the game. In particular, he points out that, unlike in previous situations, there's a split between employees working on live content and working on future expansions. There's a big quarterly update planned for April, which will focus on reducing grind and improving rewards, which O'Brien calls a "back-to-our-roots kind of update."

While O'Brien does promise to be more "visible with the changes we're making" to World vs. World, he cautions against players getting too hyped up about when upcoming features will ship -- or even if they'll ship at all.

So if you ask us for a list of things that will ship in April, we’ll probably be coy because we think it’s nice for you to have presents to unwrap on release day, but more than that, the truth is we don’t even know. We’re working on a lot of potentially great improvements for April, all themed in the direction of less grind and more rewards, and they won’t all make the cut, but any reasonable subset will make a great release.

As a long-time Guild Wars 2 player, I wish Colin Johanson the best of luck in his next endeavor, and look forward to a new direction for Guild Wars 2!