The PC Is Undead: Guild Wars 2 Ascendant

Here's the exciting news: Guild Wars 2, a PC-only videogame, is number one at UK retail this week. Eurogamer reckon it's the first PC game to have that honour since Football Manager 2011 and StarCraft 2 both pulled it off in 2010. (Diablo III was held off by Max Payne 3, although, as has to be qualified every bloody time with these kinds of stories, digital sales were not included, therefore the entire chart is basically irrelevant anyway.)

Here's the confusing news: apparently it sold less than Star Wars: The Old Republic did in launch week, despite being at least twelve times better than it. However, once again this does reflect retail-only sales, so means basically nothing - especially as NCSoft have been running a digital pre-purchase scheme for the game for yonks now.

So, all we can say is that Guild Wars 2 is indeed a hit - but we don't know quite how big a hit it is.

I reckon GW2 will have the staying power that SWTOR, The Secret World etc didn't - partially because it doesn't require a subscription, and partially because it's a damned sight better than pretty much any other post-WoW traditional MMO. Torrents of numbers it might be, but it's an actual evolution of those core systems, and thus what the people have long wanted. I'm still playing it, or at least wishing I had time to play it, and I can't think of any other MMO that's wormed its way into my head in such a way for many years now.

So sad to see its stable-mate City of Heroes has gone the way of coherent DC plotting, though. More on that soon, however.