How much do you think you’ll have to pay for more Guild Wars 2 content? Several hundred thousand dollars? All of your most prized possessions? Your immortal soul? Well then, sheesh, you have clearly never purchased a videogame before. ArenaNet, though, is opting to go below and beyond the typical standard of game content pricing – that is, the part where it, you know, costs money. There will be many free things, and they will arrive often – like home-baked goods from an affectionate, nurturing grandparent, except with more swords and fewer messages supporting uncomfortable social norms from 60 years ago.

After players voiced their concerns about what’s next for Guild Wars 2, game director Colin Johanson took to the forums to reassure them.

“No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for. On top of a large amount of free bonus content, we will be expanding on offerings in the Black Lion Trading Company going forward, as well as be doing large-scale expansion content down the road.” “We do appreciate that you’d like to buy lots of new content, but we’d prefer to give a lot of it to you for free, cause that’s what we think a responsible MMO company does!”

So basically, it’ll be an evolution of the groundwork laid by Guild Wars 1 – which also lacked a subscription fee and still managed to produce free content patches. It’s impressive, though, that ArenaNet has decided to stick to that mentality in a day-and-age when many non-sub MMOs have become a bit too nickel-and-dime-happy. Admittedly, GW2 has a cash shop, but the convenience items are actually, well, convenient – and not giant, writhing chunks of essential gameflesh that have been ripped out to make ponying up a necessity.

So bravo to ArenaNet for that. Here’s hoping the quality of the content will end up matching its quantity. Granted, if the game proper is anything to go on (hint: it is), then I don’t think we’ll have too much to worry about.