ArenaNet has dropped two massive two pieces of Guild Wars 2 news – first, effective immediately, the core game is available free of charge to anyone who wants to play it, and secondly raids are set to make their debut in the MMO when its first expansion Heart of Thorns launches on October 23 of this year.

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“ The core game will be free for everybody. But it’s not a change to the business model.

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“ We want to bring all the stuff people love about the concept of raiding, but take out the headaches.

“ All of these systems are how we’re expanding the game in the future, and they’re what the future of Guild Wars 2 will be built on.

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see deal Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns - PC $29.99 on Gamestop

We got the chance to speak to studio president Mike O’Brien and creative director Colin Johanson about the decisions and why they were made, and the first thing both are keen to emphasise is that the decision to make the game a free download doesn’t mean the business model is shifting – there’s a clear distinction between being free-to-play, and letting your players play for free.“We’re not actually using those words – free-to-play. Those three little words are both a description and a business model. Our business model is buy-to-play and we’ve been champions of that model for over a decade, since the original Guild Wars,” explains O’Brien.“This is a natural extension of that – it’s already bundled for free and our players keep saying they want to get their friends into the game, and will there be a demo or so on? So here we are. The core game will be free for everybody. But it’s not a change to the business model.”No additional microtransactions are set to be added to the game whatsoever. As is currently the case, the Gem Store will continue to offer a rotating series of cosmetic items, along with the option to buy additional character slots and the like.Of course, the decision to make the game free for anyone is likely to raise some eyebrows given the prevalence of gold-spammers and their ilk in online games. ArenaNet has taken this into account, however, and so free accounts will have some restrictions.The second restriction, meanwhile, sees free players prevented from using map-wide chat. They’re also only able to send unsolicited whispers to people once every 30 seconds. If you’re playing honestly, O’Brien stresses this won’t make a massive difference, but anyone trying to disrupt the economy or the game’s community will have a tough time of things. Similarly, participating in the Trading Post is possible, but items can’t be sent unless traded.The final restriction is that certain features will be gated behind level requirements. The example given was of World vs. World, which won’t be available until level 50. The plan with this is to prevent someone creating masses of free accounts and disrupting the more competitive areas of the game for other players."]“What I really want people to understand is that this shouldn’t change the game for them,” stresses O’Brien. “We’re announcing this on Saturday – the game that they’re playing on Friday will be the same game they’re playing on Saturday. It really won’t change anything and we’ve been so careful tweaking all these restrictions and getting them right, it won’t change the experience. We’re aggressive about protecting our community here. It’s our top priority.”“Raids are the perfect complement to having a system like Masteries for endgame progression,” says Johanson. “Masteries are how you’ll grow the power of your characters, Elite Specialisations will allow you to grow your professions into these new sub-professions you can play, and raids take all those components and all the things that make the GW2 combat system unique and bring them together to make the ultimate challenge for our players, right at the time when I think that’s exactly what they’re looking for from the game. Raids aren’t just for this expansion either, but part of our core live philosophy moving forward as well. We want to regularly provide exciting challenges for our players to band together and overcome. We want to bring all the stuff people love about the concept of raiding, but take out the headaches.”To this end there’ll be no attunement quests you need to do before being able to play raids – you simply jump in when you’re ready. The fact Guild Wars 2 doesn’t rely on the traditional ‘Holy Trinity’ model of tank, healer and damage-dealer used by most MMOs also means you’ll be able to play the profession you most enjoy, and not worry about sitting around waiting for the right class to come along to fill the role you need. But the biggest lure has to be that the game’s raids will never be outdated, even as future ones are released, thanks to the absence of the gear grind.“We don’t want to leave a wasteland of meaningless content behind when we add new raids to the game – I think traditionally one of the things you see is that as new raids are added to traditional online games, you get new tiers of gear and levels added, making the raids that came before easier to beat or in many ways redundant,” stresses Johanson. “In Guild Wars 2 when you beat a raid, six months later it’s still a big deal you beat that raid because another player is beating it now or still unable to do it with all the same abilities and skills that you had – it isn’t suddenly easier for them.”When Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns As our time together draws to a close, it’s clear the duo is excited for the future of the MMO. Having recently celebrated 5 million sales , there’s a near-palpable feeling Heart of Thorns is just the beginning of a long and fruitful future for Guild Wars 2.“Everything we’re introducing in Heart of Thorns will be the systems we’ll use to grow and expand this game in the future. Elite Specialisations are how your professions will continue to grow and turn into new, additional sub-professions; our Mastery System is how we are adding additional endgame progression to PvE; raids are how we’re providing challenging really difficult encounters for 10 players; Fractals is how we’re expanding our five man dungeon content; Guild Halls is how we’re providing meaningful progression and a chance for you, your friends and your social group to own a part of our world and progress and grow your guild; and PvP Leagues are how we’re adding meaningful progression to PvP, where you can earn different ranks and prove who are the best players and teams in the world. All of these systems are how we’re expanding the game in the future, and they’re what the future of Guild Wars 2 will be built on. It’s an exciting time.”

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter