Two weeks ago we reported that Guild Wars was to start selling extra Xunlai storage panes for $9.99 each. NCsoft has now decided to give away an extra pane for FREE, for a limited time. Guild Wars players have up until the end of May 31st to claim their extra storage pane from NCsoft's online store.
Instructions on how to claim the free storage pane can be found on the official Guild Wars website.
In case you missed it, we just interviewed ArenaNet's James Phinney, Lead Designer on Guild Wars, to discuss the game's 4-year anniversary, which will be celebrated on April 28. Well, NCsoft and ArenaNet have just made another announcement near the game's birthday: the Guild Wars franchise has exceeded six million units sold!
“We are humbled by how gamers have responded to Guild Wars over the past four years, and we are proud that the game and its community have helped to continually shape, define, and expand the genre,” ArenaNet studio head Mike O’Brien said in a press release. “Our subscription-free business model has proven to be a big hit with gamers, bringing an enormous and diverse online community to the game.”
You can read the full press release after the jump.
Guild Wars celebrates its 4th Anniversary on April 28th, with the usual celebrations taking place in-game from today until the 29th of April. We caught up with ArenaNet's James Phinney, Lead Designer on Guild Wars, to talk about the past four years, what to expect down the road, and even some juicy nuggets of Guild Wars 2 information. Check out what he had to say in our exclusive interview.
ZAM: Hey there. Thanks for sitting down with us to talk about the 4th anniversary of Guild Wars®!
James Phinney: Yeah, it's a huge milestone for us. It's gratifying to be a part of a game that's still being played so actively years after its release.
ZAM: Do you guys have anything special planned in the office for this occasion?
Guild Wars celebrates its 4th Anniversary on April 28th, with the usual celebrations taking place in-game from 23-29th April. However, it's the new content due to be released during this time that we're most interested in. All characters will be given access to an extea bag slot, and it will be possible to purchase extra Xunlai Storage slots at a cost of $9.99 per pane. The "Zaishen Menagerie" will also be opened, which adds additional pet functionality to the game. It will also be possible to purchase access to all the "common" pets in-game, for $9.99. Finally, daily "Zaishen Challenge" quests will be introduced, which will see characters tasked with completing a mix of PvE and PvP objectives.
Full details on the update can be found on the official Guild Wars website.
Guild Wars' "Rules of Conduct" have been updated, with changes and clarifications being made regarding offensive character names and rigging PvP matches. The first time a character with an offensive name is created on an account, things are handled as before: The character is blocked until its name has been changed by the player, and the account itself is suspended for a time. However, committing a second offence no longer gives the option to rename the character - it is assigned a randomly generated name instead.
The other change is more of a clarification, to spell out that manipulating the outcome of PvP battles is against the rules even outside of tournament play. More details on the changes can be found here.
The following editorial contains views that are the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of Allakhazam.com
Depending on where you live and where you come from, you’ve probably heard of the growing community of 
professional e-gamers; cyber athletes who rake in the cash by playing the games that they love (or end up hating because they play them so much). I say depending on where you live and where you come from in this case because if we imagine that you hail from, say, Korea, the country that invented the “I-can’t-see-your-fingers-they-are-moving-too-fast” syndrome and the ailment known as “I-can-micromanage-better-than-a-computer-itis”, then you’re probably more than well aware of what I’m talking about. If, on the other hand, you’ve just emerged from your rock, blinking and confused at this internet substance, then I’m willing to bet that video game athletes aren’t something that you saw coming.
Either way, this article is not aimed at discussing the growing market that comes from professional FPS or RTS gaming. Rather, it is aimed at the new, acronym-awkward professional MMO PVP athlete (I might as well just say World of Warcraft e-athlete). In particular, this article is aimed towards answering the real question: is MMO PVP a viable path in e-athleticism, or is it simply an awkward date-my-daughter scenario being forced on us by some very influential people? I say influential people in this case because it’s very difficult to ignore a path that is being padded and endorsed by guys like Intel, Blizzard, Dell and NVIDIA. The awkward daughter-date, of course, is our charmingly self-titled “30 second lifespan” World of Warcraft Arena PVP.
There have been hints dropped left and right about where Guild Wars is heading, and now we have some solid data on the direction they are going. It looks like they are making it a point to change-things-up a bit for those of us who play regularly.
There's three tiers of update information: Monthly Maintenance, which isn't anything unexpected, Content Updates, which are welcome and look to be larger than the previous content updates, even if they are going to be spaced out a trite bit more than before, coming out roughly every three to four months rather than every patch.
We are even expanding the Live Team to offer more of the best quality support and content that we can for Guild Wars . With this new system, we release our new content in fewer yet more substantial updates. We want players to feel connected to what we are developing even though it may be months away from release, so during development we will be more open about our process and what we are working on.
Like most of you, we've been waiting patiently for information about ArenaNet's (mostly) announced Guild 
Wars 2 project. Unfortunately, despite all of our efforts, we've still been unable to get anything definitive. Having said that, Guild Wars has an amazingly unique art style that made the opportunity to sit down with Daniel Dociu, Creative Director at ArenaNet, so appealing to us. During the interview we talked about the work he did on Guild Wars, the future look of MMOs, his role in Valve's Half-Life 2 and of course, my failed attempt to get information about Guild Wars 2.
Tamat : Hey Daniel, thank you so much for sitting down with me today to talk about Guild Wars.
Daniel : Hello! My pleasure.
Tamat : First of all, can you just talk a little bit about your history in the industry?
Daniel : Well I got into games around 1993 if I recall correctly. My first job was with Squaresoft as an art director, back in the days when they had a studio in the Seattle area. Then I moved on to EA for a couple of years. The next one was Zipper Interactive which is currently owned by Sony. I was there for about four years. I then went back to EA for a couple of years and then I did freelancing for a few months in-between EA and ArenaNet. I've been here at ArenaNet for a little over five years now.
This year's Dragon Festival features some of the most popular events and mini-games from previous years. Participants earn [[Victory Tokens]], which can be redeemed for treats such as red bean cakes and bottles of rice wine. Adventure-seekers can also reenact key moments and battles from Cantha's illustrious past.Check out the official notice here.
The third anniversary of Guild Wars is here! To thank all of you for another awesome year, we're holding a sweepstakes. You have a chance to win fantastic prizes, including an Alienware laptop. Read all about it here.
