Guild Wars Eye of the North

Guild Wars: Eye of the North, is an upcoming product of the Guild Wars game series. It is an expansion to all of the first three campaigns. Unlike the previous three Guild Wars products, Eye of the North is not a standalone campaign; it is an expansion pack.



The May edition of PC Gamer has announced Eye of the North, with a 15-page cover article on it, containing official information from ArenaNet. The magazine shipped on Thursday, March 15th to subscribers. It will not be available on shelves until April 3rd.

Eye of the North will not include any new professions. James Phinney has stated that Eye of the North will involve character development beyond level 20, however Gaile Gray has clarified that this extended character development will not increase the actual level cap.

Features:
 * 40 new armor styles (4 per profession)
 * 100 new profession-specific skills
 * 50 new PvE-only skills
 * 10 new heroes

Eye of the North is divided into three acts:
 * Act 1 takes place in the Depths of Tyria, which contains 18 "dungeons" and involves helping the Dwarves fight against the Great Destroyer.
 * Act 2 will involve three separate arcs involving the Asura on the Tarnished Coast near the Maguuma Jungle, the Norns in the Far Shiverpeaks and the Charr homeland north of Ascalon.
 * Act 3 will involve fighting the Great Destroyer.

Bridging the Divide
Through the story line, Eye of the North will introduce Guild Wars players to some of the races that will be playable in the planned sequel: Guild Wars 2. It will serve another important function for players who've invested much time and effort into developing their characters... a measure of continuity will be made possible through a Hall of Monuments. Players will construct these monuments through Quests in GW:EN and may then record some of their achievements (titles) and even items, which will bestow some benefit in GW2.

Release Date
The game is scheduled for release in 2007, but no precise date has been officially announced.

Only dates that are officially announced by ArenaNet will be posted here!

However, for personal estimation of the release date, the following facts may provide some starting points:
 * During E3 2006 ArenaNet confirmed that development on Campaign 4 was well underway, however the May 2007 issue of PC Gamer revealed that Campaign 4 developed into Guild Wars 2 and Eye of the North was started later, so work on Eye of the North likely began at some point after E3 2006.
 * ArenaNet sent out the first wave of alpha test invitation emails on January 9th . On December 12th Gaile Gray stated that testing (from the context, implicitly out of house testing) for campaign 4 has not started.
 * An NCSoft press release from February 7th, 2007 states that "... the company anticipates the launching of Tabula Rasa and a new major update to the Guild Wars franchise in the latter half of 2007", which refers to the next campaign.

From official sites

 * Guild Wars Official Site: Official Eye of the North Announcement

From other sites

 * Kotaku - Feature: Guild Wars 2, GW Expansion Unveiled
 * Kotaku - Eye of the North logo
 * Kotaku - Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2 image gallery
 * Guild Wars Guru: forum thread on the PC Gamer article
 * Guild Wars Guru: Official PCG Article Thread