Guild Wars 2 developer Colin Johanson details what’s in store for the near future of this free-to-play MMORPG as ArenaNet celebrates crafting the most critically-acclaimed MMO of 2012, selling over three million units since last August.

Johanson writes, “our goals for the New Year are to build on the areas of the game that were successful in 2012, to learn and apply lessons from things that didn’t work as well, and to make sure that 2013 is a year none of us will ever forget.”

So, what does this mean, exactly? ArenaNet promises to focus on community and player relationships through community events, including world-versus-world and player-versus-player events. The reward system is also going to be beefed up significantly, urging players to visit and explore parts of the world that they may have neglected at first.

Other improvements include:

• Leaderboards on our website where you can compare your abilities with other players to find out who is the best in the world.
• Expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.
• New types of achievements which tie into the new systems of achievement rewards.
• Continuing to improve the security of the game fighting botters and hackers, as well as improving the games stability by addressing bugs as quickly as possible when they are reported.
• Identifying existing parts of the game that can be improved and made more fun/exciting, and investing the time to ensure everything we’ve built really shines as we move forward.
• Improving the new player experience to make it easier for new players to learn how to play GW2, enter the game world, and more quickly learn the game without being overwhelmed.
• Improving the “looking for group” tool to make it easier to find other players to play with in the game.
• The improvements and fixes to the Fractal dungeons, detailed in Isaiah Cartwright’s blog post here.

To read up on all the exciting things to come, check out Johanson’s blog post as well as his video preview below:

[youtube id=”LNCb4uVYbbk” width=”618″ height=”378″]

Still playing Guild Wars 2? Are you pumped for some of the upcoming improvements?

If you’ve yet to try it out, make sure to check out our review!