ArenaNet has been quiet… too quiet. Where’s all the information about Chapter 4? That’s when I decided to kick things into “Competitive Intelligence” mode. For those of you that don’t know about CI, it’s ethical information gathering. It’s different than espionage. James Bond I’m not. While I own a Tuxedo, I doubt I could talk my way past the front desk of ArenaNet HQ.
I’m fairly certain that ArenaNet has my picture on file. They’d see me, then they’d say something like, “Hi Mike!” Gaile would probably have some freshly baked cookies. (It’s holiday time, ya know!) They’d take me on a tour of the place. After seeing the beautiful artwork, the developers would make me swear not to share any secrets. No, even if I was a super ninja, spying could never be successful. I wouldn’t be able to share the secret information with you.
That’s why Competitive Intelligence rocks. You look for leaks of information. Guild Wars is an online game. As such, there are obvious breadcrumbs – available online. Then, once you find this publically available information, you simply link to it.
First, I did a Google search. I found some chatter about what Chapter 4 could be like. I read a suggestion that the next chapter would be called “Guild Wars: Vengeance”. That sounded cool. Yet, the domain name was not registered. What domain names were registered? I figured by now, ArenaNet should have a name for the next chapter of Guild Wars – yes/no?
Domain Tools is a site that’s great for a search like this. I simply did a search for a domain that started with “Guildwars”. There are a lot of them… A LOT! Yet, Domains cost money. Usually, fansites only register one (such as .com or .net). ArenaNet, they register almost the whole block (.com, .net & .org).
For example…
…they all go to the same site.
All I had to do was look for a “GuildWars____” domain name that was registered under multiple suffixes. Ahh… there’s Factions… there’s Nightfall… what’s this? Utopia?! I checked to see who registered it. Sure enough, NCsoft was behind this.
www.guildwarsutopia.com 😮
It doesn’t look like a Guild Wars website (at least not yet).
ArenaNet does follow a pattern, and this fits the pattern perfectly, but I don’t know what this site is about. What is Guild Wars: Utopia?!