ArenaNet has confirmed that Guild Wars 2 has made the switch to being entirely free-to-play.

The news was confirmed during their presentation at this year’s PAX Prime. Alongside the news of the game becoming free-to-play was the reveal that over five million copies of Guild Wars 2 have been sold to date.

“We believe the buy to play, subscription-free model for MMOs is good for players, and it’s good for developers,” said Mike O’Brien, co-founder and president of ArenaNet.

“In making Guild Wars 2 free, we’re not switching business models to a traditional free-to-play game, and we’re not aggressively monetising free players through microtransactions,” said O’Brien. “We’re making the base game free because we’re confident that anyone who loves Guild Wars 2 will consider buying Heart of Thorns, continuing their experience into the expansion and beyond with Living World and our newly announced raids.”

Finally, the release date for the game’s upcoming Heart of Thorns expansion was confirmed, via the above trailer. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will ship in both North America and Europe on October 23rd of this year.