The announcement was made during the Korea Amuse World Game Expo 2002 (KAMEX) in Seoul, South Korea.
ArenaNet was established in 2000 by three members of the Blizzard Entertainment Development team: Patrick Wyatt, Mike O'Brien and Jeff Strain. At ArenaNet they were creating a game network and planned to design and publish multiplayer online games.
NCsoft said it will issue overseas convertible bonds worth 7.9 billion won (roughly $6.5 million) to the three core developers of ArenaNet.