It's been a good couple of weeks for Guild Wars 2 fans. End of Dragons is, by all accounts, a great expansion for ArenaNet's MMORPG, and the developers have taken to their blog today to give players more good news: there is more on the horizon to look forward towards.
In the wake of Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons, ArenaNet is celebrating their upcoming roadmap, as well as some big announcements sure to get fans buzzing. One of the main ones is that ArenaNet is bringing back much of Living World Season 1 and making it a permanent fixture in Guild Wars 2. Additionally, this move will bring this content to all accounts, for free, forever.
Via the announcement blog:
"This year, much of Living World Season 1 (“Scarlet’s War”) will be making a permanent return to Guild Wars 2 through the Story Journal. We'll be combining the key story moments and experiences of Living World Season 1 into five episodes that will be released throughout 2022. Our goal is to provide a cohesive bridge between the personal story and Living World Season 2 and give players the opportunity to earn many of the legacy achievements and rewards that have been unavailable all these years. The first episode, "Flame and Frost," will release on April 19. The season will conclude with the return of "Battle for Lion's Arch," which will include a new Strike Mission and Challenge Mode."
Secondly, ArenaNet has confirmed it's working on the next major story update for Guild Wars 2, which will include a new Cantha map for players to explore. ArenaNet also went on to confirm that there will be a fourth expansion for Guild Wars 2, though they do stop short of saying exactly when players will see it release.
Speaking of releases, ArenaNet confirmed it's still working on the Steam client release as well, though the developer isn't ready to put a hard date on when players might expect it on the storefront. The team also reiterated they are hard at work getting the DirectX11 version ready to leave beta.
Guild Wars 2 players wondering what's going on with the World vs World game mode, ArenaNet did provide an update on that front. In the blog post, the developer stated that the team is ":actively working on addressing population balance with the WvW World Restructuring system." Unfortunately, this type of rebalancing and restructuring takes time, but it's back on the priority list following the release of End of Dragons.
ArenaNet also publicly committed to ensuring that their employees can still balance work and life in a healthy manner and the team is taking steps to continually improve on that front.
"Second, it's important that our plans allow our team to maintain a healthy work/life balance. We've always believed that our top priority is the health and well-being of our employees, and we're more committed to that now than ever. This will help ensure that the exceptional team behind the End of Dragons expansion will continue to be happy at ArenaNet for years to come. Our work on this front will largely be invisible to you and will mostly focus on improving our planning and day-to-day development processes."
Finally, the team laid out a roadmap, promising more frequent communication with the community to keep them informed throughout the year with a more regular "State of the Game" blog series.
However, they did lay out some hard dates for releases over the next three months:
- March 15 End of Dragons Polish Build
- March 29 Super Adventure Festival, End of Dragons Polish Build
- April 19 Living World Season 1 Episode 1, Aetherblade Hideout Challenge Mode
- May 10 Xunlai Jade Junkyard Challenge Mode
- May 24 Living World Season 1 Episode 2, Kaineng Overlook Challenge Mode, New Legendary Weapon Variant
- June 7 Dragon Bash Festival, Harvest Temple Challenge Mode
- June 28 Balance Update, New Legendary Weapon Variant
WvW betas and bonus events will be announced once their dates are locked in.
You can check out the full post with all of the details on the Guild Wars 2 website.
