Recently, ArenaNet announced that Guild Wars 2’s Living World season 1 would become playable again and permanently available free for all players. The first episode, “Flame and Frost”, will become available on April 19th. This date will also bring End of Dragons’ first Challenge Mode Strike Mission, Aetherblade Hideout.
February’s release of the End of Dragons expansion was a highly successful one, with the expansion outselling the previous expansion. The active player base in GW2 having grown over the past several years, the team decided to release Living World season 1 so players can play through it and have some context to where the Elder Dragon storyline began.
Living World season 1 was pivotal content back in the early years of Guild Wars 2, so now it will become permanently available for players to play, as released in five episodes in 2022. These will be periodically released throughout the year, and now we have a date for the first one.
The opportunity to earn some of the legacy achievement and original rewards will also return with the content. When the fifth episode concludes the season,” Battle for Lion’s Arch” will actually arrive with new content, a brand new Strike Mission and Challenge Mode.
Offering this content is intended to provide some key context, and not just by telling players what happened, but letting them play through it to have the full experience. Because this content hasn't been available for nine years, releasing it now and adding some new features is a good way to start making some of this older content available to players who were not actively playing when it was originally released. Of course, the re-release of the content also mean that veteran players who experienced it the first time around can also indulge in a little bit of nostalgia.
Aetherblade Hideout will be the first Challenge Mode Strike Mission released for End of Dragons, but ArenaNet says to expect Challenge Mode for all EoD Strike Missions over the coming weeks.
