ArenaNet is giving an update on the near future of Guild Wars 2, with updates on the Battle for the Jade Sea encounter, the state of WvW restructuring, new player improvements testing, and an update on the DirectX 11 upgrade.
End of Dragons was the result of 10 years of storytelling through content and expansions, so the team wanted to create the final boss encounter in End of Dragons to be what they are calling "more challenging than most of our existing open-world experiences". The team has been tuning the experience to help player completion. In early March the completion rate for the encounter was about 15%. More recently, that has come to about 60%, which they say is in line with most of the existing world bosses and encounters, even as this one was designed to be more challenging. However, they'll still look at player data to see if any more tweaks need to be done for this encounter.
Feedback on rewards for encounters of this nature, especially with how difficult this one was designed, we're not nearly as robust enough for the amount of challenge and time it takes. So they're updating the loot tables, removing junk, and adding a Hero's Choice Chest for completion.
When it came to World versus World Restructuring, the most recent update resulted in a queue bug booting some players to the back of the line. They’re working to find out the cause, but aside from that, focus on RvR is shifting to Alliances, which let guilds matchmake together, and rewards.
While DirectX 11 support has been running as an opt-in beta, as of May 10th, all new accounts will have DirectX 11 enabled by default. existing players won't be automatically opted-in at this time, but they do plan to end Directx 9 support eventually.
With a planned launch on Steam later this year, they are testing improvements for new players in an effort to set up for growth and new player retention. There aren't a whole lot of details available yet on how they’ll do this by changing the new player experience. They tried to overhaul the new player experience in 2014 with admittedly mixed results, and some of what they are considering might reverse some of those changes.
For complete details on the current and future plans for Guild Wars 2, head to the update here.
