Category: Guild Wars 2 Columns

Guild Wars 2 gets praise for a lot things, but none strikes new players to the game more than the vastness in the open world of Tyria. As the game has aged, many of the bigger open stories that have been created within this world have been collecting dust. That is, until Living World Season 3. This season has seen a massive return to the unanswered plots of the game, and for a veteran player, has been both its biggest success and its biggest danger. THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD – YE BE WARNED!

Players in Guild Wars 2 are pretty trigger happy when it comes to the term ‘content drought’, every month or two the label gets thrown around the forums and reddit from bored players who have completed the latest release of content. But at the moment, despite updates to balance and seasons, the competitive scene for GW2 is in the biggest dry spell the game has ever witnessed since launching its eSports agenda.

This week, Guild Wars 2 has seen one of the biggest balance changes in recent history. Although not quite on the same level as some predicted, the patch came with some pretty significant changes to many of the classes, with both meta and non meta build being shifted around. The implications of the patch are fairly far reaching, with a fairly shake up to the high end raiding meta composition and also some significant buffs that are having a devastating impact in the World versus World scene.

The first story release of 2017 is right around the corner, with the next Living Story episode, Head of the Snake, and a new raid wing both expected with the upcoming patch. This will be the first time a raid wing will release side by side with a story episode, and- alongside other parts of the release- will be one of the biggest individual content updates to the game to happen in quite some time.

The Lunar New Year has been a historically popular festival for Guild Wars 2, despite its comparatively small impact on the world and limited events. Tt is an extremely profitable time to be playing with some special rewards that benefit both old and new players. It also remains one of the few festivals now that is getting yearly love from development, as the theme of the festival changes according to the zodiac for the year.

Gold in Guild Wars 2 was, once upon a time, an incredible valuable and hard to come by currency. As with most MMORPGs, back at launch the influx of gold and rewards was a lot scarcer than what you see today. As a result of a higher income as players got to completing higher end content gold became more and more common for the everyday player, resulting in forced gold sinks and more expensive outlets for your gold.

In the last year, since the release of Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns with its elite specialisations and raids, as well as the increasing difficulty of Fractals of the Mist at higher levels to earn maximum rewards, classes have been forced to take on specific builds and roles to meet the demands of the game. This has carried through to all forms of the game, not just in PvE but also in both the player versus player environments.

Speculation, leaks, teasers and the ever present hype train have dominated Guild Wars 2 discussion for months now, with the so far successful Living World Season 3 leading players to new places each release, everyone wants to know where to next! Without too many #Spoilers, let’s take a look at some of the juicier speculation we’ve seen from 2016, and the implications of some of the leaks and teasers we have gotten in the lead up to the new year.

The holidays at Guild Wars 2 have historically been a period of a whole pile of fun and excitement for the community, with big updates, seasonal activities and changes to the world. In recent history, the holidays have seen even more than just holiday updates, with 2015’s Halloween paired with the launch of Heart of Thorns, 2015 Wintersday seeing the Fractal update and addition of Encryptions and liquid rewards, 2016 Lunar New Year seeing the addition of Central Tyria Gliding.

Currently, the game is in the midst of one of the most highly anticipated PvP seasons to date, coupled with a rehashed Wintersday that still has not failed to bring joy and love to all the players (and orphans). Amongst all these big updates, it would be pretty easy to have missed the end of the European Guild versus Guild tournament that took place, especially considering that this project was 100% community run and funded.