Guild Wars 2

As we began populating the Heart of Maguuma with new creatures and new challenges, we saw an opportunity to take a system that exists in the game—the Defiance boss effect—and make it both easier to understand and more conducive to interesting combat moments. Today we’ll talk about that change and how it applies to the wyvern—a new champion creature you’ll encounter as you adventure through the jungle.

In Guild Wars 2, there are many skills that we consider control skills because they control what an enemy can do. These skills can stun an enemy, make them run in fear, knock them down, or otherwise prevent them from moving and attacking as they wish. These become problematic for boss creatures, which could be permanently controlled when fighting a coordinated group or large number of players. That’s where the Defiance system comes into play. Champions receive stacks of defiance based on the number of enemies engaged. Each stack of defiance nullifies one control effect and is removed in the process. Once all of the stacks are removed, the next control effect that a player uses is applied to the boss. This makes it possible to coordinate usage of control skills to interrupt the boss without overwhelming it.

However, defiance as it currently exists has room for improvement, so while working on Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, we decided to revisit this issue and formulate a better solution.

While coordinated groups can use the Defiance system to interrupt enemies at key times, it is much harder to use the system intentionally when playing in the open world. A player using a control ability at a bad time could nullify the efforts of the other players present. Additionally, every control effect is treated equally. This means a 3-second stun from Skull Crack has the same effect as a 0.25-second daze from Head Shot. Blindness doesn’t fit well into the system due to its ease of application, and it has its own specific rules instead of working like other control abilities. To resolve these issues, we are making changes to the Defiance system in Heart of Thorns.

Rethinking Defiance

In the expansion, we are adjusting defiance to display as a bar beneath the creature’s health bar. Using a control ability against a creature with defiance will remove a portion of the bar, and the bar will regenerate over time. When multiple control abilities are used together, the defiance bar can be fully depleted and the creature becomes broken.

When broken, some champions may simply be stunned for a time while others may have specific mechanics like a defensive shell that can be shattered. With the new system, we can adjust how much of the bar is removed so that a skill that stuns the enemy for several seconds does much more than an ability that briefly dazes the target, and blindness can remove an appropriate amount of the bar instead of having its own special rules. With the regenerating bar, we’re able to reduce the amount of control required to trigger defiance while still requiring coordinated effort to control the boss. Badly timed control abilities can no longer ruin the efforts of other players, and the bar’s visibility makes it easier to see when other players are attempting to control the boss and help out.

With the greater flexibility of the new Defiance system, we’re able to better incorporate specific encounter mechanics. For instance, in the Heart of Thorns announcement trailer, we showed off glimpses of a new champion creature that has custom defiance behavior as part of its encounter design—the wyvern. Wyverns are flying, fire-breathing creatures that inhabit the jungle canopy and rule the skies above. They can be found harassing their enemies from the skies as players traverse the jungle below, and players can journey into the upper reaches of the canopy in order to try their hands at killing them.

A wyvern fight is composed of two stages: a ground phase where the wyvern is on the ground and fighting players directly, and an air phase during which it flies through the air and ignites large swaths of the battlefield. While the wyvern is not normally affected by control abilities, it gains a defiance bar when it attempts to take off and transition into its air phase. If the wyvern completes its takeoff skill without being broken, it cannot be attacked while flying and players must avoid its aerial attacks. However, if the defiance bar is depleted before it finishes taking flight, it is knocked out of the air and is vulnerable on the ground for several seconds, giving players the opportunity to attack.

Most of the wyvern’s attacks are with its deadly fire breath, which coats the ground with napalm-like flames. This fire burns for a long time, cutting off large portions of the battlefield while the wyvern uses its tail and wings to knock players back. The ignited ground is very dangerous, so players must be careful to position themselves well and avoid the wyvern’s attacks, as getting knocked back either onto the ignited ground or off of the platform’s edge will likely be fatal. The fight is designed so that players must dodge and move quickly in order to stay alive.

Bringing the Wyvern to Life: Visual Effects

The wyvern’s heavy use of fire attacks presented the visual effects team with some challenges. The first is that the wyvern can create multiple areas of fire, and those areas then remain in the world for a long while. This results in dozens of fire effects on the screen during a battle.

Too many heavily detailed fire-area effects will cause frame rate performance to drop to unacceptable levels because of overdraw. Overdraw refers to the number of particles on the screen in a given area. The more particles, the more overdraw, and the more performance and frame rate become an issue. To make realistic fire, you may want lots of particles for flames, fire licks, smoke, heat distortion, and scrolling flame geometry. We knew early on that we wanted the wyvern to breathe believable fire. To keep our particle and geometry counts down so that performance remained high, we developed several new fire material types.

The first new fire material we developed was a lavalike ground decal that would become the main visual element of the wyvern’s fire areas; the incinerated ground becomes a liquefied pool of molten material. The decal is supported by a few well-placed particles and fire geometry effects. We also developed a flow material for the flame-breath effects so that we could rely more on geometry effects rather than having to use hundreds of flame particles.

The biggest challenge we overcame with the wyvern’s visual effects was how to indicate to players that the wyvern is about to breathe fire. We wanted a molten glow to travel up from the wyvern’s belly to its throat before it released the flames.

Effects like this may be easy to show in a movie, where particle count and shader complexity aren’t issues, but for an MMO game where performance is key, we had to get creative. For this, we pushed the limits of a little-used system called material replacement. This is a pretty basic creature system that players may be familiar with. For example, when a player is poisoned, you’ll notice that your player model texture is changed to a sickly, yucky green. This is material replacement.

The visual effects team worked hard to leverage the material replacement system in ways we never had before. Working with our programming team, we added new features to material replacement, expanding its capabilities and giving us the ability to animate the materials’ shader values and texture sets over fixed durations of time. The material replacement system is not a friendly system for an artist to work with—being all text field entries and no instant visual feedback—but in the right hands, it’s become a powerful visual tell for the new creatures in Heart of Thorns.

To leverage this system for the wyvern, we created another custom glow material that allows us to control regions or areas of glow on its body, enabling us to fade different glowing areas on and off. We knew we wanted the glow to build up in its belly, moving to the chest and neck, and finally to the throat and out the mouth, and we wanted these areas to glow consecutively, supporting the napalm-like fire effects. Using material replacement, we then animate by adjusting text values for the different glow areas to match the animation of the wyvern breathing fire, resulting in a wyvern that—through the buildup of molten lava inside itself—shows fire is coming, giving you ample time to evade the impending inferno.

If you’re attending either PAX East or EGX Rezzed, you can look forward to playing our PvE demo and facing off against the wyvern yourself. Stop by booth #5116 at PAX East, or East Mall 3 at EGX Rezzed, to get your hands on the first-ever playable demo of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!

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1st Person Camera Mode coming March 10th!

 

1st Person Camera Mode coming March 10th!

 

I don't play Necro but my favorite water weapon is Harpoon Gun... which unfortunately Necro can't use.

 

I don't play Necro but my favorite water weapon is Harpoon Gun... which unfortunately Necro can't use.

 

As part of our ongoing efforts to align the systems of Guild Wars 2 more closely with their connected content, we’re changing the way that world completion works in the next release . Specifically, we’re removing the World vs. World maps from world completion requirements.

You’ll no longer be required to complete the WvW maps in order to receive 100% world completion in the game. The WvW maps will now behave like other maps not required for world completion, such as Heart of the Mists. All vistas, skill points, and points of interest will remain on the maps.

After the WvW maps have been removed from world completion, the updated totals will go into effect for any account logging in to the game. If you were only one WvW map away from world completion, you will reach it upon your next log-in! It’s our hope that this will make for a better overall Guild Wars 2 experience as everyone sets out to explore parts of Tyria they’ve not yet seen.

And regarding the World vs. World experience, join us on Saturday, March 14, at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time (15:00 UTC), as we walk fans through the core features of the long-awaited Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion and give fans an exclusive look into what’s coming for the massive, open-world combat in World vs. World, including an in-depth, never-before-seen tour of the new desert Borderlands map.

Watch the panel streamed online via Twitch.

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I might actually go for World Completion now! Not terribly far away but the prospect of WvW always made me lose interest.

 

Log in and check out the new first-person camera, field-of-view options, beta streaming client feature, and more! Read the complete release notes on the official forums.

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They really phone these news updates in sometimes lol. Barely a sentence.

 

Beauty is only skin deep, which is why we’re providing brand-new faces to revitalize your appearance, now all in the Total Makeover Kit! And if you want to show your foes what you think of their fancy new faces, we also have brand-new weapon skins for your arsenal.

New Faces in the Total Makeover Kit

In every Total Makeover Kit, you’ll find three new exclusive faces for every race and gender. The Total Makeover Kit allows you to change your height, physique, skin color, skin markings, face, hairstyle, and even gender!

Shadow Weapon Skins

Infused with the power of shadow, these are some of our most deadly weapon skins yet. Your enemies won’t know what hit them! Purchased with a Black Lion Claim Ticket found in Black Lion Chests.

Available Now in the Gem Store!

Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

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This week, we worked with some of the most ingenious fashion designers in Tyria. We’re excited to offer you a pack of our darkest dyes yet! To accompany these exciting new dyes, we’re bringing back the Raiment of the Lich, the Crystal Nomad Outfit, and Mini Golden Pig.

Shadow Dye Kit

Tint yourself in all-new sleek and deadly shadow colors with these exclusive dyes. You’ll be the envy of all your allies in these stand-out shades.

Raiment of the Lich

The Raiment of the Lich has returned for a limited time! This outfit is the perfect complement to dealing death and destruction on the battlefield.

Crystal Nomad Outfit

The battle-ready Crystal Nomad Outfit has the pragmatic practicality of nomadic accoutrement, adorned with decorative Zephyrite crystals.

Mini Golden Pig

Bathe in the glory of the Mini Golden Pig! This pure-gold miniature is sure to make you feel lucky and prosperous.

Available Now in the Gem Store!

Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

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Hello, my name is Tyler Bearce, a Game Designer here at ArenaNet, and I’m here to tell you about the new World vs. World desert Borderlands map that we’ve been hard at work creating for the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion. This map will replace the map used for each of the three current Borderlands.

So, why the new map? Well, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in the time since releasing the original game, and we decided this would be a good opportunity to create an even richer WvW experience. We know players are hungry for something new—after all, you’ve been waging war over the same Borderlands map for years now, and it’s time to give you a new battleground to learn and conquer.

[video=The WvW Desert Borderlands Map in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns]8041[/video]

Before I go into what’s new in the desert Borderlands map, I’d like to first tell you about the things that will still be familiar if you’ve played the current Borderlands map. At the highest level, much is the same as what you’ve grown used to. The map has the same number of keeps (3), towers (4), and supply camps (6) as the existing Borderlands. These objectives are also in roughly the same positions on the map. Capturing and holding these objectives still awards points per scoring tick for your team’s Mist War score, and dolyaks still travel on the roads, shuttling supply between supply camps and other objectives.

Now to tell you how we’ve spiced up the experience!

Increased Verticality

The desert map is much more layered and vertical than the existing alpine Borderlands map. As an example, you may run across a span of rolling sand dunes, find a gap in the sands, follow a shadowy obsidian staircase plunging deep into a massive cavern, and lay siege to an entire fiery keep hidden within. The terrain is more complex, the cliffs are higher, and the paths are windier, resulting in an even deeper field of battle.

Thematic Objectives

Keeps and towers are more distinctive than before. They all have unique architecture, unique guards, and a unique lord protecting the capture point. The three keeps are elementally themed—air, earth, and fire. The air keep was inspired by the historical city of Petra. It is a keep cut directly into the rose-colored stone canyon walls, with tengu guarding its heights. In contrast, the fire keep is our first entirely underground objective. Lava flows outside the keep while fire imps and charred fleshreavers guard its gates. The earth keep is a corrupted asuran complex. Rocks jut strangely from the walls, and massive stones float in the sky just out of reach. Only golems remain to guard the ruins of this technologically advanced structure. The towers you’ll encounter include an ogre outpost, a charr military depot, an academy of magic, and a necromantic spire.

More Strategic Layout

We’ve made towers more strategically important. Rather than simply being isolated landmarks for invaders to easily sidestep, towers now wall off larger sections of the map and create real choke points. Controlling one of these towers not only allows your team to pass easily into another section of the map but also creates a noticeable impediment to the movement of enemy armies. The gates of towers and keeps are now more dangerous to attack head-on. Invaders must pass underneath a kill box of arched walls, putting them at risk for attacks from above on all sides. Even the terrain itself is more geared toward giving players the opportunity to make intelligent—or foolish—tactical plays in nuanced terrain.

Shrines

Along the outskirts of each of the three elemental keeps are three shrines of matching elements, making a total of nine shrines. Much like a sentry post, these can be captured by a single player. Controlling shrines gives you two important advantages. First, by interacting with a shrine that your team controls, you will gain a five-minute elemental blessing effect. This effect increases both your movement speed and either your attack damage, critical-strike chance, or defense, depending on which elemental blessing you received. More importantly, the other reason to control shrines is that they confer important strategic bonuses to the team that controls the keep of the same element. And for each shrine controlled, the team controlling the keep gains an additional benefit. For example, for each Shrine of Air controlled, the defending team gains access to things like jump pads, wind turrets that can blow invaders off the cliff face, and even immunity to falling damage while within the region. At the fire keep, controlling Shrines of Fire grants the defending team the ability to transform into fiery hounds, turns on fireball-spitting gargoyle turrets, and grants immunity to burning and lava damage. The earth keep gains automatic defenses like lodestones that impair enemy movement, pop-up rock walls that block off sections of the canyons when invaders approach, and a sandstorm that provides stealth for allies within.

Oasis

The center of the map is a giant jungle oasis. It’s filled with complex rocky terrain, winding streams, bamboo walkways through the trees, an enormous golden temple, and dinosaurs. This is an environment that caters to roamers, ambushers, and gankers. Once every three hours, an event begins within the oasis. An energy cannon of great power sits atop the golden temple, and naturally that means your team will want to be the first to charge it up and fire it! Players will scatter throughout the oasis, defeating dinosaurs that have swallowed the weapon’s power cores and returning those cores to any of three Durmand Priory research camps located on the outskirts of the oasis. It’s not as easy as it sounds; enemy players will try to attack your team’s carriers and steal the cores for themselves. Once a team has collected enough cores to power the weapon, the cannon will begin firing blasts of energy at the outer gates of all enemy-owned towers and keeps in the map, gradually obliterating them. Even if your team already controls all of these objectives, you’ll still want to control the weapon, if only to prevent the enemy teams from using it against you!

Dolyaks and Sentries

Dolyaks have gained a new defensive ability. As long as an allied player is near the dolyak, the dolyak gains an effect called Protected Caravan. While this effect is active, the dolyak is greatly resistant to both damage and conditions. Undefended dolyak caravans are just as vulnerable as ever, but if players are escorting a dolyak, enemies are now forced to either deal with the players or spend significantly more time attacking and wearing down the dolyak to ultimately kill it. Sentries have also had a few tweaks. They now guard tiny outposts and have a skill that cripples enemy dolyaks for several minutes, noticeably increasing the time it takes for the dolyaks to carry supply to their next objective. Friendly players can also pick up temporary med-kit bundles—which are very similar to the Med Kit engineer healing skill—at allied sentry posts. These can be used to cure a crippled dolyak, quickly gain some health, or grant swiftness on the fly.

We want to give players solid reasons to keep their keeps, so you might find that running up to knock on your enemy’s front door with a big group isn’t the most efficient path to victory. In turn, you’ll have plenty of new strategies to discover and important decisions to make when using the landscape to your advantage. We’ll be back to tell you more about how we plan to apply these concepts to World vs. World as a whole, so be on the lookout between now and the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Even though this will initially replace the existing Borderlands, we have plans to bring back the classic alpine Borderlands. More information on that will come in the future.

I hope you folks enjoyed this peek at what’s to come and are excited to try out the new map and mechanics. See you on the battlefield!

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In this exciting and chaotic time, it’s easy to forget the hard lessons we’ve learned. We here at the Black Lion Trading Company would like to honor the memory of Lion’s Arch after Ellen Kiel’s tragic failure to protect it from the dastardly Scarlet Briar. For this event, we’re bringing back a boatload of exciting items you can use to show your respect!

Lion's Arch Dye Kits

The soul of Lion’s Arch has always been vibrant and strong. As an homage to that vigorous spirit, we have two vivid, high-contrast dye packs—the Lion’s Arch Survivors Dye Kit and the Lion’s Arch Commemorative Dye Kit.

Permanent Captain's Airship Pass

Available for one day only! Get permanent access to the Havoc’s Heir airship from any PvE map! With every conceivable convenience—from Black Lion Traders, to crafting stations, to our own Mystic Forge—this is a one-stop shop for all your needs!

Scarlet's Armor Pieces

Wear these armor pieces like trophies! Celebrate the hard-earned defeat of a terrible villain. The Scarlet’s Grasp and Scarlet’s Spaulders skins are wearable by any armor class!

Toxic Armor Pieces

These carefully crafted glove and shoulder pieces are infused with deadly toxic energy. The Toxic Gloves and Toxic Mantle skins are wearable by any armor class!

Available Now in the Gem Store!

Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

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Beginning the long process of crafting a legendary weapon can be a daunting task, particularly acquiring the associated precursor weapon and gathering all of the materials needed to upgrade it to a legendary weapon. With Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, the new Map Bonuses system will give you a directed method for acquiring crafting materials. Getting a precursor will become an epic journey to discover the essence of your chosen legendary weapon, ending with a fully formed precursor ready to be crafted into its final legendary form. Let’s take a closer look at these two new systems.

Crafting Your Precursor

In Heart of Thorns, you’ll have access to a special Mastery track for unlocking precursor crafting. Mastery tracks are a new progression system being introduced in the expansion that will allow you to put experience earned toward training specific abilities once you hit level 80. You can read all about them in this blog.

This particular Mastery track is all about legendary crafting, and the first three tiers are dedicated to guiding you through the three tiers required to craft the first set of precursors that were introduced with the original release of Guild Wars 2. Completing the first tier allows you to unlock the start of a journey to acquire any of these original-release precursors by visiting the Mastery vendor and choosing which precursor you want to work on first.

Each legendary weapon has two main themes that will be represented in the precursor journey. The first tier of a precursor journey starts with a collection built around one of these themes. Let’s use the Moot as an example. A moot is a norn celebration of prowess, so that’s the basis of our themes for the legendary mace named for it. The first collection is all about the hunt, so you’ll be proving your abilities by fighting fierce creatures around Tyria and acquiring a trophy to show for it. By completing this collection, you’ll unlock a recipe to craft the first iteration of your precursor—a nontradable exotic weapon with a distressed version of the existing precursor skin. It could use a little polish and refinement, which will be the focus of the second tier collection.

The second collection in your journey involves doing your research, talking to the experts, and honing your craft. You’ll need to barter for knowledge, seek out great minds and convince them to teach you their tricks, and prove your ability at the crafting workbench. All this work allows you to refine your base precursor into its next iteration. Completing this collection unlocks a recipe to do just that, resulting in another nontradable exotic weapon with the existing precursor skin.

The final collections in these precursor journeys return to the themes of their respective legendary weapon. For the Moot, this is where the celebrating starts. Since the Moot’s theme is all about partying, you’ll participate in a range of activities that include dancing with world leaders, setting off fireworks for the Spirits of the Wild, and sampling delicacies and libations from around Tyria. This final collection unlocks the recipe to craft the polished final iteration of the precursor. For all of our existing precursors, this is a tradable exotic weapon, but they will all be updated to use new skins that look much like the legendary weapons they’ll one day become. We like to think of these new precursor skins as the legendary weapon before it is embodied by its soul. Unlocking one of these new skins in your wardrobe will also unlock the two previous tiers of skins. So, should you get lucky and find a precursor out in the world, you won’t miss out on the skins.

This crafting system is an account-based activity, which means you’ll only be able to craft each precursor this way once. However, all of the currently existing precursor acquisition methods will remain intact in addition to this new acquisition method. That means that if you want a particular precursor more than once, you’ll have to fall back to the original methods of acquisition.

Once you have your completed precursor, you are free to begin the process of turning it into a legendary weapon. It’s a long process of gathering the required materials to craft gifts that will eventually be given to Zommoros—the djinn at the heart of the Mystic Forge—who in return gifts you with your powerful legendary weapon.

Map Bonuses

While the update to precursor acquisition makes for a huge change in the way we craft legendary weapons, our new Map Bonuses system will also make acquiring the materials you need a more directed activity. With Heart of Thorns, most explorable maps will have an associated set of bonus rewards that rotate on a regular basis. Starter maps will not be included in order to preserve the new-player experience. By completing events, jumping puzzles, and mini-dungeons in a map, you’ll be periodically awarded with one of its associated bonuses in addition to the normal rewards. For most maps, the bonus reward will be crafting materials. For instance, playing in Cursed Shore could reward you with ancient bones, charged cores, charged lodestones, or giant eyes during one rotation, and powerful venom sacs, glacial cores, glacial lodestones, or globs of ectoplasm during another rotation.

Maps like the Silverwastes or Dry Top that have a dedicated currency will work a little differently. For these maps, bandit crests and geodes have been something of a test for this concept, where you’re rewarded with these currencies through a bouncy chest for playing on the map. The Map Bonuses system is a more streamlined experience, and with Heart of Thorns, these maps will be updated to always award currencies through the Map Bonuses system. Moving forward, any map with a similar currency will also work within the Map Bonuses system.

The goals of this system are to provide ways for players to target the materials they need, let players know exactly where to obtain those materials, and help all explorable maps always feel like relevant and rewarding places to play.

New Legendary Weapons

I know you’re all dying for more information on new legendary weapons, but we’d like to delve into them more with a dedicated blog post in the future. For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates. The methods by which you’ll craft these legendary weapons are similar to the existing system, but we’ve refined it into more of a journey, similar to precursor crafting. We also want to better preserve the prestige associated with crafting a legendary weapon, so the new legendary weapons, and their precursors, will not be tradable. Keep an eye out—we can’t wait to start showing them off when they’re ready!

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From the very beginning, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ was designed to maximize every player’s jungle experience. Gameplay, story, and the terrain itself were all conceived, fleshed out, and woven together to create a unified and immersive world that hooks players and keeps them hooked. Under the steady hands of Matt Wuerffel and Jon Peters, the Heart of Thorns team collaborated, iterated, and executed on a series of features and themes that deliver our most satisfying and comprehensive gaming experience to date.

Location, Location, Location

The foundation of this experience is the region itself: the Heart of Maguuma. Initial map design coalesced around the concept of “biomes,†or levels of terrain, each with its own flora, fauna, and gameplay opportunities. From the towering heights above the jungle canopy down to the root-riddled depths below the surface, each map in the Heart of Maguuma focuses on vertical as well as horizontal exploration. Players can explore jumping puzzles in the trees, hopping from crashed and flaming Pact airships, to giant, grasping Mordrem vines; or scale rope bridges and wooden walkways that connect the forest floor to colorful hylek tree-frog villages in the boughs. Majestic golden outposts are juxtaposed with ominous bioluminescent caverns, each with their own unique mix of hostile and potentially friendly denizens. Every biome is loaded with content and incentives to explore the levels above, below, and beyond, providing unprecedented levels of gameplay density.



Themes and Schemes

Each map also has its own unique themes and map-wide meta-features that connect to the story and the characters in new and exciting ways. For example, in Verdant Brink—the first map players encounter once they enter the Heart of Thorns—the wreckage of the Pact fleet serves as both terrain and a character, defining what sorts of activities and encounters players will find there. Players meet and interact with the desperate survivors of the crash, helping to fortify their positions, gather much needed supplies, and fend off the voracious hordes of Mordrem.

The Brink’s meta-feature is the increased importance of the day/night cycle; things are tough enough while the sun’s up, but once it sets, the Mordrem redouble their efforts and the landscape becomes even more dangerous. Natural predators like the fire-breathing wyvern give way to the more monstrous and deadly toxin-spewing Mordrem variety. Players have to make the most of their daylight activities to prepare for the coming darkness, because once night falls, straight-up survival becomes the primary goal.

I’m Going Up, Down, All Around

New methods of exploration also create new opportunities for more gameplay. The new Mastery system in Heart of Thorns gives players the chance to build up their region-specific skills, like gliding, which allows for deeper and more complete exploration of the environment. Max out your gliding Mastery to discover previously unavailable areas and gameplay challenges. Max out your hylek language and lore Mastery to access content the frog folk reserve for those in the know.



Replayabililty, or Storytelling and Retelling

As if there weren’t enough to do in the Heart of Maguuma, we made sure that when players experience the story of Heart of Thorns, there are ample reasons and rewards to justify going back and doing it all over (and over) again. We set out to give players plenty of options to explore and plenty of loot to earn to make replaying these story instances not only attractive, but essential.

First, we took a page from the Living World’s book and made our story-specific instanced content replayable so that players can give the instances a second, third, or fourth try any time they like. Key story instances also have binary choices that define how the story unfolds; for example, after choosing to trust Laranthir and rescue the sylvari prisoners from their Mordrem captors, players can go back and instead relieve Laranthir of command to experience entirely different gameplay and narrative-path challenges. These branching choices always pay off within the same story instance, so players see the results of their decisions right away. We also included special difficult-to-attain achievements with specific challenging conditions to satisfy before players can earn the points.

As the map-based gameplay and story instances were so tightly bound thematically, we also consciously broke one of the main game’s cardinal storytelling rules and allowed key characters to exist in both story instances and in the open world. Those characters who are not involved in the main story arc can still evolve and change as players progress through the expansion’s open world content. This adds impact to the choices that players make, and the results of those choices ripple out across the entire region and affect the characters struggling to survive in it. For example, whether players trust or distrust Laranthir in that initial story instance, the Vigil’s second-in-command will patrol the open world with a crack squadron of sylvari snipers, providing overwatch to beleaguered Pact survivors and raining destruction down on Mordremoth’s hordes. He and his squad work their way across the entire Heart of Maguuma, doing their thing and winning over some of their former comrades who doubt them, until they are positioned to support players in the final confrontation—and it’s up to players to decide whether they want Laranthir’s help.



Wait, Did You Just Say Something?

Finally, we were able to restore the player character’s ability to speak—not just in story instances, but also in the open world. It may seem like a simple thing, but having your onscreen avatar speak whenever it makes sense for them to do so creates broad new avenues of engagement and interaction. Players can participate in verbal exchanges with friendly NPCs, hurl threats and challenges at enemies, and bark mission-specific orders to comrades. They can have these exchanges while in motion or even in combat. Best of all, we are also now able to give each race their own distinct lines so that norn, sylvari, asura, human, and charr characters can speak like actual members of the unique cultures and societies from which they hail.

Come On In, the Jungle’s Fine

The writers, designers, and artists on the Heart of Thorns team were tasked with integrating key features like story, environment, and gameplay to an unprecedented degree. To put it bluntly, we can’t wait to see what you do once you enter our jungle playground—if you have half as much fun playing it as we did building it, our mission will have been a rousing success.

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You humans are going to love this! This week we’ve carefully constructed an outfit according to the murals depicting Balthazar, a powerful warrior worshipped by humans. We also created miniatures of two of my favorite animals! Details below!

Balthazar's Regalia

Finally, you can look just like the mighty warrior Balthazar, complete with horns like a charr soldier! Courageously march into battle with this statuesque outfit.

Mini Moose

The stubbornness of the moose in mini form! This miniature will follow you anywhere, even when you lock horns with your enemies!

Mini Red Panda

This miniature will inspire you to dominate on the field of battle the same way they dominate bamboo! Be warned—the Mini Red Panda may be small, but it will shock you with a surprising amount of adorableness!

Available Now in the Gem Store!

Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

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Slowly working toward this still, someday... someday.