22
votes
Guild Wars 2 announced it's first mini expansion, 'Secrets of the obscure'
Link information
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- Title
- Announcing Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure - GuildWars2.com
- Published
- Jun 27 2023
- Word count
- 398 words
There are more details on the expansion's home page as well as other anet blog posts (combat changes, new rewards, and story/skyscale info).
I'm honestly surprised by what's been announced. I cautiously set my expectations lower when anet revealed the new timeline of roughly one expansion + 3 quarterly updates per year. Some things I'm excited about:
It's going to be difficult to beat the amount of content previous expansions had as well as no longer getting free Living World content, but that quantity of updates was never going to be sustainable. I'm just glad GW2 is not only alive, but growing after more than a decade.
I'm really excited to have new content that's not siloed away in its own part of the map. some of the living world maps get pretty lonely, and EoD still feels like a ghost town, especially Kaineng.
Adding more build options by decoupling weapons from elite specs brings back good memories of GW1 and how many options there were for builds.
I'm also excited to see how the maps turn out now that they can build them around the Skyscale. So much old content can be skipped with Skyscale, but if they can assume everyone has access, maps can be built with a lot more verticality in mind.
I agree. I really liked the "Return to ..." Living World events/achievements they ran before End of Dragons released. It gave everyone a great incentive to revisit past content together. The quarterly updates tied to the expansion also fixes the problem of inactive players missing out on the free LW episodes.
I remember thinking that New Kaineng was such a cool zone when I first went there. I had a ton of fun zooming between buildings on my griffon. Unfortunately, the novelty didn't take long to wear off. It's such a shame that a city of that size has so little substance.
Kind of wish I didn't go through the skyscale collection process recently if they were just going to drop an easier way, idk, to me that collection was extremely not fun.
Really wish I liked this game.
Seems like one of the better supported MMOs right now at least from an outside perspective
It took me 3 attempts to get it. As a wow/runescape head, it took me playing retail WoW (2022) and other big mmos to finally appreciate why guild wars 2 is great, and the way it is.
I played 05 WoW and that journey was epic, I also played a private server in 2018 (too impatient for classic lol) and it also held up, made the same kinda friends too.
Retail was….nowhere near as bad as people said for years, but the exp pack at the time was…let’s just say interesting (shadowlands).
I reached max and realised doing any old content was pointless, I like questing and enjoying a zones vibe. That is NO longer WoW. It’s simply a 3rd person ARPG dungeon game with extra steps.
Guild wars 2 on the other hand, while it takes a bit of mental rewiring, has a massive amount of time-respecting things.
Account bound unlocks! All gold/crafting mats are shared between toons. Along with Mount unlocks and their respective skills for them (Masteries).
Map exploration while at first I was like ‘yeah whatever’ turned out to be my favourite thing. You clear the map and get xp and rewards for doing so - which makes exploring useful. The waypoints on the map makes for ez traversal once you’ve unlocked them too.
It’s just chill man. Plus gearing is DONE pretty quick once you hit 80. Other than some high end dungeons (fractals) your 80 exotic gear can do ALL content.
You can tweak gear with Armor runes and weapon sigils, along with Ascended and Legendary gear for some QoL / gear chasing but the power gain is very small.
There’s no dungeon grinding for that constant tiny chance of ONE bit of gear like in WoW.
My time with retail WoW was largely a ghost town, which made me sad because vanilla wow was bustling!
GW2 brings that back with mega servers for your region (EU/NA). I kid you not, pretty much everywhere is full of people at all times. Hell I play NA in the UK and in MY morning there’s shitloads of people around, it’s great.
This is also because level scaling is in effect, and special events happen around the world which keeps all zones somewhat relevant.
It’s kinda like a MMO dragon chasers retirement game. You’ve experienced the lame shit of other MMOs now you’ve found your happy place to take things at your own pace 🤣
Tentatively excited. Over the years GW2 lost me, after a high point right past the first expansion it felts like the developers no longer knew what to go for. Almost as if they hadn't imagined their game would need support for this long. 😅 Oh noes, we're too successful is not a bad problem to have I imagine.
This sounds like it could work out for the better, if they can actually stick to these mini-expansions. In particular the weapons no longer being shackled to elite specializations sounds like in the long-haul it could do a lot of good for trait and spec balance.
This is like 90% of Arenanet's issues right here lol. For every good thing they implement, there will also be some soon-to-be obsolete feature or currency, seemingly implemented just because and soon forgotten.
I hope their new release cycle works out. I am also tentatively excited especially, especially for the new weapon combinations. Pistol/pistol Guardian is gonna look badass.
I'm happy to hear GW2 is continuing to receive new content! I dropped off right before the last expansion (not bored, my friends all play FFXIV and I've had a lot of single player games to catch up on), but I was worried the game would finish its story and head to maintenance mode.
How do current players feel about this "mini-expansion" and the state of the game though? Is this significantly different from a living world season, or merely a repackaged version?
I'm a current GW2 player, and this expansion is a new thing ANet is trying. It's supposed bigger than a living world season, but smaller than the previous 3 expansions. They are also doing a slow release of content, so initially there will be two new maps and some story content, and over the next while there will be more story chapters released and a third new map.
In general, I am tentatively excited for the new changes, including new weapons for existing classes, new PVE legendary armor that's not locked behind raids, and new story content. While I have unlocked legendary armor from raiding with my guild, having a way to get it without needing to grind raids every week for currency is appealing for acquiring my second two sets. I'm also excited about the changes to the skyscale mount, making it easier to get and upgrading existing flying mounts to work with leyline gliding and updrafts.
Same actually, am playing FFXIV by now as my filler game. Sure it costs monthly but nowadays time is my limitation, not money, and everyone went there during COVID anyhow.
But that also makes me excited about the mini-expansion thing. I am tentatively hoping that the big upheaval to class design might end up finally introducing more attention to balance in the chaos that is GW2's systems. And that they focus more on the open world again as the premiere feature of the game.
Definitely going to keep an eye on it.
Looks like I’ve got to jump back into GW2! I have been hanging out to see what that floating island was all about ever since launch, finally! It only took 11 years.
I’ve been on/off with GW2 over the years. I stopped playing seriously after PoF, came back for a bit of EoD, the. Dropped off again. This announcement though has me chomping at the bit to jump right back in. I do miss zooming around the maps on my griffin.
The wizard tower in Kryta? This is somehow related to that?
Yea in Kessex hills, it’s the focus of this expansion it would seem.