Guild Wars 2—The Journey Ahead at PAX Prime 2015

[Karizee]

Guild Wars 2—The Journey
Ahead at PAX Prime 2015

by The Guild Wars 2 Team on August 19, 2015


We’re excited to announce that we’ll be at PAX Prime 2015 in Seattle, Washington!

Headlining our presence there is big news on the horizon. On Saturday, August 29, ArenaNet President Mike O’Brien and Game Director Colin Johanson will host a special fan and press conference titled “Guild Wars 2—The Journey Ahead.” There they’ll be making a number of big announcements that will define the future of Guild Wars 2 and—as many of you have been waiting for—reveal a major feature coming in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™. Can’t make it to the show? We’ll be streaming the presentation live on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. You won’t want to miss it!

We’re also on the show floor for the duration of PAX Prime this year&mash;partnered with PC peripherals maker Corsair—with demos and swag giveaways at booth #3342 from Friday, August 28, to Monday, August 31.


Discover Challenging Group Content

We’ve shown you the different ways that we’re adding meaningful progression beyond level 80 in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Now it’s time to tell you about the intense challenges that will define your endgame experience in the expansion.

Join Mike O’Brien and Colin Johanson as they reveal all of the details behind the challenging group content you’ll encounter in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. This is in addition to other announcements not just for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns but for the core Guild Wars 2 game as well.

When:
Saturday, August 29, at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7).

Where:
This presentation will take place in the Hydra Theatre, located on Level 1 of the Grand Hyatt. Please note that you will need an official PAX badge to attend the presentation.

Livestream:
If you’re unable to attend in person, never fear! We’ll be streaming the presentation on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. Tune in at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) for a preshow featuring community members:


English
MightyTeapot and Derorir at http://www.twitch.tv/mightyteapot
Lynxaria and MufasaPrime

Spanish
Darkxemnas and Makina at http://www.twitch.tv/darkxemnas

French
Ashuvidz at http://www.twitch.tv/ashuvidz

German
We are still finalizing the details of our German casters. Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates!


The presentation will be followed by a postshow to analyze the presentation with:

English
MMOINKS and NikeDnT at http://www.twitch.tv/mmoinks
RPGShack and Corvus at http://www.twitch.tv/rpgshack

Spanish
Elena Minervae and Daniel Figares at http://www.twitch.tv/minervae

French
Ashuvidz at http://www.twitch.tv/ashuvidz

German
We are still finalizing the details of our German casters. Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates!


https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/g...ax-prime-2015/

[Arlee]

Huh... no mention of doing a community party or anything. That's odd. Thought for sure they would do one again.

[Deleted]

I wonder what the attendance will be like, iirc the twitch has never been uber popular

[Karizee]

I wonder what the attendance will be like, iirc the twitch has never been uber popular

They hit 90k viewers on the NA stream earlier this year at Pax South, packed house. Pax Prime has been sold out for months.

[Arlee]

I wonder what the attendance will be like, iirc the twitch has never been uber popular

At Pax East their booth was packed with people from the time the show opened to the time it closed and the lines were consistently capped at max. There were a lot of people who currently played, but by and large most of the people in booth seemed to be people who either hadn't played in a long time or had never played. I don't expect it to be any different at PAX Prime.

As for their panel... I wouldn't be surprised if it was a packed room as well. It's a big announcement and people always want to be in on the big things regardless what game it's for Also they aren't doing it on the main stage so even if they got the next largest room it would only hold a few hundred people.

[Eleccybubb]

Release date hype? :O

[Arlee]

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post5398414

Well that's interesting. Apparently it won't have any of the HoT content on the floor o.O I thought they'd just bring the build from the last BWE or maybe the build they brought to Pax east way back. I feel like that's a bit of a rough decision.

[Edge-]

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post5398414

Well that's interesting. Apparently it won't have any of the HoT content on the floor o.O I thought they'd just bring the build from the last BWE or maybe the build they brought to Pax east way back. I feel like that's a bit of a rough decision.

I mean, I get them not wanting to take the time to build a demo for PAX Prime (though honestly, why couldn't they use one of the existing beta versions that they've tested on weekends? Surely they could have backed up that data and just turned that into a demo build), even if they've been doing nothing for the past 8 months but work on the expansion.

But if they're just going to have the current game...why fucking bother? ArenaNet continues to amaze with their idiotic decisions with this kind of stuff -____________-

[Arlee]

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...Party-Passes-1

There's the Pax party post I was expecting

[Deleted]

I really wonder what the challenging content will be. Last I heard ArenaNet had no dungeon development team. This makes me think that the announcement at PAX won't include any new dungeons. I don't think they can classify any world events as challenging, and without simply adding in one-shot mechanics to current dungeons and fractals, you are not going to create actually difficult encounters.

I would really like to see new dungeons with new stories and mechanics (and the tools to go with) that will require people to bring support traits to group content. I despise the Berserker Meta (I prefer to play a Condition Necromancer) and the 'tactics' used to skip trash in dungeons by stealthing the whole party through it.

[carnifex2005]

ANet hired a "Game Designer: Raid Content" about 9 months ago, so I'm assuming the challenging content is more than 5 people but not open world. I'm guessing that dungeons are dead and all 5 man content will be done via fractals.

[Karizee]

Countdown timer to the Pax Prime presentation!

[Karizee]

If you didn't catch the livestream, here's the youtube mirror:




Highlights per Dulfy: http://dulfy.net/2015/08/29/gw2-pax-...estream-notes/

Colin Johanson on stage.

• 5 million copy sold.
• Metacritic score is the highest of any MMO released in the past decade.

Raids

• Raids coming to GW2. Raid trailer shown.
• Participate in Epic fights for legendary rewards.
• Legendary Armor: As part of rewards for raids, we're introducing legendary armor. Conquering raid content will earn you the pieces to build legendary precursor armors, which can be forged into legendary heavy, medium, and light armor sets. Like legendary weapons, these pieces will have the same stats as ascended armor; you'll be able to change the armor stats out of combat and dazzle your friends with your sense of style, but you won't have a statistical edge. Endless tiers of gear grind to stay raid relevant have no place in Guild Wars 2.
• Give everything you love about raiding without all the headaches associated with raiding.
• 10 player instanced challenging content, harder than any challenging content so far.
• Tied to the Mastery system - i.e. Glider system is needed for the boss fight shown in the trailer.
• Raids in GW2 is anything that our dynamic events system can do. We will still have traditional linear dungeon type raids.
• No waiting to have fun, no attunement process to get access to raids (poke at Wildstar).
• Every profession has the ability to do control, damage and support. No required party composition.
• New raids won’t invalidate old raids/content or make them easier since there is no endless gear treadmill.
• HoT will come with a single raid split into 3 wings. A couple weeks after release of HoT, we will add in the first wing. After players learned how to defeat the first wing, we will unlock wing 2 and 3.
• Live releases (i.e. Living World) will continue after the expansion and raiding will become a key component of these live releases.

Free to Play

• Core game free to everyone, starting TODAY
• Business model is not changing. We are not here to monetize the free players like the other F2P games.
• Our goal is to protect existing players while still make it easier for you to invite friends to play the game.
• Account security, customer service, and bot detection all improved recently.
• Free accounts starts with less bag slots/character slots than paid accounts.
• No map wide chat for free accounts.
• Whispers every 30 seconds.
• You can access the trading post but can't mail stuff to other players.
• WvW restricted to L60 on free accounts.

Gift for existing players

• New royal guard outfit, delivered to your ingame box this coming week.

[Gray_Matter]

[*]Live releases (i.e. Living World) will continue after the expansion and raiding will become a key component of these live releases.

This concerns me.

[Deleted]

This concerns me.

The opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj in WoW was potentially one of the greatest ever live events in Warcraft's history. And guess what, raiding was a key component.