GW2 Janthir Wilds - Discussion Thread

[Malorne the White Stag]

Oooh, paragon and ritualist? Does that mean guardian monk???

[Edge-]

Across nineteen story chapters and four new open-world maps, the narrative explored the aftermath of the Elder Dragon era through a more grounded and political lens.

more grounded? I mean, they got politics in there sorta via the earlier chapters, but what the fuck do they think is grounded about more otherdimensional/whatever monsters coming to eat tyria and shit?

The first quarterly release after the expansion’s launch will not include new story or map content. Instead, it will focus on updates to core systems and longstanding features.

On the one hand this sounds good, because Anet absolutely sucks at maintaining and updating core systems. Like, badly.

But at the same time I don't think they can ship enough content in the initial offering to keep folks engaged for 6+ months.

This approach allows for more complete and satisfying story arcs

Honestly Anet has struggled with "satisfying" story arcs because their endings are pretty consistently underwhelming. I hope this improves on that, but I'm not optimistic.

Elite specializations are making a return

Praise be. The only thing that might get me somewhat excited.

In the first quarterly release of our next expansion, that means unifying raids and Strike Missions into a more consistent structure, improving onboarding for newer players, reworking parts of the UI, streamlining rewards, and investing in systems that help group content feel easier to step into and more meaningful to stick with.

It's not content (and this is what they mentioned above), but this is good at least.

Strikes and raids are weird and confusing and the UI is ancient and archaic. This seems a lot more like a play for new players but hey, I guess it's nice in general. But will probably mean the game sits on the back-burner for me for a while longer.

Hopefully the expansion announcement is a bit more exciting this time around. I'll probably still be around but I'm just here because I've been around for so long, at this point.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What a bloated and difficult to parse article. The first six paragraphs read like a self-congratulatory corpo press release.

They are doubling down on making customers pay more for less content, trying to spin it as them trying to increase player satisfaction haha. Remember when GW2 was releasing a new map every 3 months during the season 3 through season 4 era? They even wove a 5 map expansion release in there without any pause in the release cadence.

[Edge-]

What a bloated and difficult to parse article. The first six paragraphs read like a self-congratulatory corpo press release.

They are doubling down on making customers pay more for less content, trying to spin it as them trying to increase player satisfaction haha. Remember when GW2 was releasing a new map every 3 months during the season 3 through season 4 era? They even wove a 5 map expansion release in there without any pause in the release cadence.

we're really not paying more for less

$25 is less than the price of what expansion used to be (around half of HoT, a bit less for others that were $40) and comes with roughly the same amount of initial expansion content + arenanet actually going back and doing the thing they never do - work on previously released features to fix and improve some of that shit

don't get me wrong - i find it a pretty unexciting approach to expansions and have been critical of it since SotO's first update (I thought the initial release of SotO was very good minus the rush to kill Mabon). but "more for less" doesn't parse at all.

realistically a new map every 3 months all the time is not just unsustainable in terms of design-work/dev-hours, but just grows the world unsustainably large while spreading the players ever thinner and thinner.

they've said one reason they're doing less content then a while back - they're not crunching the team as hard anymore and i can live with that, this is a 12 year old MMO at this point. i just want them to figure out how to pace this expansion approach to make it actually exciting.

but this goes back to my ongoing commentary of how arenanet is a 20+ year old company still seemingly acting like a young company trying to find their way, working on a 12+ year old MMO that they're still trying to figure out how to support

[Flarelaine]

this is a 12 year old MMO at this point.

Make that 13. Even if technically it only turns 13 next month.

[PACOX]

- - - Updated - - -



Two more left

[Edge-]

if that's not bunnymancer i'm uninstalling

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Expac leaked on a storefront.

https://archive.fo/0S7it

Train new elite specializations, master new skills, face deadly encounters, and more as you explore the magical island of Castora. Highlights

Adventure on an Unknown Island

Tyria's leaders are apprehensive about rumors of the Inquiry's secret voyages to Castora, an island so remote it has long been considered inaccessible, if not nonexistent. The risks involved prevent all but the most tenacious (and perhaps reckless) pursuers from investigating the Inquiry's plan. At launch, your race to uncover the Inquiry's plot will take you to two new open-world regions teeming with magical energies and strange creatures. Two additional maps will open as the story continues over the course of a year.

During your travels, you'll unlock three new Mastery tracks, including one for your Skimmer mount that unlocks new and updated abilities. The new region also brings new adventures, collections, and themed rewards. Players who own Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity and Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds will be able to unlock the new map, Castoran Homestead.

New Elite Specializations

A new elite specialization for each profession will unlock new traits, profession mechanics, and healing, utility, and elite abilities. Further enhance your build by acquiring new themed relics throughout your adventures in Castora. Work toward six legendary rewards: three new legendary weapons, a ring, an accessory, and a respirator.

Deadly Encounters

Castora's magically imbued landscape is home to all manner of strange and twisted wildlife. Two of the three major updates coming in 2026 will pit players against the island's most powerful inhabitants in Raid Encounters (including Challenge Modes and a Legendary Mode) and a new Convergence. Along with the first of the new Raid Encounters, new system updates will make raids easier to access. A Fractal with a Challenge Mode will also launch with the expansion's final major update.

New Features and Rewards

New emotes, armor, weapons, recipes, and other exclusive rewards await those who brave the dangers of Castora, and seasonal updates to the Wizard's Vault will bring additional options for unique cosmetic rewards throughout the expansion. To support the addition of a new Homestead map, we're introducing two additional features. The first, the ability to freely switch between the Janthiri and Castoran maps, is supported by the second feature, Layouts. Layouts create a file that you can use to save, load, share, and edit decoration arrangements.

Strange how they are making ownership of a previous expansion a requirement to access content in another expansion, when previously GW2 did not do that. You did not need to own HoT to access PoF's elite specs. You did not need to own PoF to get the Jade Turtle mount in EoD. Ofcourse, if you have made it through the original dragon story and are still buying these smaller expacs then you are probably going to get them all anyway, but it is still odd.

[PACOX]

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Looks like they are bringing back Rytlock (Steve Blum). It's neat that they are doing a serious Asura villain, but the Inquest tech glows too much to be taken very seriously.

Visually the expansion land looks meh. It's just some random tropical island using what feels like thrown together Vanilla assets. Doesn't look memorable. The concept art on the thumbnail looks much more interesting.

[PACOX]

[Edge-]

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post54719361

New thread for the expansion, let's take that discussion there, please : )