GW2 Heart of Thorns Announced With Lots of Info

Guild Wars 2, or GW2 for its fans, had been the most anticipated MMO prior to its release, as some of you probably know. After its release, however, it slowly but surely faded into the background of the genre as many gamers voiced their disappointment at the unfulfilled promises originally made by ArenaNet.

 

Still, in the recent weeks the hype was rekindled by ArenaNet’s teases of a big announcement during PAX South and yesterday, the developer kept its promise by announcing GW2 Heart of Thorns, the first paid expansion to the game. Many details were disclosed (including a trailer which you can find below):

• The new area is the Heart of Maguuma, said to be massive and a lot more vertical than the basic maps. It will consist of three different biomes: core, root, and canopy (where the remains of pact fleet are scattered). You can explore everything from the very depth to the very top. It will include new individual, group and guild challenges. There will also be new types of content, new civilization, new creatures, new achievements.
• There will be no new “tier of gear” or increased level cap, in accordance to GW2’s basic principles. However, ArenaNet intends to add deeper challenges and deeper progression.
• This will be done mainly through the new Mastery system, which is going to be account based. You’ll need to complete content in the jungle to earn Mastery points, which can then be spent in very different ways:
• Exploration example: If you have spent mastery points, you will have the ability to hang glide and fly with your glider. Ride gust of wind to reach hard to reach locations.
• Lore example: Able to spend mastery points to learn languages of civilizations deep in the jungle. Learn their secrets, stories and their hidden treasures.
• Combat example: Learn mastery abilities to defeat the new creatures in the jungle.
• Collecting/crafting/build example: Precursors are the hardest to get for legendary weapons. Mastery system allow you to build collections that send you on epic journeries that reward you with precursors once complete.
• Big changes are coming to professions as well, starting with a new one - the Revenant, using heavy armor - and the ability to specialize each profession.
• Revenant have abilities to channel and control the power of the mist.
• Revenant channel the power of great legends from the past and use those to help power its abilities.. King Jalis Ironhammer is one of the legends Revenant will be able to channel and Jalis’s dwarf abilities will be available when you channel him. The demon Mallyx buried at the heart of the Domain of Anguish is another legend that Revenant can channel to use the power of conditions to defeat their enemies.
• Each profession can master a new specialization that grow the profession to something new like a secondary profession.
• Example: Rangers able to master druid abilities and become a druid; they can now use the staff weapon and have access to a new heal skill, a new elite skill, new utility skills and new profession mechanics that change the way you play.
• Example: Necromancer & Greatsword. A new specialization will allow Necromancers to use the Greatsword weapon.
• The trailer also demonstrated Mesmer using shield and Engineer using hammer
• That’s not everything as another big focus of GW2 Heart of Thorns seems to be enhancing guild systems. ArenaNet finally announced Guild Halls, a place for players to build and progress. Guild members can prepare their next great adventures here and it is expected to become their base of operations and a social hub for the  community.
• Guilds are also featured prominently in the structured PvP changes, as ArenaNet is bringing back GvG in a way. It will be possible to form guild teams which will compete on a leaderboard dedicated to a brand new game mode called Stronghold; in this mode players will fight for control of supply, spend supply to hire troops. Hired troops assault stronghold and kill lord to win; it will be also possible to find heroes along the way to help you assault the stronghold.
• Finally, there will be changes to World versus World mode as well. A new “borderlands” map will be added the rotation and it was described as the most diverse map yet, where each keep has its own distinct theme and holding objectives around keep provide abilities to the world that holds it (if you control the shrines around earth keep, earth will rise up to defend keep when attacked; if you control the objectives around fire keep, your team can use lava to travel across the map). The developers are also looking to make holding objectives way more important in WvW as a whole.

 

That’s pretty much everything that was discussed at the panel, but there are a few other tidbits. For instance, Dave Mark, President and Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, revealed yesterday to be working on GW2 Heart of Thorns.

Mark worked as a sub-contractor along Storybricks on the Everquest Next Emergent AI for some time, then in April 2014 begun working with ArenaNet to improve Guild Wars 2 in “many different areas”. Needless to say, it’s always exciting to hear about projects on how to improve AI, which I personally find to be the single most lacking element in most games nowadays.

GW2 Heart of Thorns will be playable fairly soon at PAX East, so stay tuned for more information.