When Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons was first announced, players of the MMORPG were dead excited to get their hands on a new major expansion. The release was set to expand the personal story every hardcore GW2 player has fallen in love with, by adding tons of fresh content. n a new blog post the studio has said that it’s going to need to delay that release until next year.
Going into detail, the studio director has this to say:
“As expansion development has progressed and the real-world challenges of the past year and a half have changed the way we live and work, it’s become clear that we need a little more time to deliver our creative vision for Cantha.”
So what does this mean? Mainly that some of the planned features for the game are being pushed as well. One of the needed changes, performance optimizations, has also been pushed back. ArenaNet’s head of live operations Josh ‘Grouch’ Davis had a bit to say on the plan. While the upgrade to DX11 has been planned for some time, it still needs time in the oven.
It’s also clear that expectations need to be tempered on this. “An important note is that the upgrade to DX11 itself isn’t a magical fix for frame rates on its own”, said the exec. “Some players may not notice a difference at all. However, upgrading to DX11 opens a lot of doors for improving performance—CPU multithreading for instance. It also paves the way for some potential graphics upgrades down the road.”
Another big area of focus is a full revamp of the WorldvsWorld PVP, otherwise known as WvW. The new Alliances systems planned for End of Dragons will push players to band together in new ways. The goal is to rebalance the entire WvW ecosystem “by dynamically creating matchups using WvW-designated guilds, alliances (think EVE Online‘s designation for groups of player corps), and active WvW players as the inputs.” Arenanet wants to put more focus on active and collaborative play it seems. What this means is a bit unclear, although we could be seeing some new large-scale game modes or other big changes. Although if that doesn’t sound appealing, don’t worry, as ArenaNet is planning to take player feedback into account for future iterations as part of a multi-phase beta test.
ArenaNet has kept the game thriving for so many years thanks to its aggressive and focused content strategy. Instead of focusing on pushing out big expansions every couple of years, Guild Wars 2 opts for a more focused style. The smaller expansions fill the gaps between the big blocks of content. Content like Call to Glory has helped keep thousands of players coming back everyday. And while there are only two other mainline expansions, this game manages not to show too much age.
If you’re just trying to bide your time, check out the trailer for Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons down below.