Announcing Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure
The fourth expansion for Guild Wars 2 launches on August 22, 2023.
My first read on this is to be pretty excited; the new dailies system looks interesting, more accessible skyscale will be good for newer players, etc.
Oh man, this takes me back. I'm going to share my favorite GW2 memory, because I can.
I was playing my main (a thief), wandering around some zone or another. I happened upon a cool looking elite and tried to take it, but it was too powerful and I had to retreat. After I did so, I noticed another player arrive and also go for the elite, and decided I could jump in with him and get the loot too.
We killed it, I don't remember the loot, but what I do remember is the strange portal opening...
We enter, and are teleported to a bizarre other region. We regroup, and spend some time exploring before accidentally finding a portal out of the place and being teleported to random spots in the region.
We immediately /pm each other and regroup at the elite, both eager to find what's really in that other place. Cue 2+ hours of exploration, solving jumping puzzles, and just camaraderie with this stranger I'd never met exploring a beautiful and mystifying area. Finally we reach the prize, a big chest of loot and an achievement, and teleport out.
I never saw them again, and I don't need to. It was such an amazing experience, just raw human connection and exploration, happening by pure coincidence in a game I played exclusively solo. I enjoyed a lot of things about GW2, but that one memory will always stick in my mind, and I haven't found an experience like that since
Ah, the Hidden Garden. Yeah, that one's pretty magical. I think if there's one thing I really like about GW2 (aside from the ungodly amount of content), it's how organically it pushes folks to play together. Speaking as a serial soloer, I've spent more time playing with other folks on GW2 than in any other game, simply because you can so easily bump into folks doing map events and just get swept up in whatever's going on.
People are also just generally nice too, which is lovely.
I'm pretty hyped, I love the communication from them! I've still got so much to do from icebrood and EoD, time to dive back in I guess!
My only worry about the sky scale is how they talk about buffing its movement, it sounds fun but it's also already the most powerful mount. Hard to imagine a use for our bunny or raptor if we're zipping over queensdale on our dragon. Guess it matters less if everyone's got it, no more leaving new folks out.
Are they buffing base skyscale movement speed? Because that's the use case for the raptor, it's faster than skyscale over flat surfaces.
Only use my springer gets nowadays is when a boss has a CC bar to break at the start of a fight, eg matriarch.
As far as I can tell, they aren't buffing the speed, but it gains a lot of new utility. Being able to mount in combat sounds quite broken, and will apparently not be possible with the other mounts.
This looks great! I'm excited.
To anyone who comes along and hasn't played GW2: Go check it out. Its a fantastic MMO with inoffensive monetization and one of the best online communities I've come across. I always shill it whenever I get the chance.
Fellow gw2 player!?
This news make me excited for two reasons.
First one is, because I heard about the new addon here in the fediverse first, before I even saw the announcement on the official website. Nice to see, that the fediverse, especially its content aggregators at the moment, is growing and some specific gaming content is arriving. :D
And the second one is of course the announcement of the addon itself. Looks pretty nice. Looking forward to the new story and new maps and the skyscale improvements sound nice. And I'm happy to see that legendary armor will be accessible to non raiders. The changes in the weapon system sound interesting, too, but I hope they get the balancing right. I mean, there was a reason that you couldn't use every weapon of every elite specialization. On the other hand this could lead to some cool new synergies and builds. Not sure though which weapons I'm going to combine with my mesmer main. :D
If you're into gw2 specifically, there seem to be 3 communities (two active and one basically dead I think) in the fediverse -
Can't believe we're coming up on the 11th anniversary soon. This has always been my favorite MMO.
I can't believe it's only 11 years old. It already felt like it had a lot of history when I played it back in 2012.
Guess this means I should finish EoD story soon!
Wow didn't realize this game was still going
I spent a few weeks playing through the three expansions after not playing for 8 years. (My inbox was full of years of free stuff)
It's really quite good. I don't need to get deep into some grind system, which it definitely has. But the story was quite good and the world building is fantastic. Even the combat was fun.
It's worth checking out, I think.