Colin Johanson gives an overview of where ArenaNet is taking things for the rest of the year.

In a new blog post, Colin Johanson of ArenaNet gave an overview of where the studio is taking Guild Wars 2 through the rest of 2013. The major focus of the post was improving the rewards that players receive in game.

Colin started off with Living World releases, reconfirming that the two week cadence is here to stay. While we will have to wait for information about the Living World content closer to their individual releases, he did say that they are focused on areas such as improving world bosses, updating and refining dungeons and fractals, creating world events with larger and more permanent impact and increasing the number of dynamic events in the world.

Dynamic events is not the only thing being expanded in the game as new skills and traits will be added on a regular basis. In addition to this, the method of acquiring skill points will be expanded to guide players towards different challenges and content throughout the world in both PvE and WvW.

Colin then jumped into the topic of the new rewards players will be getting. Champions will be updated to give a guaranteed reward box for any player that qualifies. This box will contain crafting materials, skill points, unique skins, lodestones and more. Each path of the dungeons will also be getting bonus gold that can be earned once daily at the end of each unique path. The amount of this bonus gold reward will vary depending on the path, so longer or harder dungeon paths will award more than shorter and/or easier paths.

Magic Find is being removed from gear. Exactly how MF items will be replaced will be detailed later in the year. Once the change is implemented, MF will become an account-wide stat that is increased through the current achievement reward system as well as a consumable. The higher your MF, more of these consumables will be required to increase it further. These consumables have a chance to be acquired when salvaging fine and masterwork items.

Crafting is being increased from rank 400 to rank 500. At rank 500, crafters will be able to use a new material and craft ascended weapons and armor. The new material will be made by combining lower tier materials, but is time-constrained so that each item may only be crafted once per day. This will retain value and rarity for this higher level economy. The new ascended gear will not only be crafted but will also be available as rare drops from "locations in the world."

Precursors for Legendary weapons will be available for crafting at rank 500 and new legendary weapons and legendary gear types will be added. While information won't be given until later, the precursors are likely to require a large amount of the new time-limited materials in addition to other items earned from specific content in the game.

Legendaries are also getting an improvement. In addition to remaining on par with the new ascended gear, players will be able to choose the stats of their legendary whenever they are out of combat. This rids legendaries of the need for transmutation.

In WvW, players will see a replacement to the orb mechanic on borderland maps in addition to what was mentioned in last month's blog post on the future of WvW.

Improving rewards also makes its way to sPvP, though specifics are being held until closer to release. Among the changes coming to PvP include a separate queue and leaderboards for solo rated play, new map types, legendary PvP weapon skins and additional rewards and growth to PvP tournaments.

Lastly is the expansion of Guild Wars 2 to foreign markets. With the game coming soon to China, a new "level zero" optional tutorial is being added to the game to teach core basics. In addition to this, new story steps at level 5 and 10 will continue to teach these core basics as the player grows. The hints system will be upgraded and a new level-up messaging system is going to be added. While targeting for the eastern release of the game, these additions will be added to GW2 everywhere.

That isn't all that is coming to GW2; an LFG tool (which Colin mentioned earlier this week) and limited culling in PvE are just some of the things coming during the second half of 2013 alongside the continual two-week content releases and other super adventures.

Matt Adams

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