Beginning Of The End : GW2

We know what it's called:

 We know what it looks like (er, kinda...)

We know when we're getting it.

The only thing we don't know is - will it be any good?

By my count, so far ArenaNet are two for three.

The original Guild Wars 2: excellent.

The first expansion, Heart of Thorns: also excellent.

The second expansion, Path of Fire: very bad.

This is a personal opinion. A lot of current and former GW2 players, almost certainly most of them, would disagree with all of those assessments.

It's easy to forget now but GW2 was not that well-received after launch. The game claimed to break the MMORPG mould and for many it succeeded all too well.

Droves of confused and disatisfied MMO tourists tried the open world levelling game, couldn't understand it, didn't like it and left.

Veterans of Dark Age of Camelot or Warhammer and other fans of large-scale, faction-based PvP tried World vs World, didn't like it and left.

Small group players tried the chaotic, trinityless dungeons, didn't like them and left.

PvE zergers who made it through the levels to Orr, found their supposed endgame an unfinished, buggy mess. They tried it, didn't like it and left.

PvP players were embarassed by Anet's determination to make GW2 into an in esport. Whether they stayed or left, who knows? No-one was watching.

The game muddled along for a couple of years, stumbling from crisis to crisis. The Karka debacle, the Ascended gear scandal, the Scarlett fiasco. Content cadence flipped and flopped as ANet struggled to come up with a flow that worked. And failed.

Through all this, there would never be an expansion, we were told.

Then there was an expansion.

Heart of Thorns was tough, uncompromising and difficult. It put the challenge back into a game that had gone soft. It sorted the casuals from the hardcore.

So some said.

Heart of Thorns destroyed solo play, drove casuals to despair and nearly killed the franchise.

So said others.

It seemed pretty easy to me. It was a lot of fun, solo or in zergs. I played it all the way through, twice, and then parts of it a few more times, for fun.

Still, it was widely seen as a mistake. Pandering to the hardcore, Anet had abandoned the core. GW2 had been touted as a game for everyone and somehow now it wasn't.

Also, WvW almost closed down. The Desert Borderland revamp, not strictly part of HoT but added alongside it. was almost universally hated. Players shunned them and eventually Anet first re-revamped then largely removed the entire thing. Even so, the game mode never fully recovered. Most likely it never will.

A couple more years passed and Path of Fire arrived. Second expansion, not the same as the first.

PoF was where I fell off the bus. Until then I'd rolled with all the punches and generally had a good time. PoF was not a good time for me.

I disliked it from the get-go and over the  years I've come to loathe it. I never go there if I can avoid it. I played the story through, once, with gritted teeth. Never again.

That was PvE. PvP I didn't follow. No-one ever seems happy with PvP, though.

WvW fell deeper into despond. PoF elite specs and mounts fractioned the playerbase. Populations dwindled. Servers "linked", which meant merged.

And yet, Path of Fire seems widely admired. It's generally considered a significant improvement over Heart of Thorns. Why? Beats the hell out of me.

And so we look ahead to the third expansion. You'd think, given the trajectory, I'd be pessimistic. The first one, that I liked, failed, relatively speaking. The second one, that I hated, succeeded, relatively speaking.

And if PoF was bad for me, the live content that came after was even worse. The nadir of the game so far.

Only, things have changed. At ANet, things are always changing. Somehow they turn stasis into churn, constantly thrashing yet never seeming to move forward.

A lot of people have left the company since Path of Fire. Not co-incidentally, I'm sure, a year ago, things began to turn. From the start of the Icebrood Saga there seemed to be a new attitude. Someone seemed to want things to be fun again.

And they have been. Mostly. Even when they haven't been fun for me I could see how they would be, if I was still as invested in the game as I once was.

So, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm hoping that End of Dragons navigates a path between pandering to the hardcore and pacifying the casuals. Evidence suggests that can happen.

Also, expansions need Must-Have Features and the features have to be something that can be monetized. HoT had gliding. PoF had mounts. I loved the first, loathed the second.

What will it be next? Could it be housing? I doubt it. I'll be happy just so it's something that gets ANet off of mounts for a while. God, I hate mounts in this game.

As for the story, well, End of Dragons. You'd think that says it all. And it would be neat. That would make a ten-year arc, near enough,  the supposed expected lifetime of the game. I know we don't talk about Guild Wars 3 but this is looking suspiciously like the end of an era.

And now, of course, we wait. Heart of thorns had a long build up. This is going to be longer still. Maybe. Depends just when in 2021 the train arrives.

I'm sure plenty of people are speculating already. I'll pass on that. I don't care enough about the story or the game any more to spend energy guessing. It'll be here when it gets here and that'll be soon enough.

It's nice to know it's coming, at least.