Marionette Strings Are Dangerous Things

The final episode of the Icebrood Saga just dropped and along with it a whole raft of information about what ArenaNet hope will keep us all busy this summer as we wait for the third expansion, End of Dragons. There's going to be a livestream on July 27 that should (finally) fill in a lot of the missing details about what's actually included in EoD. From the timing, and the mention of an "elite specialization beta event" I would surmise a late summer/early fall launch.

I'll get to all of that (and there's a lot of it) in due course. Not in this post. The reason I wanted to pop something up immediately is this totally unexpected bombshell:

July 13—The Twisted Marionette

Living World Season 1 set Guild Wars 2‘s story in motion, ending with the city of Lion’s Arch in flames and Mordremoth’s awakening. Scarlet Briar left the ruins of her corrupted genius strewn across Tyria, from the broken Tower of Nightmares in Kessex Hills to The Breachmaker’s wreckage in Sanctum Harbor.

Shortly before she launched her war on Lion’s Arch, Scarlet used Lornar’s Pass as a testing ground for her colossal watchwork superweapon, the Twisted Marionette. An army of heroes organized a three-pronged assault strategy, destroying Scarlet’s forces, surviving the Marionette’s attacks, and severing the chains tethering it to The Breachmaker.

Until now, the Marionette has lain scrapped in False River Valley. But on July 13, one of the most memorable battles of Living World Season 1 will return to Guild Wars 2 as a bonus event. We’ve preserved the flow of this highly requested encounter, with some adjustments to bring it up to our current design standards.

In my opinion, the Marionette fight was the single best set-piece event Guild Wars 2 ever had. I did it many times and I'd almost certainly still be doing it occasionally even now, if they'd only left it in the game. 

I really never thought they'd bring it back, not after all this time, but they're going to do it. Better very, very late than never. I will most definitely be there.

I just hope the "adjustments" don't ruin it. If "current design standards" are superior to the ones that operated back when the fight was current content I confess I can't quite see it. Even if they mess it up, though, it'll probably still be better than just about everything they've done since.

That's all I wanted to say. For now.