A couple of weekends ago at PAX East 2015, I had a private demo and interview for the recently announced Guild Wars 2 expansion, Heart of Thorns. What I saw and what the developers told me about the expansion is the focus of this month’s MMO Co-Opportunities: a GW2: Heart of Thorns Preview, if you will.
The demo took place at the Westin hotel located next to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. It was nice to get away from the pressing chaos of the convention center and be able to talk at a reasonable volume. I was shown the demo that ArenaNet had on the expo floor while being given some insight into the development of the expansion. Two developers were in attendance: Izzy Cartwright and Colin Johanson. Izzy did most of the talking while Colin was at the computer running the demo.
I spent quite some time with GW2 in beta and several months after launch, but it’s been a fair amount of time since I’ve devoted time to it exclusively; however, I’ve casually read about the Living Story installments (Season 2 recently wrapped up), so I feel like I’m reasonably in the loop. Heart of Thorns picks up where the Living Story has left off. Player characters are venturing deep into the Maguuma Jungle in a fleet of airships. The expansion opens up with the pact fleet meeting a disaster in the sky and players crash-landing right into the jungle. To make matters worse, many Sylvari NPCs have turned against the alliance for an unknown reason. Players will have to salvage the situation and pull the survivors of the pact back together again.
There will be different options to pursue for players that will affect later parts of the story. Players will also get different voice overs based on past choices made in the Living Story and their race or class. ArenaNet has also put a great emphasis on having the story and open world flow more smoothly into each other. When a story mission ends and players re-enter the open world, they should feel like what’s happening in the world around them makes sense based on the events that just happened in their story mission. The Maguuma Jungle itself makes a lot of use of vertical space. The map is divided into three layers: the jungle floor, the sky, and the roots. Players will be bouncing between all three of these layers for both the story and the open world content. Of course, both story missions and open world content are equally accomplishable either solo or grouped in a party.
One of the most exciting reveals about Heart of Thorns is of course the new profession. The Revenant channels spirits from the Mists to harness a unique playstyle. These spirits, known as Legends, have completely separate skill bars, which means that Revenants will have 20 skills at their disposal instead of 10 (10 in each Legend stance). The two Legends that are currently announced are Jalis (Dwarf) and Malyx (Demon). Jalis is a durable and tanky Legend while Malyx focuses a bit more on damage via condition spreading. Revenants will also have to manage energy, a new resource to the game. Izzy said it was a bit reminiscent of maintained enchantments from GW1. As far as party play goes, the devs assured me that there are many ways for revenants to help out their parties. The Jalis Legend, for example, has Rite of the Great Dwarf, a stone form that can be activated to give five allies damage reduction.
If the theme of Heart of Thorns were to be summed up in one word, that word would be “progression,” Izzy told me. On the character development side of things, progression comes in the form of the Mastery and Specialization systems. Masteries will give players more to do in PVE, while respecting what players have already accomplished in the core game and not invalidating things they’ve done in the past. So instead of creating a new gear grind or increasing the level cap, for example, Masteries provide players with accessibility options that will open up the world (kind of like a Zelda game). Masteries are account-based and will unlock abilities such as glider-riding or mushroom-jumping reach areas unable to be accessed without them. Mastery points will often only be available by doing difficult or tricky stuff, however - like completing achievements or finding a secret location. Specializations will offer players different ways to play their existing characters. While not much has been revealed about specializations, what we do know is that they’ll unlock new weapon choices and skills for professions, which should offer a whole lot of new and exciting comboing, both within a character and between characters.
There’s a whole lot more that is being added or changed in the expansion, both in PVE (e.g. outposts, adventures, guild halls, and an overhauled boss defiance system) and PVP (e.g. new Stronghold mode and a new WvW Borderland). I’m sure I’ll be highlighting more of the PVE content in the future as more information is announced.
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will expand the base game of Guild Wars 2. Players will need to have a copy of GW2 to play. The release date is currently unannounced.