Details on dungeons were also announced at the end of June. If you played the only true GW1 expansion, Eye of the North, you’ll already know that there’s a difference between “dungeons” and “missions.” Dungeons in GW1 were for max level players and often involved more teamwork and skill than the regular story missions. They also rewarded loot for all players upon completion. In this vein, GW2 dungeons are group activities that are much more dangerous than the normal GW2 fare. Dungeons may be a misleading term, as some of the GW2 dungeons are not underground. Currently, there are 8 dungeons planned for GW2, the first being available at level 35. When you first go and do a dungeon, it’s only available in story mode. These story modes focus on the heroes of the former Destiny’s Edge, one of whom is your character’s mentor. The overall story theme of the dungeons is to explore the feud between these heroes and to reunite them, a metaphor for uniting all the races to combat the Elder Dragons which are destroying the world.
After you complete the story mode of a dungeon, the exploration mode for the dungeon is unlocked, which is supposed to be the area after the events of the story mode. These exploration versions have multiple options (usually three) which in turn create different challenges and goals for the dungeon. So eight dungeons actually turns into 32 or so dungeons (as each dungeon has a story mode and three different exploration modes). So what’s the incentive for doing these dungeons? Why, the loot of course! Each dungeon has dungeon-specific weapons and armor pieces which are aesthetically tied to that dungeon. So players can complete a dungeon multiple times and get multiple pieces of loot! Check out the pretty sweet intro video to one of the dungeons, the Ascalonian Catacombs, below!
What major game updates has your chosen MMO experienced in the past month? Or are you currently trying out an MMO and want to share your impressions? Let us know!