The Future of Guild Wars 2

Living World Season 5 is coming in 2019, the year when we should be expecting the next expansion. What does it mean to GW2?

Season 4 will have, as many speculate, 6 episodes, so knowing that they have 2-3,5 months release cadence, Season 4 will end somewhere in April- before or after SAB.

So we know Episodes for Season 5 are in process, so we can still expect 2-3 months cadence after the Finale of Season 4.

So the next Season will start in July- before or after the Festival of 4 Winds.

So expansion will not be released this year, it won't be released 2 years after PoF as we could have expected.

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

Seasons are way better, give them more money, and it is something what makes this game special.

If they plan the next expansion it will mean its the last big thing we will ever see from GW2.

Seeing how the XXI children and people in general go play PS4 and mobile games all the time, and play shooters that looks to me like some games for brainless- Fortnite or seeing that Minecraft is still popular, and its just piece of junk, I am not surprised Blizzard wants to move on, because even WoW has some turbulent times, and this game is just massive, how will Arenanet survive this MMO crisis?

First of all they need to do what they do best- release the Episodes. Second thing- they need to respect the money. Third thing- the expansion cannot be released ever again- its to big investment in those turbulent times.

Season 4, then 5 and then 6 etc.

They need to be working on the next gen of MMO and its time to stop making some WoW copies, as GW 1 and 2 have been.

Guild Wars 3- that is the future, because Arenanet as any other company has the potential to lead the world to the new generation of MMO with its huge experience.

WoW will stay like that forever, it will be strong and will stay the best MMO in the next many of years.

I think that is a sad perspective, but the world goes on, PS4 devs have much more options that are brand new- just play Horizon Zero Dawn- it's so beatiful and on the highest level of design- that is the future.

So if I could pick a company that can lead the MMO genre to something new with an already established lore, that company is called Arenanet.

This didn't need it's own thread.

Sigh, yet another thread on this - I swear we get one a week now. We do not need a GW3. GW2 has a long, long life in it and plenty of untapped stories to tell. It is established, it is popular and it is successful. There is no need or business requirement to make such a risky venture as GW3 this early into GW2's life.

Also, GW1 was never a WoW copy. Games like WoW and Lotro copied a great deal of what GW1 did on the other hand. I also see a lot of games try and copy GW2 with it's "living world", it's dynamic events and more involved jumping gameplay.

You state there is a crisis (which there isn't) and then expect them to make a new mmo altogether which is about as risky as it gets, espeically given the many years they'd have to put into it, all the while ignoring GW2 development and risk little money coming to finance their new project. GW as a franchise might have established lore (which it happily retcons and rewrites anyway), but it isn't a big enough or well established enough World in gaming compared to other franchises, so I really don't see how a GW3 would prove to be any bigger draw than GW2 currently is.

I have no idea who this Deroir is, but I think the financial reports showed PoF worked extremely well. It drew back a lot of people. Anet makes its success from strategically combining the two ideas of Seasons and expansions, which clearly works well enough for them. Putting GW2 down, to work on a new game seems like folly at this point.

I suggest people stop worrying about something which would be many years in the future and concern themselves with the here and now. The devs and the business people will take care of the rest

Every new episode of the living world is a grind fest for the newest, shiniest thing, like it or not. I hate that. The amount of time spend grinding depends on the type of content released as well as the gold you are willing to blow on it. Could be days, could be weeks. This is hardly the most exciting thing I can imagine to look forward to, but it might just be me.

The purpose of an expansion is to bring new content, to attract players with something different. However, arguably the best thing about xpacs in GW 2 are the new elite specs. Stuff like gliding and mounts are nice, but hardly gamebreaking. For me at least, this game suffers from serious balancing issues as well as lack of attention to certain game modes. There is no point of adding more content when some of the old one has not seen good changes in months or even years.

If the core gameplay is good, xpacs will sell themselves. If this isn't the case, however, making new content will be like building a house of cards. Eventually, everything will go down because the foundantions aren't solid.

Just my 2 cents.

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

Not everyone reads the things you read. Some sort of link to whoever this deroir and his point was would have been nice. Just putting out a statement and claiming he has “a good point” doesn’t help your argument if we don’t know what his point was.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

I'll be curious to see his reasoning on why GW2 expansions do not work because financially, they do.

@Arden.7480 said:I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.I don't think he has access to any data that would determine if that is true or not.

First, he'd need to know what ANet wants from an expansion:

• The revenue?
• The hype from traditional media sources? (Zines and sites and even bloggers ignore Living World and pay most of their attention to expansions.)
• The influx of fresh blood?
• The reinvigoration of veterans?
• A tool for introducing major new mechanics that can be used to hype the game in other arenas?
• As a disruption to the status quo?

And then we'd need to measure how well expansions serve those different goals and compare it to where those things would be using a different sort of business model.

tl;dr I don't think there's a single player who have an accurate sense of whether expansions work or not.

There's nothing magical about expansions in my opinion. I was happy when ANet tried to make a go of it without them. And yet I've also been pleased with how well the two expacs have worked. They got a lot of stuff wrong... and got much more right, in terms of my enjoyment, often in ways that I would not have predicted (including mounts, gliding, verticality, elite specializations, raids, etc).

It seems likely that if ANet upends the business model again, they'll get most of it right.

I just think it's kind of ...awkward to suggest that we can teach them how to make, market, and sell games.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

The name deroir is ringing a bell. I think it’s some YouTube guy, or something equivalent. No one with any real credentials other than having YouTube followers if it’s who I think it is.

I love people who actually believe GW3 will EVER be a thing.

Sure if you are absolutely out of touch with the gaming industry, the MMO market AND the actual cost of developing (and the risk associated with this task) a new MMO, then believing that GW3 will be possible is a thing. No one is working on MMOs any longer in the western market, at least no big developer. There are multiple reasons for this.

I'm going to repeat what I wrote the last time I read such a thread:Expansions draw attention and are good for encouraging players to return. Living World Episodes are not. You might not understand, but no one gives a flying F about Living World Episode XYZ outside of the GW2 community and active player base. Not even players who are taking a break. The only thing that makes news is expansions.

Now how many expansions and if we will see more than a 3rd one, that is a different issue. There is a limit to how many elite specializations can get added to this game.

Deroir is the guy Jessica Price went after on twitter, allegedly because he'd been disrespectful to her. (Google it for more details, don't read too much the press coverage ^^).He is also a content creator prevalent enough to have his legacy in game, There's an NPC wearing his name in the Fractals lobby.

Now, i'd like the source of his saying, too !

@"Deroir.4035" is known for his excellent tutorials on fractals, which are shared directly from from Discretize's website. In honor of his contributions, ANet named the Fractal Attunements NPC after him.

Let me disagree with you, slightly. Xpac did and do work. They do what they are supposed to do and expand the game. I still play on all HoT biomes and enjoy doing the PoF bounties. They also bought us gliding and mounts. The season episodes are just filler and most of those maps become distant memories. Granted most of this seasons maps were good. I really hate this GW3 talk simply for the fact they got lucky with GW2. Most sequel mmos fail. Examples are everquest and diablo. If anything they should revamp the engine and when the technology gets better then maybe they should consider a gw3 or another ip all together. Right now gw2 is great as it is and is aging quite nicely.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@"Deroir.4035" is known for his excellent tutorials on fractals, which are shared directly from from Discretize's website. In honor of his contributions, ANet named the Fractal Attunements NPC after him.

So he’s some guy who might have an opinion worth listening to if it’s about fractals. He’s still some YouTube guy with some followers when it comes to his opinion about expansions and gw3.

@Arden.7480 said:Living World Season 5 is coming in 2019, the year when we should be expecting the next expansion. What does it mean to GW2?

Season 4 will have, as many speculate, 6 episodes, so knowing that they have 2-3,5 months release cadence, Season 4 will end somewhere in April- before or after SAB.

So we know Episodes for Season 5 are in process, so we can still expect 2-3 months cadence after the Finale of Season 4.

So the next Season will start in July- before or after the Festival of 4 Winds.

So expansion will not be released this year, it won't be released 2 years after PoF as we could have expected.

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

Seasons are way better, give them more money, and it is something what makes this game special.

If they plan the next expansion it will mean its the last big thing we will ever see from GW2.

Seeing how the XXI children and people in general go play PS4 and mobile games all the time, and play shooters that looks to me like some games for brainless- Fortnite or seeing that Minecraft is still popular, and its just piece of junk, I am not surprised Blizzard wants to move on, because even WoW has some turbulent times, and this game is just massive, how will Arenanet survive this MMO crisis?

First of all they need to do what they do best- release the Episodes. Second thing- they need to respect the money. Third thing- the expansion cannot be released ever again- its to big investment in those turbulent times.

Season 4, then 5 and then 6 etc.

They need to be working on the next gen of MMO and its time to stop making some WoW copies, as GW 1 and 2 have been.

Guild Wars 3- that is the future, because Arenanet as any other company has the potential to lead the world to the new generation of MMO with its huge experience.

WoW will stay like that forever, it will be strong and will stay the best MMO in the next many of years.

I think that is a sad perspective, but the world goes on, PS4 devs have much more options that are brand new- just play Horizon Zero Dawn- it's so beatiful and on the highest level of design- that is the future.

So if I could pick a company that can lead the MMO genre to something new with an already established lore, that company is called Arenanet.

It wont anet is in a trap all their money comes from gw2 if gw2 dies so does anet

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

Also the guy that J.Price raged on, and got fired for. Not that he's at fault for that, but that's probably where you read his name from.

On the topic, i have a few things to say:1) I, for one, don't think the game needs an expansion right now, if anything 2020 would be the year for that, not 2019, although, Season 5 and expansion aren't mutually exclusive. I mean you can have 4 episodes of S5 + 1 out of S4 and still have 1-2 months in 2019 for the expansion to release. I mean, S5 can be as short as 3 episodes for all we know (i sure hope it is more like 10, but that's me).

2) Expansions do work, financially and in terms of publicity. Sure they bring a lot of problems also, one of them being the pushing of necessary additions to the expansion release, imo, Elites should have been released way more often to allow for a wider coverage of rolls for each profession, allowing the balance team a better leeway in terms of what they can change without making professions obsolete in the meta. (For example, if each profession had 3 elites, they could have at least one functioning support role per class, and when they have to fundamentally break things to balance it, it wouldn't leave the class in the dust, read what happened to Necros and Eles in the past).

3) What the game is lacking is what beetle races partially achieved: Updating old, especially core, areas to be in line mechanically, visually and in terms of content so as to keep the whole game fresh. They've done this partially in several occasions, but it was always a one-off thing without much purchase. Current events did this for a while, but then trailed off, the underwater changes also brought back some attention, but it wasn't expanded upon, the contest weapons also brought us back to core tyria, but again, for a couple days only, and now beetle races seem to be going in the right direction, but i'm afraid it'll stay there.

I'd say, right now, what the game needs way more than an expansion or new content is for them to fulfil their old promise of always keeping old content fresh and relevant, and give old players a reason to go back to old maps often and engage with the new ones more significantly. The world of Tyria is so vast, and yet they waste that variety and land by always focusing the living world and expansions fully on new maps, without going back to revisit the old maps, the plot points with characters we actually care about that were left hanging.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" I wouldn't say that verticality was unexpected, sure the scale at which it was implemented due to gliding was, but the concept of it and the way it was implemented for the areas below the canopy wasn't something we couldn't predict or a huge departure from what we'd seen in Season 2 with Dry Top, and the Labyrinthine Cliffs. So much so that the griffon and gliders felt right at home in that last map without major changes. Other from that point, and i'll concede this is a bit nitpicky (not trying to start a fight, just commenting on that part of your post), i completely agree with your points and opinions on this.

I'd say in HoT they made 4 big mistakes: The price; their model for PvP ranked seasons, and the later decision to forego team queues; the decision to only release one elite spec, and keep them as a expansion sell point; and the balance rotations. Otherwise what was not so great was eventually fixed, like the rewards, which are still eclipsing everything they released with PoF prior to LWS4.

With PoF they made several mistakes, and didn't correct them in PoF itself. The decision to go completely the opposite direction of HoT and not release any map-wide metas, the poor reward and extreme grindy costs of a lot of the stuff in PoF, all these are things that to this day are still broken points in the expansion.Sure they "knew" they were releasing a map-wide meta on the first story episode, but that is not only a poor excuse, it's like saying that anyone that bought PoF post episode 2's release has to pay extra to benefit for what they apparently chose to withhold from PoF.It's still completely ridiculous how much more expensive it is to buy an ascended trinket from a PoF heart vendor compared to season 3 ones:

2000 Unbound Magic + 100 Blood Rubies for a ring in Bloodstone Fen. Stat selectable and can be reset.vs1500 Trade Contracts + 15 Brandsparks + 10 Laurels for a fixed stat ring.

Without the Laurels, that would be kind of OK, but they had to add that, and it's not the only area where costs are just too high, making all the rewards from that area less appealing because of the high grind associated with them.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@"Deroir.4035" is known for his excellent tutorials on fractals, which are shared directly from from

Discretize's website

. In honor of his contributions, ANet named

the Fractal Attunements NPC

after him.

I didn't mean for my comment to do anything more than inform people about who Deroir was; he's just as qualified as anyone outside of ANet to offer an informed opinion about GW2's business model, which is to say... not very.

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

With all the respect, im a huge fan of deroir, have always been a huge fan of deroir long before hot.

Hes full of shit tho.

They work wonders for the game. Advertise it way more than anything else could and bring content and systems that ppl want to pay for. I dont buy gems often esp now since i play less of the game, i dont care for half the cosmetics and things in the gemstore.

But ive always bought the expansions and even the collector's edition of pof because i like the expansion content that much.

They havent shown me instances as superb and as amazing as the expansion ones(modermoth's mind, mouth of mordy arena/fight, the majority of pof story instances) by and large their lw zones pale in comparison to expansion zones.

We havent seen elite specs or as good masteries outside of expansions, content that ill pay for.

Plus, expansion budget is just bigger and allows them to go bigger. Hot maps set a bar for maps in games and mmos, Pof mounts have inovated the way mounts work in mmos and got their own r/games thread (Feat which i assume no lw update did)

The game works better with expansions every 2-3 years and lw between. Thats just my opinion tho if the lw updates came every 1 1/2 - 2 months in a world with no expansions and raids fractals also got added faster (2 or 3 raids a year 2-3 fractals a year) then maybe that would also be cool.

I dont think that would happen tho, what i think would happen would be anet upping their gemstore promotions and updates remain similar or never get delayed past the 3 months.

I really don't see a GW3 even started to be made (if it is) until at least 3 or 4 more GW2 expacs (Potentially a Cantha, Underwater, Primordus/Jormag, and possibly eastern Ascalon expacs at least) so I don't really get the hype for a GW3 at the moment.

GW2 Expansions and LW content seems to be doing fine to me atm with Anet experimenting with new concepts.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@"Deroir.4035" is known for his excellent tutorials on fractals, which are shared directly from from Discretize's website. In honor of his contributions, ANet named the Fractal Attunements NPC after him.

Also some of the best lore/speculation content in the scene. Rivaling or even better than wp.

@zealex.9410 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@"Deroir.4035" is known for his excellent tutorials on fractals, which are shared directly from from

Discretize's website

. In honor of his contributions, ANet named

the Fractal Attunements NPC

after him.

Oh? I managed to have missed that. I'll take a look (or a listen). Thanks for pointing it out.(If you have a favorite, please send me a PM with a link or a keyword to search for.)

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@"Deroir.4035" is known for his excellent tutorials on fractals, which are shared directly from from

Discretize's website

. In honor of his contributions, ANet named

the Fractal Attunements NPC

after him.

Search for his mindspike series.

I stopped and took more notice of seeing Aion 2 on a google search than I was looking at a thread wanting GW3. And make no mistake I have no interest in Aion now what so ever.
I really think If anet do another game they will branch out to something different. I couldn't do tyria again 250 years on again. (although ho hum, thinks, in the past maybe, before the charr screwed up old ascalon and we see birth of Rurik at some point)

Why can't we just enjoy the game as it is and not care about the future?If Anet will decide to make GW3 they'll let us know. I promise.

@"Arden.7480" said:Living World Season 5 is coming in 2019, the year when we should be expecting the next expansion. What does it mean to GW2?

Season 4 will have, as many speculate, 6 episodes, so knowing that they have 2-3,5 months release cadence, Season 4 will end somewhere in April- before or after SAB.

So we know Episodes for Season 5 are in process, so we can still expect 2-3 months cadence after the Finale of Season 4.

So the next Season will start in July- before or after the Festival of 4 Winds.

So expansion will not be released this year, it won't be released 2 years after PoF as we could have expected.

I think Deroir made a good point- the expansions in GW2 do not work.

Seasons are way better, give them more money, and it is something what makes this game special.

If they plan the next expansion it will mean its the last big thing we will ever see from GW2.

Seeing how the XXI children and people in general go play PS4 and mobile games all the time, and play shooters that looks to me like some games for brainless- Fortnite or seeing that Minecraft is still popular, and its just piece of junk, I am not surprised Blizzard wants to move on, because even WoW has some turbulent times, and this game is just massive, how will Arenanet survive this MMO crisis?

First of all they need to do what they do best- release the Episodes. Second thing- they need to respect the money. Third thing- the expansion cannot be released ever again- its to big investment in those turbulent times.

Season 4, then 5 and then 6 etc.

They need to be working on the next gen of MMO and its time to stop making some WoW copies, as GW 1 and 2 have been.

Guild Wars 3- that is the future, because Arenanet as any other company has the potential to lead the world to the new generation of MMO with its huge experience.

WoW will stay like that forever, it will be strong and will stay the best MMO in the next many of years.

I think that is a sad perspective, but the world goes on, PS4 devs have much more options that are brand new- just play Horizon Zero Dawn- it's so beatiful and on the highest level of design- that is the future.

So if I could pick a company that can lead the MMO genre to something new with an already established lore, that company is called Arenanet.

There seem to be a lot of assumptions in this post (these were assumptions I did not have, so feel free to disagree as they are only my expectations)...Why are we expecting the expansion in 2019? It was potentially going to be released then, but I don't recall ever hearing it would be....Are we certain Festival of the 4 Winds is returning? It wouldn't surprise me, but again I never saw anything official.Is 2 years an expectation for each expansion? Is that based on MMOs without episodic content, or with? I'm not certain where that comes from either...As many pointed out, who is Deroir (yes, I know who he is after reading the previous posts) and why should we believe he has insight into whether GW2 expansions work? Has he expressed this as an opinion and you agree with it (due to your respect)?Do we have evidence that Living World Episodes give ANet more money than expansions? If so, it would certainly defy all the evidence I've seen to the contrary...If another expansion is planned and released, why would this end GW2 (or be the last big thing, to use the OP's words)? If it was a financial success like PoF, why would they quit?

I'm not certain what to make of the next statement... it seems as if the OP does not like shooters, or feels Fortnite and Mincraft are of low quality, or maybe doesn't like that player base, or possible that FPS games are taking over the MMO market; this assumption would need some backing, as I've seen many vibrant MMO players bases in a variety of games and, while MMOs are not the juggernaut they were, they are still easily profitable.

A few other questions:When the OP states, "they need to respect the money", what does that mean? Is the call for ANet to only engage in activities that yield the highest net revenue? If so, working on another title would be very low on that list (as it assumes the greatest risk)If we agree that ANet has a large amount of experience with creating MMOs (or hybrids thereof), why should we question their business decisions?If the future is PS4 (which I do not agree with), shouldn't ANet start building for that system?

tl;dr The OP seems to assume a great deal regarding the desires and expectations of players as well as the intentions of ANet. I would like evidence to support the argument.

Never mind my first post.

GW2 stands stronger than ever before, I misinterpreted everything!

GW2 is so freaking healthy, and they likely just want to take their time with the next expansion to make it special.

It's future is very exciting. And if there will be GW3, it's so far away, that GW2 will have no 4th, but maybe even 5th expansion.

@"Kelian Ravenwood.4130" They did state that The Festival will be annual, when they announced it "this annual festival brings back popular summertime activities in both Divinity’s Reach and the Labyrinthine Cliffs."

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/festival-of-the-four-winds-begins-next-week/

Sorry for this irrevelant post, but if there are any plans for a next gen MMORPG game that can blow everyone's minds, it will be Guild Wars 3, because Arenanet is not afraid to take the risks, and I am happy they still can, because GW2's future is very interesting.

Can't wait for the next amazing stuff GW2 will offer.