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Expansion: Title name? And release date guesses?


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@Zaoda.1653 said:

@"Theros.1390" said:Who knows, maybe the guy who did
is a medium :o

Wow, that looks really awesome. From the GW2 logo, to the elite spec icons. Whoever made it did a great job. I can definitely see Anet increasing the amount of underwater content in the next expansion. I don't know why but I just have a gut feeling there's going to be some more underwater content, weapons, etc. - it's a shame it's a fan-made concept, because the website was done very well, even looks legitimate!

Great ideas and guesses guys, keep em coming. I agree that 2020 would probably be too early, especially with all the lockdown stuff. It's more likely to be 2021 or 2022 at this rate. One can still hope for a late 2020 release though :P

Yea I like this as well.

As for the date, I think September 2021 or early 2022 is more likely for the release date. As I believe the saga will finish next summer(with there being epilogue/prologue).

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Maybe next year in Q1, if later the announce doesn't make any sense... let's see another saga episode and may and epilogue episode means 6 months covered with 3 festivals left 4 if you count lunar means another 3 months covered meaning I see the expansion coming after 9 months starting now .... end of February-March 2021. And if you are asking if is possible to do an expansion in 9 months ?? If Anet need an expansion will do it ....

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@Cobra.6509 said:Maybe next year in Q1, if later the announce doesn't make any sense...

Appeasing (or at least silencing) the crowds crying for Cantha and another expansion makes no sense for you?

let's see another saga episode and may and epilogue episodeWe only have three episodes so far, as the Prologue and Forging steel don't count.It's safe to assume there will be three more episodes and maybe an epilogue.

Assuming we get one episode every three to four months, that'd be at least nine to twelve months covered.If we get an epilogue, it might be in late 2021.

end of February-March 2021.I think 2022 is far more likely than anytime 2021.Since most developers still are busy in season five, there is hardly anyone working on the expansion.I doubt they even have a finished concept for the story.

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@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:So, out of 280 'devs', there's not enough for the Living World Teams and an expansion team?Could be, I guess.

Correction: They have (probably, we don't know for sure) around 260 to 280 employees now. I'd say that the number of devs would likely be no more than half to two thirds of that. Which is significantly below the PoF development cycle numbers (remember, when they were working on PoF, the employee numbers were around 400).

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Looking back at the previous expansion names, we have Heart of Thorns, and Path of Fire. Both titles refer to the main antagonist and are also tied to lore (HoT = the giant tree where Mordremoth's physical body/avatar can be found in as well as metaphorically the darkness that infects the Dream and Nightmare to sway sylvari, PoF = Balthazar's campaign to reach his goals while leaving misery in his wake as well as the Dragonbrand left behind by Kralkatorrik breathing fire to corrupt land throughout the desert).

As such, one potentially interesting title for expansion 3 could be "Age of the Dragon" even if it sounds a bit similar to the Dragon Age game series. My reasoning for this title is as follows:

1) Age of the Dragon is an actual age described in the Canthan calendar. It was initially named so because astrologers, emboldened by the empire's diplomatic successes and growing wealth at the time, joyously predicted a would-be prosperous future for the empire until Shiro and the Jade Wind messed things up.

2) Among the Celestials, the Dragon is said to be a reminder of atrocity, pain, and anguish and linked to an empress named Tahmu. There are some intriguing parallels between this description and the Elder Dragons' cycle, and Elder Dragons' rises are even said to lead to changes in the constellation and new stars being born as shown by jotun discoveries.

3) The ruling nation in Cantha is called the Empire of the Dragon which will likely, in part, play a somewhat antagonistic role at least in some parts of the expansion while also being a descriptive name for the setting the story takes place in based on the Shing Jea hints in the first teaser image and its filename. The Empire may attempt to pursue the Age of the Dragon where Cantha will reign supreme, maybe even involving the intelligent and speaking saltspray dragons who have great powers (e.g. Albax having the magical ability to grant mortals good or bad luck) and whom the Emperor, Empress and/or the Ministry of Purity may try to enslave to gain their magic.

4) The expansion will likely involve one of the Elder Dragons. Age of the Dragon could thus have another meaning: not only would it describe the setting and the potentially antagonistic empire that we'll be facing, but it could also point to the overarching menace of the Elder Dragon in this plot even if said dragon was more in the background like Kralkatorrik was during PoF before becoming the main villain who replaces or overwhelms the more humanoid villains in case it attempts a genuine takeover of the continent.

5) If we end up pursuing Glint and the Forgotten's suggestion to find multiple benevolent replacements for the Elder Dragons to keep the All's Antikytheria mechanism in balance as per the Glint's Legacy plan, the title could also refer to a hunt for these replacements, possibly tying in the fate of the saltspray dragons such as Albax, Kuunavang and Shiny and if they are worthy or capable enough to become such replacements.

This way the title would both describe the setting and name the antagonist(s) (dragon and mortal alike) and their ambitions while also teasing a more hopeful outcome depending on what roles Aurene and the saltspray dragons play in the narrative. They could even go with something like "End of Dragons" if they wanted to emphasize the end of an era with the replacements, Empire of the Dragon, and the dragon antagonist in mind as discussed above.

As for the potential release date, ANet has shown that their development cycle for both HoT and PoF was too fast as both could've been expanded significantly with more content and some more polish. For some reason PoF even went through extensive rewrites based on dev comments (e.g. Kormir already had some alternate recorded lines, one of which is heard in S4Ep1 Daybreak trailer, that ended up on the cutting room floor in the final game), which may have contributed to some of the rushed aspects of the story like us speeding through the Desolation in the narrative. As such, I hope they'll use at least 2-3 years for developing the expansion so they can truly deliver a content-rich expansion with a longer story and a healthy balance of meta-driven and exploration-oriented zones with replayability. Taking their time with polishing the expansion would also allow the Icebrood Saga some room to breathe and extend its somewhat rushed narrative as they'd get more episodes to play with until the expansion is getting ready to launch. Whether the developers are extended such courtesy from NCSoft will be interesting to find out, but I feel that the company should take their time with developing the expansion while learning what worked and didn't work with the approaches taken with the previous expansions. :)

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@Strider Pj.2193 said:I think you all just got Allianced.

soon

seriously though, anet said news in the first quarter of this year on Alliances and still nothing. It's beyond a meme at this point, almost 30months from said announcement, and the sad part is that wont fix wvw. we need reason to place first, second, third; a reason to want to be in tier one; a reason to want to take and defend stuff. there are zero reasons right now for any of that. I love the game mode, but thinking about it just makes me sad to the state it's gotten. oh and ofc fix the kitten server issues. (and start actually banning the cheaters)..................back on topic - a good name QUEST - Quaggan Alliance! Enemies of Tengu

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I don't think that it will be called Factions...But who knows?...and here are my thoughts:Because apparently it will be all about the emperor, and perhaps the Tengu trying to get back to cantha.I reckon that a war will break between them.In the midst of all this, a dragon emerges... so on so forth.Taking that into prespective, a good name for it might be..."The war for cantha""Conflict: Canthan Storm"Or something a bit more original but still relevant..."Bloody Lotus"Or something of that nature.

PS.Factions Redux.Lol joke.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@voidek.5738 said:Last two was in autumn, next gonna be in spring hopefully..Core was around the same timeframe as well. I guess it's not accidental, but there are some marketing reasons for autumn releases. So, i'd expect this one to also be somewhere around late Q3/early Q4.

Many companies in the US begin their fiscal year in the fall. That might be why.

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Title:Celestial TideDawn of the EmpireWinds of ChangeWings of FreedomFrom the AshesRising from Ashes...etc.

But as someone said here, pretty sure ANet will come up with something much better xD

As for release date, definitely late 2021 or early 2022 (hopefully!)

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Tides of Darkness/Winds of Change. Any sooner than next summer is a pipe dream. They still have half this saga to go, three festivals, visions of the past that can be introduced to extend the saga, the legendary armory and seemingly bi-yearly balance patches and occasional qol patches. I would be surprised to see the expansion before next fall at the earliest.

Given the current cadence and the guess that there are 4-5 new maps with maps being split and falling in between festivals.

Drizzlewood 2.0 - later this month.Festival.Fractal in september.Halloween in October.Vision of the past or MAYBE episode in November.Festival.Second half of episode or first half of episode in January.Festival.It’s February and we may or may not be at episode 5.Leaving 3-4 more episodes and the start of a new cycle of festivals.

2 months on average between map releases.

Yeah, I don’t feel like doing the math but assuming 3-4 episodes are left you’re looking at 6 to 8 months and it seems we aren’t getting one in September so it’s probably another year or more left of this saga, best case.

They’re probably aiming for next fall but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come at the end of 2021.

We may get some teasers here and there before the end of the year though.

As to the team size, we only know what they tell us and I believe they told us that team size before the Icebrood announcement. They’ve undoubtedly restructured again since then and likely moved more people over to the expansion. It does seem like a last ditch effort to appease the community so it wouldn’t surprise me to see them shuffling the majority of resources to its development.

Which is probably the best decision.

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