Personal Housing, A New Raid, A New Weapon, and More: Janthir Wilds launches August 20! [Merged]

[Teknomancer.4895]

17 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I am not pre-ordering Janthir Wilds at this point

Not me either. They got me with SotO and I'm not falling for it again. Release the product first, then I'll purchase.

3 minutes ago, Snaid.9714 said:

Second this question. if it's not getting an update, will there be a way to teleport to the homestead?

I hope it just ends up being an added option for the "teleport to home" gemstore item.

1 hour ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

As a WvW main, wondering if the upcoming changes to Warclaw in WvW will require the purchase of the new expansion to utilize, or not?

I'm more interested in knowing whether it's finally going to be given more speed, or if it will still be the Warsloth.

[Luthan.5236]

Just got the ultimate edition. The gems arrived immediately. I like this new release cycle (yearly expansions) cause now I do not have to buy more gems - just getting the yearly ultimate. 😄I always see it as base edition + 4k gems and the deluxe stuff for free. Instead of deluxe +  discounted gems, but ...

the deluxe stuff actually is nice for once. Not just a skin or skins. Instead unlimited tools - can use them on my secondary char or on the main giving my other ones ot the alt. I think the first time I unlocked skins for gathering tools. (Only got on my main one the base ones without skin.)

The icon that only can be unlocked at the expansion's release (similar to the Skiff skin for EoD back then at preorder) mentions a recipe to craft more. I wonder ... will all of that stuff use the old core crafting professions? (Maybe artificer?) Or will it require scribe - or an own (not yet mentioned) crafting profession? But maybe it is just simple stuff like a station to make some furniture where you can input resources without actually a profession tied to it.

Edit: While we are at it - and since the housing instance is supposed to use the same resource nodes as our home instance: Can we finally get an indicator (red text saying you unlocked this or just the normal "unlocked" like with the skins) on the node icons (some are at the trading post and available for statuettes) ... to indicate the unlocked ones. I bet you can't just buy them again (wonder if there is a message when you double click an unlocked again. Never happened for me I was careful when getting all of those.) (I'd prefer if the  mail carriers and finishers in the statuette vendor also had the locked/unlocked indicator. Not sure if I have unlocked some of them and just no info there. Or if all are still locked since there is nothing additionally shown there.)

Edited June 4 by Luthan.5236

[Echostorm.9143]

I saw Legendary backpack and at first I thought, "YES!  finally legendary 32 slot bags for all my toons"  Then I realized it's probably like Ad Infini which is cool for people who don't dig fractals but now I'm a little sad.  It's my fault but maybe think about legendary bags too please.

[Wedge.2579]

I am SO stoked! Thanks for your intuitive and thoughtful insights to what we want as a community. Well done! Keep up the fantastic work!  ❤️❤️❤️ 

P.S. I can't WAIT!!!

[Wedge.2579]

Oh yeah, I already pre-ordered. Ultimate, as usual. Thanks again team, I love you all so much. You work so hard and I love your journey of growth, as we grow with you.

[Sindust.7059]

30 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

unlimited tools - can use them on my secondary char or on the main giving my other ones ot the alt

What glyphs do they come with?

[Luthan.5236]

Someon mentioned this already: They have no glyphs. Just the skin unlock + being unbreakable. Never really cared about glyphs though. I mainly gather for the daily gathering task (old EoD sometimes has this in the dailies - daily forager/miner and stuff. And some vault tasks maybe) + the home instance. Too lazy to stop in normal maps every time I see a node - when I actually want to play the game.

[Sindust.7059]

Just now, Luthan.5236 said:

Someon mentioned this already: They have no glyphs. Just the skin unlock + being unbreakable. Never really cared about glyphs though. I mainly gather for the daily gathering task (old EoD sometimes has this in the dailies - daily forager/miner and stuff. And some vault tasks maybe) + the home instance. Too lazy to stop in normal maps every time I see a node - when I actually want to play the game.

Thank you for the info.

I guess I'll be buying just the standard upgrade then.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Like we said in this morning's news post, we're going to have much more info coming about Janthir Wilds. I don't want to spoil all of that but I can give you a few quick answers to questions I've seen here and there:

• Your current home instances are not going away when Homesteads arrive on August 20.
• Homesteads will have a separate crafting profession from Guild Scribing. 
• We are not planning to add new strike missions in addition to the raid with Janthir Wilds.

 We have a lot more to share with you between now and Janthir Wilds launch. Stay tuned!

[Deihnyx.6318]

Now this is how you sell an expansion, with some new killer features.

This looks more promising to me than SotO, let's hope it delivers!

Also Polymock someday? Polymock ftw! It'd be so good to see it come back!

Edited June 4 by Deihnyx.6318

[Michael.9403]

1 hour ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I am not pre-ordering Janthir Wilds at this point, because:

Is there any deliverable now (extra character,  lever 80 gain token, etc ) for pre ordering now?  or is everything delivered Aug 20?

[Deihnyx.6318]

10 minutes ago, Michael.9403 said:

Is there any deliverable now (extra character,  lever 80 gain token, etc ) for pre ordering now?  or is everything delivered Aug 20?

I got pretty much all the bonus content right away (skins, gathering tools, shared inventory, gems)

[BrotherBelial.3094]

1 hour ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

My wife and I go out for a fast food meal and pay more than the cost of the expansion. Just sayin'.

Eh, now that I think about it, some of those fast food meals do have some "replay value!"

The cost is not the issue, it's the fact that the quality of the product has gone downhill, the fact we do not have a finished product, and have what was advertised and selling points at launch are issues. It took 6 months after launch to get an advertised feature, and a story so bad I can only remember 3 characters names and having to "kill ten rats" in between story steps to drag it out so you don't finish the incredibly short story in probably less than 2 hours.

[Super Hayes.6890]

The new war claw skin preview video had idle animations that very much reminded me of a horse. Are we getting horses via skins for the war claw with this expansion???

[Luthan.5236]

Some interesting points addressed by Ruby. I guess future releases might switch between strikes and raids for the content targeted at more than 5 people. (Or if this is liked by the community - the thing with open world possibilities to explore the raid story - just more like that.)

Looking forward to that separate crafting profession. (Probably also trying to make more people by the adtitional crafting licenses. I will just put it on my 5th char that also has the scribing profession. Everything split on different chars. 😄 Maybe we will get legendary furniture one day lol. :D)

I will save my gems from the Ultimate purchase for at least until about 3-4 weeks before release. Might be a weekly supply drop package coming in again. (Though there surely will be no early info. To have people speculate and to sell more gems. More people would save - and buy less - if they knew for sure + even the content.) SotO and EoD had one. (We still miss a SotO requisitioner board for the black lion post. With the things from the SotO maps mostly tied to the legendary maps this seems unlikely and might be less worthwile though.)

@Michael.9403I think the only thing not usable yet is the Homestead furniture thing. (You get a token to unlock that one at release. The item just says it doe snot work yet. Similar to the skiff skin at EoD preorder.) All other stuff delivered already. Including Ultimate gems.

Edit: Btw: Tengu, Largos and Kodan have been requested frequently as playable races. Pretty much safe that there won't ever by any other playable races. But EoD had Kestrel (Tengu), now the Kodan get focus here. I think we still can hope for underwater combat + the Largos in one of the future expansions. 😄 (Maybe then with land weapons allowed underwater lol.)

Edited June 4 by Luthan.5236

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

35 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Like we said in this morning's news post, we're going to have much more info coming about Janthir Wilds. I don't want to spoil all of that but I can give you a few quick answers to questions I've seen here and there:

• Your current home instances are not going away when Homesteads arrive on August 20.
• Homesteads will have a separate crafting profession from Guild Scribing. 
• We are not planning to add new strike missions in addition to the raid with Janthir Wilds.

 We have a lot more to share with you between now and Janthir Wilds launch. Stay tuned!

Not wanting to be negative, however, I can't help but feel like there is a need to point something out for clarification. Doesn't the overlap of home instances, guild halls, and the new Homestead - as well as guild scribing and this new crafting profession - blatantly contradict the blog post from last week which stated:

Features

MMOs are made up of numerous gameplay systems and content types, each with a different role to play in the game experience. As games go on, they tend to accumulate more and more systems and features from expansions and the like, which…is fine…if there’s effort put into maintaining and updating those systems. Looking back over the game’s history, I think this maintenance and upkeep is one of the areas where we’ve fallen short, at times even falling into the trap of releasing new features for the sake of releasing new features even if they overlap with something that already exists. This is something we’ve been referring to internally as “putting a hat on a hat.”

Over the last two years, we’ve put much more of a focus on upkeep and iteration of systems and avoiding unnecessary bloat where possible. We put more of a focus on maintaining live game systems, and with SotO we even went to the extent of entirely reworking existing features to make room for more modernized solutions. The Wizard’s Vault is a good example of this strategy working out well for us, and you can expect to see a new system being introduced in expansion 5 that adds a meaningful new way to spend your time in Guild Wars 2 while using this as an opportunity to greatly improve the player experience with related, existing game systems.

Overall, we were a bit conservative with features in Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure—trying to strike the right balance between scope, schedule, and risk while navigating a new content structure. We’ve ironed out a lot of the kinks here, and it’s allowed us to be a bit more ambitious with our next expansion. Next week can’t come soon enough!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/secrets-of-the-obscure-looking-back-and-forward/

If you ask me, having a personal instance you can invite friends to, that you can decorate, with the personal unlockable gathering nodes in it, sounds like a redundancy - an unnecessary bloat if you will - with the home instance, which is a personal instance you can invite friends to, with personal unlockable gathering nodes and NPCs in it. It also feels like a redundancy with guild halls, an instance you share with your friends, that you can decorate, with (different) unlockable gathering nodes.

Unless I am missing something - feel free to elaborate (or tell me an elaboration is coming in the following weeks as more details are revealed) that this homstead system is a blatant disregard to the "lessen learned" brought up just last week, that just last week suggested the new expansion (Janthir Wilds) would "iron out a lot of the kinks" of.

[Gilosean.3805]

45 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Like we said in this morning's news post, we're going to have much more info coming about Janthir Wilds. I don't want to spoil all of that but I can give you a few quick answers to questions I've seen here and there:

• Your current home instances are not going away when Homesteads arrive on August 20.
• Homesteads will have a separate crafting profession from Guild Scribing. 
• We are not planning to add new strike missions in addition to the raid with Janthir Wilds.

 We have a lot more to share with you between now and Janthir Wilds launch. Stay tuned!

It's a little bit too bad that the home instances are being abandoned instead of reworked for the new system. I can understand not having the dev time to spend on upgrading or integrating the older work, but the game really needs fewer odd legacy systems hanging around.

But my most important question - can we add pets to the homestead like we can to the home instance? Display areas for minis, maybe?

[Cernoch.8524]

8 minutes ago, Gilosean.3805 said:

It's a little bit too bad that the home instances are being abandoned instead of reworked for the new system. I can understand not having the dev time to spend on upgrading or integrating the older work, but the game really needs fewer odd legacy systems hanging around.

But my most important question - can we add pets to the homestead like we can to the home instance? Display areas for minis, maybe?

It is just like with dungeons. Making new system (strikes/fractals) and abandoning existing and well working system (dungeons). 

[Cernoch.8524]

I would like to see all of my existing characters in the new housing system at the same time, in barracks or just walking/standing arround. I know 74 or whatever is the limit atm is a bit too many but it would be cool. Or let us pick one for some posts arround the area, guarding, crafting, planting crops....that is how housing works afterall.

[DeanBB.4268]

13 minutes ago, Gilosean.3805 said:

It's a little bit too bad that the home instances are being abandoned instead of reworked for the new system. I can understand not having the dev time to spend on upgrading or integrating the older work, but the game really needs fewer odd legacy systems hanging around.

This is an expansion feature, so they would want it separated from the old stuff. And maybe they want to sell more options in the gem store than just the old home instances: deserted island, snowy mountain resort, SAB glitched home, whatever.

[Maximillion.3425]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Like we said in this morning's news post, we're going to have much more info coming about Janthir Wilds. I don't want to spoil all of that but I can give you a few quick answers to questions I've seen here and there:

• Your current home instances are not going away when Homesteads arrive on August 20.
• Homesteads will have a separate crafting profession from Guild Scribing. 
• We are not planning to add new strike missions in addition to the raid with Janthir Wilds.

 We have a lot more to share with you between now and Janthir Wilds launch. Stay tuned!

Wait - so no Story-Strike Missions?
I don't know what to think of it. On one side I'm disappointed that's "just" the Raid. On the other side, I'm happy that we get 3(+1) end-game encounters instead of 2(+1). I'd be fine if they ditch Housing, so we get 2 Story-Strikes, 1 Raid and 1 Fractal. But on the other side Housing might help anet to get more money in, so maybe in exp6 we get story-strikes+raid+fractal.

Edited June 4 by Maximillion.3425

[Cronos.6532]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Like we said in this morning's news post, we're going to have much more info coming about Janthir Wilds. I don't want to spoil all of that but I can give you a few quick answers to questions I've seen here and there:

• Your current home instances are not going away when Homesteads arrive on August 20.
• Homesteads will have a separate crafting profession from Guild Scribing. 
• We are not planning to add new strike missions in addition to the raid with Janthir Wilds.

 We have a lot more to share with you between now and Janthir Wilds launch. Stay tuned!

Please increase the number of additional crafting licenses so characters can have all crafting disciplines active on one character!

Each one is 800 gems, so I'd love to spend more money!

Edited June 4 by Cronos.6532

[Cronospere.8143]

46 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Not wanting to be negative, however, I can't help but feel like there is a need to point something out for clarification. Doesn't the overlap of home instances, guild halls, and the new Homestead - as well as guild scribing and this new crafting profession - blatantly contradict the blog post from last week which stated:

Features

MMOs are made up of numerous gameplay systems and content types, each with a different role to play in the game experience. As games go on, they tend to accumulate more and more systems and features from expansions and the like, which…is fine…if there’s effort put into maintaining and updating those systems. Looking back over the game’s history, I think this maintenance and upkeep is one of the areas where we’ve fallen short, at times even falling into the trap of releasing new features for the sake of releasing new features even if they overlap with something that already exists. This is something we’ve been referring to internally as “putting a hat on a hat.”

Over the last two years, we’ve put much more of a focus on upkeep and iteration of systems and avoiding unnecessary bloat where possible. We put more of a focus on maintaining live game systems, and with SotO we even went to the extent of entirely reworking existing features to make room for more modernized solutions. The Wizard’s Vault is a good example of this strategy working out well for us, and you can expect to see a new system being introduced in expansion 5 that adds a meaningful new way to spend your time in Guild Wars 2 while using this as an opportunity to greatly improve the player experience with related, existing game systems.

Overall, we were a bit conservative with features in Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure—trying to strike the right balance between scope, schedule, and risk while navigating a new content structure. We’ve ironed out a lot of the kinks here, and it’s allowed us to be a bit more ambitious with our next expansion. Next week can’t come soon enough!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/secrets-of-the-obscure-looking-back-and-forward/

If you ask me, having a personal instance you can invite friends to, that you can decorate, with the personal unlockable gathering nodes in it, sounds like a redundancy - an unnecessary bloat if you will - with the home instance, which is a personal instance you can invite friends to, with personal unlockable gathering nodes and NPCs in it. It also feels like a redundancy with guild halls, an instance you share with your friends, that you can decorate, with (different) unlockable gathering nodes.

Unless I am missing something - feel free to elaborate (or tell me an elaboration is coming in the following weeks as more details are revealed) that this homstead system is a blatant disregard to the "lessen learned" brought up just last week, that just last week suggested the new expansion (Janthir Wilds) would "iron out a lot of the kinks" of.

I full on agree here. 

Building a new crafting profession which (for now) looks like it will do the same as scribing, seems a big waste of resources for me. And also an opportunity missed to develop an existing discipline. 

Must be because of the way how a "guild" scribe works. 

[RedNuii.5680]

4 hours ago, Ixxio.3708 said:

Little bit saddened, I kind of like my city living with my garden plot etc.  I guess like a true Hero I will adapt.  However I am happy I kept telling everyone to get their War Claw.

Pretty sure you will need to do a collection to use the war claw in pve. I saw some pictures of a baby war claw so it looks like it’ll be like when we raised the little beetle or turtle to become the mount

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

31 minutes ago, Maximillion.3425 said:

I'd be fine if they ditch Housing,

I can confirm that we are not gonna be doing that. 😛