The wait is over—Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds is live!

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

With this expansion, each of the nine professions can now wield an enhanced set of spear weapon skills, helping you to conquer new challenges on land. Plus, our updated warclaw mount is your perfect companion for those especially tough trials ahead.

Want to learn more about today's update and the future of Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds? Check out our blog, where we dive into more information about the content, features, and roadmap for the expansion. 

 

[Ashantara.8731]

tl;dr: I am enjoying myself so far, am pleasantly surprised about the love for detail in both, writing and design, and will eagerly start exploring the map(s) tomorrow.

Cheers! 🙂 

 

[Blur.3465]

I am absolutely blown away. THIS is the Guild Wars I love! \o/
The music, the aesthetics, the vibe -- it feels amazing!

Thank you ANet!!!

I am right at the start, exploring the new map and just taking it real slow. 

[Albione.3894]

Any chance the sunspear staff skin could be unlocked for actual spears please.

[Luthan.5236]

I kinda thought of Elrond's council (from Lord of the Rings) when I saw the village and the other elders (with the achievement to talk to them) lol. The patch notes have some other nice stuff - like changes to the essence prices in the Gharr Leadclaw vendor. (Cheaper now.)

Played prologue and chapter 1 (a bit lengthy) - going to explore more in the next days. Twitch is running muted - to finish the drops lol. Some kind of stuff seemed interesting. In the masteries (bonus for your other mounts for the stamina/endurance regen). The jumping while mid-air. (Is it like Jackal dash but vertical maybe lol.) Probably will be utilized in some adventures. (I saw Warclaw adventure icons/achievements. And renown hearts in the UI.)

Will need some time to explore more and check which other new materials got released. (Have not checked the storage for new slots.) Main currency seems to be only one (besides the coins) in the wallet.

[Randulf.7614]

A return to the beautiful map building and design of old. My only minor niggle is that the warclaw animations feel like it's on superspeed and it's a bit jarring. And the tooltip spam is still there.

But that is my only gripe. I shall be in this first map for a while before moving on I think. So much ambience and a nice slow pace, with plenty to do and explore.

(will prob avoid the forum for a bit due to spoilers, but wanted to leave early feedback)

[DaZeeHero.5210]

My major "niggle" is that the game is nearly unplayable with frequent bursts of 12 second delay lag or worse.

[Smurfiness.3714]

3 hours ago, DaZeeHero.5210 said:

My major "niggle" is that the game is nearly unplayable with frequent bursts of 12 second delay lag or worse.

No lag where I am and I'm in China.

[Smurfiness.3714]

It's a great expansion. No hostile one-shot-kill-me mobs! Lots of achievements with Mastery Points as rewards. 

[anninke.7469]

4 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

A return to the beautiful map building and design of old. My only minor niggle is that the warclaw animations feel like it's on superspeed and it's a bit jarring. And the tooltip spam is still there.

But that is my only gripe. I shall be in this first map for a while before moving on I think. So much ambience and a nice slow pace, with plenty to do and explore.

(will prob avoid the forum for a bit due to spoilers, but wanted to leave early feedback)

So it's not only me finding the warclaw movement a bit weird!

Otherwise I'm happy and having heaps of fun and I love the new stuff so far 😊

[Aecho.5491]

I'm sort of not liking this at all. 

The maps/environments are lovely and a nice throw-back to classic original Guild Wars, but the storyline is AWFUL and the way things function is so clunky. And locking Homesteads behind storyline (that is bug ridden and doesn't even work) is infuriating.

Edited August 21 by Aecho.5491

[Ashantara.8731]

18 hours ago, Aecho.5491 said:

the storyline is AWFUL

I love the story!

Its presentation is on point, there is (at least for me) never a dull moment, and the missions have been tons of fun so far and make me yearn for more (I will see that I finish up tomorrow, and I can't wait where this is going!). The characters are also well-written, and the chemistry between them is nice to watch, be it the members of the Tyrian Alliance council or the lowland kodan.

The pacing is also on point; it's neither rushed/cut short, nor does it drag on into oblivion.

And the music... fantastic!

My only gripe was with the start of the first map and its mostly boring activities, of which many were copied and pasted from old content. That really had me demotivated and I briefly lost interest in continuing to explore the map, even though its design was pretty, because I got bored. The fact that it had rift hunts didn't help. 😉

Fortunately, the story continued to please, and the second map with its dark and Irish theme had me in awe. And the lore bits and pieces are quite exciting.

I'm curious to discover what will happen next!

Edited August 21 by Ashantara.8731

[Logos.5603]

For me it is a solid 6/10.

The housing system lacks meaningful decorations (like those showed in the trailers and playthroughs). I don't need 20+ flower pots. Where are the walls, floors, bridges, and stairs? This is basic stuff needed to build creative stuff. It is also a really grindy system. I might wait to play again until all the decorations are out if I play at all since this left a bad taste. I purchased this expac because according to the online information we were getting (e.g., The PC gamer trailer exclusive Homestead reveal), we were getting all kinds of platforms. Not so. I feel a bit cheated out of my money.

The delivery of the story is meh. The actual story is OK, I guess. The titans are not really presented as scary enemies, one of them sounded like Rita from the Power Rangers. Some of the writing is good (I liked the Tyrian Alliance stuff...although I wish it was done a bit better...more grandeur, more tension, more choices). Some of the writing is just plain bad (e.g., the Titans).)

Edited August 22 by Logos.5603

[Klivia.3879]

I am stunned by how amazing the new expac turned out to be. To be honest, I was really hyped for the new features but I was scared about the direction of the story. Now all the elements combined, the meaningful music, the dialogue and balance between action and lore introduction is incredibly well served! The attention to detail shows how much the studio evolved in both management of ressources and their capabilities themselves. I find the sudden twist stunning in how the music decorates this new atmosphere that does not consist of anything we have seen so far - this is the richness in features and carefully curated art I cherish so much with this work. Not to mention it is incredible to work this piece of expansion out on the base of an progressing code that runs for 12 years. I never thought it would be possible to implement so many features (and how big each is speaking from a coding perspective) in such a short time, the devs must have had a lot of overtime the past year or two with SotO in between. But to cut myself a bit shorter in what I want to conclude; I love the art, nothing changed to the worse, just more detail, more perfect use of the unique yet super ressource efficient Arenanet Shell Fur technique on beast races and stunning use of colours on the new landscapes as always but in this whole setting it literally blew my mind, in addition that I love the balance in the maps themselves; not too vertical but reasonably steep for what they should express to be. I know I may overly describe the beauty of this epos of an expansion but truly I am amazed like I never have been before of any game I have played, not even games that gave me a similar feeling of the wilderness. The gameplay felt smooth, the implementation of the spear feels flawless but I have only tried it so far on one class (You will never guess wich one *wink*). I am that soaked into the game that I don't want to jump out of role with my current character, even that I finished that story now and can roam freely through Janthir. But something keeps me stunned. Unlike a lot of people I discover "ruling" over the fate of the Guild Wars 2 Story and spreading their word everywhere and anywhere they can to promote, that the game "had" a good story and just slipped into 2020s story telling as this would be something bad anyways, I still feel the magic of Guild Wars in every drop of poetry, every tear of dialogue that meaningfully touches the whole lore composition; I had my rough times with Guild Wars in general as a main thief, don't think I love everything about every patch, and I don't say this easily, but this new whole expansion just feels right in its gameplay. Progressing feels balanced both inbetween the instanced story and to the mastery tracks. With balanced I mean it does not feel to get overloaded with early and easy mastery points but a consequental lack of XP and the need for an event grind like SotO felt. SotO still was great and all other expansions before, especially Icebrood, had their flaws in how they communicate(d) a feeling of balanced progressing so that the game keeps busy to say in a short, and to be more precise to keep the game interesting, impactful on the own playstyle, giving new variations to discover, introducing sustainable lore and characters but to vary in the storytelling and the narration type and stylistics; for example you discovered EoD differently than SotO with the intention in the nuances on how you got introduced, how the wayfinder became rather passive in this volume of mysticism that just unfolded. That's why I was scared about the new lore chapters and how they connect with the secrets we still have in the game. Because when there is something that kept me into this game before I actually started to dive neck deep into the whole MMORPG mechanics, then it is the very little details in the lore noone really talks about. Forgotten expansions, flying wizard towers, the world already feels so big and old due to great storytelling and design communication on every aspect of game design and worldbuilding, it is absolutely reasonable to believe that there can be multimistial (read it as if it was a real word lol) travel we could expect in the future, I speak of big big content, while Arenanet always managed to surprise again with something even bigger and again incredible that these whole concepts finally realised on top of the relatively old code, really amazing. Now I am even more thrilled than I ever was on what might come. I know that I currently never like before wrote as many tickets for little bugs, but that can happen. I write each because I know it might help to fix them earlier and not out of any frustration - this expansion is already so good in every aspect of the game modes that I don't care about blocked progress on metas or otherwise buggy features I experienced as well. I also don't care about the dialogue, as I wanted to point out in the beginning but came a bit short in words, I appreciate the way the story now gets more and more driven into different nuances of gaming narration, wich is good, because sometimes in the personal story the chapters were filled with predictable mechanics, the lore was good, but I didn't enjoy the gameplay as much as I did from HoT on. And in Janthir Wilds the way we can peak into the character developement is not by confronting us with a very emotional and strong impression like Braham brought us before, but now we get very small details from characters, inderect interaction with the player like a voice from the off that speaks to us from another world: A very private world where the Commander or the Wayfinder are not omni-educated about its consistence and how the figure inside feels about the world, no dictated personalities. The writing is great and the characters feel natural. I also like it that with Janthir wilds we are coming back to the refined beast voices that I was so impressed by with the Charr when the core game came out. This is also an aspect that gathers trust for me that I can expect at least maximum dedication with each expansion that is up to come. I am always sceptical about each expansion, because it is just difficult from so many angles to steer this cruiseship-of-a-decade-succsess without any turbulences and bad decisions, that is sure, it is like other people speculate on big markets, but we are hoping for a very chill time. Anyways before I brabble forever, this time Arenanet really outdid themselves, this expansion is big.

TLDR: I love this expansion to the core, I know there are bugs I already had a lot of them, but no critique on some aspect of the game could counter the beauty of Janthir Wilds, because in my conclusion this quite literal game expansion brings so much new stuff into the game, I was convinced that this was not even possible to begin with; this expansion should not be possible and the bugs are not just understandable but it is a wonder that there are not more relative to the complexity of features we simultaniously now can access. Also under the aspect that Arenanet changed a lot on the spears just right before release and there was little experience with launching a completely new weapon type for every class since we had none new before Janthir Wilds and since core release.

[willow.8209]

I love it. 

I like the environment, the NPCs, the pacing. It has that undefinable something that makes a game loveable and fun. 

I actually like that there are rifts there so I can chase rift rewards in a map i like to play in. 

I was worried about the game after Soto which was not much fun for me, i feel stressed every time i need to go there. But I'm not worried anymore.

I was worried a rustic homestead would feel uncomfy but it's quite nice and cozy. I like that my other toons are there and that I might find an NPC or alt riding my raptor in the stable. The crafting system seems interesting and attainable, tho I haven't done much with it yet. 

Great product. I'm happy. Would recommend to anyone.

[willow.8209]

also I'm enjoying spear on warrior. 

[Deihnyx.6318]

So far I'm loving this extension, it gives back some of the "old" guild wars vibe that was thoroughly missing lately. I absolutely do not mind the slower pace of the story, it's relaxing, it gives space for exploration and enjoying the map, which is quite frankly one of the best in a long time in my opinion.

As a GW1 veteran this touches me in so many ways and I hope to see more of this.

+++ The maps, environment and general atmosphere. I cannot overstate that enough. Please give a huge shout out to the map designers and everyone who brought this content to life.

+++ The Kodan & slice of life stuff. Many cool activities, some funny lines, lots lots of characters and they all feel alive and believable. 

++ Music: There again, different. I think the battle themes could get a bit more epic but still pretty good.

+ Story: Haven't finished it yet. It is slow, true, but I don't mind. I was kinda let down by SOTO story bits that were barely a couple hours each, so even if it's just lore and dialogs, I still enjoy it.

- Rifts: Well... I'm not going to complain as much as others because it doesn't seem like we're gonna have to do thousands like last time, but it rather tedious at this point. 1 year of rifts. Okay. Let's move on.

----------

Okay, now rant time! Because it wouldn't be feedback without one!
It's clear that you've shown a lot of love for the bear people! The Kodan are super cool, they've built a humble yet thriving society, they've got their own architectures, and SO. MUCH. FURRY. BAIT. All great! However...
...
You -again- mentioned the Dominion of Winds in the prologue, you had to, didn't you, you had to tease that forbidden jewel once more. And now I am once again yearning for the time I will see its gates open.
I mean come on! They've been closed for 12 years!! 12 YEARS! And you tease, you tease, did I mention you tease? And then you give so much love for the Kodan!
Is begging allowed? Okay I am begging now, please, please, whenever you decide it's time to give love to the birds, please give the Tengu as much love as you gave the Kodan!

Rant over, no I am not ashamed. Nope.

----------

But no seriously, great job Anet!

 

Edited August 22 by Deihnyx.6318

[DoomNexus.5324]

As per usual I don't like the story and everything associated with it. Cringe dialogues, annoying characters, lame story telling, no pacing, .. GW2 never stood out with particularly great story (although the lore has always been pretty cool) but dropped off even further in this regard ever since even back after HoT and has been on a steady decline since then. @edit: I really like the lore and the idea behind the story is also pretty cool but the execution and missions are a rather subpar experience in my opinion.
In base game we at least had some good characters like Tybalt for comedic relief but now everything always has to be grandiose and "ahh look at me I'm the commander/wayfinder, we don't know each other but have to band together and fight the evil!". 90% of the story is just listening to boring/bad, unskippable dialogues. Maybe a big part of it is also because I really don't like the voice acting. Biggest issue I had with Aurene too.
Idk, really looking forward to finishing all the missions, thank god the story is done in only a few hours and isn't really replayable content anyway 🙏

But at least everything else is pretty cool, as usual 👌
The world is beautiful and I actually like the mobs this time. The blighted beasts/titans are basically an improved version of Kryptis in my opinion (or kind of similar to the GW1 destroyers in a sense).
Personally, not the biggest fan of the Kodan architecture but it does fit the race and is believable, could've been way worse too. I just hope there will be other homestead house skins in the future because the rest of the area looks awesome.
Haven't really played with the spear yet but I think it's a really good way to introduce new weapon skills this way. Would be pretty cool if the next expansion would introduce a dual-class system again, where you could choose weapon/utility skills from other classes (without traits, so the primary class still has an advantage in this regard).

Edited August 23 by DoomNexus.5324

[Luthan.5236]

The renown heart thing seems interesting. I just hope we won't have to do them daily over and over again - all 3 - to get the buff that comes with 6 tiers. (To get the good rewards.) I think each day you do it it progresses the achivement and after 3 or 4 days (earliest today or tomorrow for people that did them tuesday already the first time) it will be tier 2 - then the vendor maybe offering better stuff.

(Where I hope it ends up with 6 of that item being able at one vendor. Not at max tier just two for each of the heats meaning you'd have to do all 3 daily to max the buff.)

[Klypto.1703]

I'd be surprised if anyone was actually waiting for this all I remember is hearing oh you get a spear and a new place to afk.

[willow.8209]

I'm also thrilled that the homestead basic materials can be traded for with such a large variety of mats. Perhaps literally every basic mat in the game, even T1. 

I'm excited that the homestead resting buffs have additional effects for other game modes. 

And warclaw is my new favorite all-purpose mount. 

16 hours ago, Deihnyx.6318 said:

The Kodan are super cool, they've built a humble yet thriving society, they've got their own architectures

I love this too. Really gives a sense of place.

[willow.8209]

I also like that with the new expansion we've ditched the culture of toxic productivity. No more telling people to stop with the self-care and get back to work already. We just accept that people have personal needs as the lowland Kodan do.

[Luthan.5236]

The "additional homestead space" I assume is not just the doors that are locked - but it also upgrades the circle where you can place stuff (on the map)? Since there is stuff like the "Janthir Grass" outside that circle (at starter range) that you can erase. But you can't place it there anymore. (Of course if the circle increases this would be possible again.) Trying co clean up atm. Removing all pre-set deco stuff to have it empty to start with maybe.

[Ashantara.8731]

Just wanted to say one last time how much I enjoy the soundtrack of JW. Those Celtic and Slavik pieces of music are emanating such a deep atmosphere.

[Malavian.4695]

I was satisfied with one beautiful map and you gave me two.  Thank you for the hard work.

I'm a little myeh about the spear as I'm guardian primarily.  However, the Warclaw upgrade is fun in every respect.

My only complaint is I can't eat the ducks.