PAX Prime 2015 Day 2 Recap

Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet stole the show first thing in the morning; it was so big people were camped out at 5am waiting in line just to be in this presentation. Guild Wars 2 is constantly changing and growing, and they believe strongly in their buy-to-play business model. You buy the game, you get to enjoy all the amazing content that it has to offer. But what happens when an expansion drops? Or four expansions? The president of ArenaNet came out and discussed this at great length. The question becomes “How do we get more people playing this game?” and the answer is usually a free trial. But free trials wear off. The long and short of it is that as of this writing, Guild Wars 2 is free. For everyone. You can go download Guild Wars 2 right now to see if you like it. If you do, you can buy the expansion. Or if you feel like spending on Heart of Thorns, you won’t have to purchase the base game. This is a bold move to say the least. It will get new eyes on the game who maybe weren’t sure about the game before; not to mention first editions of games rarely seem to keep making money, but this expansion sure will. The style of gameplay introduced in this expansion won’t die. The cool systems they’re bringing forth will keep on growing and evolving.

Now if you have the free game and have not bought the expansions, there are some limits on what you can do, few though they are. They are primarily for security reasons, so players don’t make a bunch of bots now that they can do it for free. Fewer character slots/less storage, and you can only start a new whisper once every 30 seconds. This does not seem unreasonable at all. In addition to this, ArenaNet revealed that now Guild Wars 2 will have Raiding! Yes, raiding. Ten person instances, very strategy oriented. The encounters will offer a great deal of challenge, and thanks to the design of Guild Wars 2, you don’t necessarily have to wait on a perfect tank/healer. Every character can be responsible for themselves in some manner or another. Another point to remember for this: NO ATTUNEMENT. No week long quest chains just to do a dungeon. You might not be strong enough but you can damn sure try it. There will be one raid at launch but lots of raid content to come. Also it will not be an endless gear grind. Don’t expect everything you have to be worthless come next raid. They didn’t give a ton of details, but keep a close, keen eye on Heart of Thorns.

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