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Over two years on from its release, MMO Guild Wars 2 is to receive its first expansion.
Heart of Thorns will, according to ArenaNet, represent a re-envisioning of progression in an MMO” that offers a new Mastery system that offers new abilities for high level players, rather than simply upping the game’s level cap.
The expansion will pick up the narrative left off by the previous Living World updates and takes players to the heart of the Maguuma Jungle in a brand new open world map, in which players will also be able to team up with friends to form a Guild Hall.
We’re thrilled to bring Guild Wars 2 fans their first expansion with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns,” ArenaNet president and co-founder Mike O’Brien said. The features we’ll be introducing with this expansion have the potential to once again move the MMO genre forward.
Heart of Thorns will challenge the way that expansions traditionally treat endgame progression, and it’ll introduce new feature sets and content that reinforce our mantra that the journey itself is the goal in the way players experience and immerse themselves in an MMO.”
Guild Wars 2 game director Colin Johanson added: We wanted to go well beyond just announcing that an expansion is coming and then let our fans guess as to what it would bring, and so we waited until we could tell them every single feature that we think sets it apart. We only wanted to reveal Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns once we felt we could highlight everything that makes it an expansion worthy of Guild Wars 2.”
Here’s the trailer:
