GUILD WARS 2 Announces Update to DirectX 11, END OF DRAGONS Delay, and More
Guild Wars 2 is my personal favorite MMORPG and the team at ArenaNet recently gave fans an update on what to expect this year with some bittersweet news. We’ll get what I believe to be the biggest news out of the way first.
End of Dragons is not coming this year. Due to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the team realized that they won’t be able to deliver the Cantha they want to fans by the end of 2021, so now the release date is early 2022. Like many fans, I’m sad that it’s being delayed, but if it means that it’s more polished at launch, I can wait.
Don’t worry though, fans will still get their first look at End of Dragons on July 27 during the First Look livestream. Another quick note is that above this announcement was a silhouette of a figure holding what appears to be either a spear or a dagger and then pink daggers above them. Fans believe this may be hinting at a new Elite Specialization for Mesmers. If this holds true, I would believe that it’s supposed to be a dagger since spears are aquatic weapons and Mesmer can’t use daggers yet.
This takes us to other announcements. Colin Johanson has returned. He used to be a game director for Guild Wars 2 and now he’s back to co-lead the studio. With his return, the team has created a new role that is focused on developing the live game and they brought Josh “Grouch” Davis back to the team for the job. Davis seems to want to work on improving communication with the players and he then went to announce two big things for players to look forward to.
First, Alliances will be coming this year under the name World Restructuring. This feature is aimed at creating greater balance in World vs. World by “dynamically creating matchups using WvW-designated guilds, alliances (a player-made collection of guilds), and active WvW players as the inputs” instead of worlds and world linking. According to Davis, the new World Restructuring system will provide more flexibility and granularity for creating matches and helps address fluctuations in population over time. World Restructuring will be released via a multiphase beta that allows the team to release a part of the system, have players test it in the live game, gather feedback, and then incorporate feedback for a future release. An overview of the system will be provided in August.
The second announcement from Davis is that the client and game are receiving a much-requested upgrade. There’s no release date yet, but the ArenaNet team is working on upgrading from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11! I know it’s not DX12, but this is still huge! This upgrade means the game can make use of CPU multithreading and other performance improvements that have the potential to not only make the game look better, but to run a lot better with higher frame rates. I am extremely excited for this upgrade!
It looks like the Guild Wars 2 team has been undergoing a lot of changes and are listening to players. I know a lot of people have been wanting improvements to WvW and now we’re finally getting some. What has you most excited about these announcements?