Guild Wars 2: Roadmap for the next 7 months

I was so happy to see ArenaNet post a roadmap for the game. Even though I fully expect the possibility of delays (as it says: “subject to change”), it is nice to see what we can look forward to.

As I have previously written, I am actually not a fan of the living story. I don’t like the instanced content because it is often too hectic for me to play (in case you haven’t read anything from me before: I have a chronic injury in my hand and can’t play anything where I have to click a lot or move around fast). The open maps are usually nice and I really love the map events in Guild Wars 2, but since there is often a new map with the new story part, I feel that this is where you have to be and older maps are neglected. However, I still like that the game is getting new content and more story and just because I don’t enjoy it, doesn’t mean I think it’s bad that this is what the game is getting.

Also, I am so excited about Wintersday! I haven’t played much last year and didn’t participate in Wintersday. I love the Bell Choir game and hope that I can play it again despite my hand issues.

But the roadmap we have also gives us a prospect on when to expect the next expansion, End of Dragons. Or rather, we know it definitely won’t launch before the middle of 2021. We also got a tiny bit of news about this a few days ago with ArenaNet stating that they will focus on the expansion now instead of on the game’s release on Steam. I don’t know anything about the inner workings, but this announcement did surprise me a bit. I don’t know how much work goes into bringing a game to Steam. I would just assume that it’d be a nice extra income because there are enough players who say that they want a game to be on Steam as they only want one launcher, period. Or for whatever other reasons – maybe also visibility.

So basically, what I am saying is that I am glad to see a roadmap because we now know when to tentatively expect new content to come and we can see that new content will come (in case anybody was doubtful). It is the bit of transparency we need. But out of everything they posted, I actually mostly care about Wintersday.