Tyria in 2013: The Year Ahead for Guild Wars 2
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(We'll of course have festivals and special events as well), he added in reference to last year's Halloween and Wintersday celebrations, (but we want to expand the concept of what events can be to tell stronger narrative stories that drive the overall story of Guild Wars 2, and change the world forever as a result.)
World events are one thing, but ArenaNet has made no secret that it's planning a full Guild Wars 2 expansion, the nature of which is currently shrouded in secrecy. Regardless I asked Johanson for details, (I can say we absolutely will have expansions in the future, however right now our major focus is on building upon the core living world and major game systems of Guild Wars 2. Thematically, we'll discuss expansion content a lot more once it's closer to being realised.)
Defeated I asked Johanson about the increasing eSport nature of Guild Wars 2'²s updates and ArenaNet's own blog posts. It seems as if the studio has something brewing that may capitalise on the growing popularity of competitive titles such as Dota 2 and League of a Legends.
Surprisingly, Johanson didn't hold back. In fact, he confirmed that eSports is indeed a strong desire of the studio going into 2013 and beyond. (I think there really are two steps we need to accomplish here before we truly realise the possibility of Guild Wars 2 from a PvP perspective,) he explained.
(The first one is ensuring the core PvP game and systems are strong enough to support a solid base of players who enjoy PvP from a more casual or progression standpoint. They're looking to have fun, be matched against players of similar skill, for it to be easy to get in and out of PvP games, and most importantly, feel like there is a strong sense of reward and progression for their time.)
Once ArenaNet feels confident that it has this core nailed down, Johanson confirmed that the studio would then look at tackling the eSports world head-on, and that means catering to the needs of Tyria's more hardened players. It's going to be an open invitation brawl to all-comers, even if as Johanson added the smaller hardcore minority will be those that other players aspire to.
