To hunt a star 🌠

The strategy they're embracing moving forward looks to keep that momentum and entice more players to try, remain engaged with, or return to regular activity in GW2 and GW1 with the tiered HoM 2.0 releases, GW2 world polish, and more info about GW3 being provided makes people excited to experience or return to the world.

They spent a while emphasizing that they want player time and investment to be and feel respected bridging between the three games, and are fostering an ecosystem where players are encouraged or inspired to try the different 'versions' of the world to earn those HoM rewards/ explore the unique experiences each game has to offer.

They heard feedback about GWAMM being carried over to GW3; that's not their current objective, but they might review/revisit. In that vein, they also essentially confirmed GW1 HoM won't connect to GW3 like. at all.

HoM 2.0 will ‘feel like the Return To experience’ and release in chronological order, with the core game having 2 releases (one focused on open world, one focused on story) to tackle the sheer volume of core content. Confirmed the living world instalments will also be included, not just the titled expacs. HoM 2.0 will grant rewardss in both GW2 and GW3.

Insisted that they have not and will not move devs off of GW2 to GW3 during these 18 months of 'down time' before the beta launch next fall to dispel concerns about gutting GW2's team/ resources. Each game has a dedicated team, they don’t share people or resources.

In talking about the new WVW BL, they touched on where they failed in the release of desert BL back in HoT. The internal approach was ‘what's best for gliding’ instead of ‘what's best for WvW’ and they're acknowledging that wasn't the correct approach. They've taken years of feedback to heart while developing their new map: they didn’t work alongside the community during devlopment of desert BL and they learned their lesson there (will be taking cues from the PvP push mode beta and feedback gained throughout that moving forward). Eg. They want to run betas for the new map for around a year on the live server and not just the private test realms to get broader community feedback and data.

Chatted a bit about the technical challenge of modernizing/optimizing the engine as the game has aged and touched on the coming PBR (physically based rendering), community voiced performance concerns (client performance like frame rate in large scale populated areas, server performance like skill latency) etc. that they want to address in these polish updates and future development. For example, they mentioned added granular settings for individual optimization, so more settings client side for your rig, and making info like event/boss timers and other stuff more intuitively accessible in game instead of through the /wiki commands.

‘You don't make investments in technology at this scale unless you are committed to supporting those investments long term.' Reaffirmed their commitment to developing all three games. All three will be updated with a zippered/staggered approach; a ‘lull’ in one game will be a leapfrog for an update in another, meaning there's always content in the world of Guild Wars.

GW2 will not be coming to mobile or console; the 3 games are meant to occupy different niches, and they've built them intentionally in that way. in order to do a game really well on console, you have to build it from the ground up with those gameplay and tech considerations in mind. doesn't make sense for GW2 to be placed anywhere other than PC ('Players managing gw2 inventory with a controller seems like a cruel punishment' lol).

The GW3 timeline is intensely focused on high fantasy with little to no technological advances in the world given it's so far in the past, with the intent that seeing how the magitech and jade tech etc. evolve in GW2 and feeling that distance between the setting of GW2 and GW3 is tangible and impactful (and also letting each game fully embrace it’s own unique storylines and themes).

Bonus images. Any time I need some comfort i just draw grace in this very specific outfit. Its a mix of 2 of my favorit movie grace outfits. The one where he asks stratt to continue working on the astrophage, he wears a blue shirt, his white cardigan, and slightly darker jeans. The 2nd outfit (and my personal favorit) is before the lab explodes, he's got his yellow rain coat, his white cardigan, a pair of dark blue pants and a pair of dark blue rain boots.

I know I sound and look delulu but I just can't describe the kind of comfort it gives me hehe.