They spent three years wandering the world of Tyria until, the new expansion of Guild Wars 2, Heart of Thorns , took shape in early 2015.
What many expected was announced, the first extension to the MMO without Arenanet quotas. After two years in the market and a change of direction towards the free model , Guild Wars 2 felt the need for a breath of fresh air, a solid content beyond the small periodic updates. To this must be added the need on the part of the players to know that they were
really being heard in the forums and social networks, so that ArenaNet revived again the “inner child” that had excited at the time with the launch of the principal. Heart of Thorns aims to reconnect the MMO with a community that is particularly appreciative of the development work.
The first thing we must remember is that the base content included in Guild Wars 2 and all its extensions are accessible for free, without paying a euro or buying it in stores, since a few weeks ago. ArenaNet announced, not without avoiding controversy, the change of business model for the main game, which can be accessed from now with just registering an account.
A decision that has brought more players to the MMO for the launch of the expansion. However; To penetrate the new contents of the expansion in
the territory of Maguuma , it does require buying it. Also have achieved that your character has level 80, since we are facing an expansion dependent on the main game (not standalone as in Guild Wars).
Keeping in mind that the content of the expansion is for advanced players, the first question comes: Will you miss the original game? No, you’ll forget about him, at least for a while. ArenaNet has made one thing clear: it wants to make the MMORPG for all those who do not like the genre and at the same time offer a challenge to those already skilled in the field .
The search to please everyone has been the double-edged sword during these last three years of updates, with its successes and mistakes, and it seems that finally the success story is shaping its last strokes with Heart of Thorns. The first thing is that you forget that you knew about the exploration before.
Maguuma does not look like anything seen until then , for good or bad. It is a territory that breaks the usual horizontality of the genre betting on different heights or levels. The classic flat mapping based on RPG, with its starting point A and output B, has evolved to a
hybrid system by height . With this the exploration has acquired a new level. We will never be sure that we have seen everything until we have risen to the top of the clouds or descended to the roots of the environment. So, climbing cliffs or letting us fall down ravines will be our daily bread to discover everything that Maguuma hides.
The verticalitywill make us stay much longer on the same map, knowing new places that will give us the sensation of having changed the biome, but without the characteristic load screens to which we are already accustomed and which at times seem to break the immersion.
All this would not make much sense without a mechanics that cohesione player-environment interaction and this is where the Domains come into play. The Domains(along with the profession specialization that we will deal with later) are the new bet of ArenaNet to maintain the progression without adding new character levels to increase.
Through a bar that will be filled with the experience gainedwhen completing events, collecting, participating in challenges or simply killing enemies, we will acquire new skills to use in the jungle, such as jumping for mushrooms or descending with a
glider attached to our back, which will allow us to reach areas of the map, at first impossible It is one of the main novelties of the expansion and serves as the frames seen in other games of the genre.
