Warning! Spoilers ahead.

Well, now we know. After a bizarre amount of secrecy, ArenaNet has finally announced their new expansion, Path of Fire, which comes out surprisingly soon at September 22nd. I’m really excited for this expansion!

Living World Season 3
Before I jump into the expansion, I wanted to talk a little about Season 3. The Living World content has always been a little hit-or-miss, especially for the first two seasons. I didn’t really play any of season one because I took my sweet time getting any of my myriad characters to 80 (I did a little bit of the Battle for Lion’s Arch, but that’s about it), and the fact that that means I’ll never get to be properly introduced to the main cast of characters for all of the content for the foreseeable future makes season one probably the biggest blunder ArenaNet has ever made. Season two was at least repeatable, but it felt super rushed, and most of the chapters had a lot of filler. Season three finally brought the Living World on par with the game’s main/expansion story, with each chapter bringing its own zone, and a new mastery. While the masteries are a little contrived (most of them only work in the zone they were added with, and it just hit me last night that I probably didn’t even need to train the Siren of Orr one from Episode Six), at least they fill up pretty fast. It’s also nice that they were added per zone, unlike the Heart of Thorns masteries that were just dumped on you all at once with no direction as to which ones would block progress in the story. At least the masteries themselves have some cool effects (I love the grappling hook from episode five! I hope that comes back in some form!). As for the story itself, it was good, if a little scattered. I like the idea of the mursaat and the human gods coming back, but it was a bit back and forth. Basically, the plot goes like this: There’s a bloodstone-splosion that summons an evil magical mursaat, who turns out not to be evil, except he’s actually neither of those, he’s actually an evil human god in disguise. Then we forget about the evil god for a while (until the expansion hits) and join the Shining Blade to kill the actual mursaat. The one that the evil god was pretending to be. Simple, right? Oh, and don’t forget the fact that some important pieces of that story were locked inside raids which I haven’t done, so I had to look them up on the wiki. Those complaints aside, I really like that they’re bringing back a bunch of Guild Wars 1 lore. While I’ve barely played Guild Wars 1, and only after playing 2, it always seemed strange that the sequel seems so disconnected from its predecessor.

Path of Fire
Finally, something other than dragons to fight! Desert zones, especially ones with varied biomes like Elona, have always been among my favorites, so heading to the Crystal Desert sounds good to me. I’m interested to see where they go with the whole Balthazar thing. What exactly happened to the rest of the gods? Are they going to make an appearance as well? I’m also interested to see where the whole Aurine thing is headed, since they’ve been building up to that one for a while.
The addition of mounts is an interesting one, since ArenaNet has long held that they’re unnecessary because of waypoints. For the most part they’re right, but waypoints in every zone added from Living World season two on have been few and far between, so they’re not an unwelcome addition. Plus the addition of faster travel allows you to open up zones and do larger, more interesting landscapes. I think my favorite so far is the Skimmer because it looks cool and allows me to avoid underwater combat (plus it’s probably the closest thing to a WildStar hoverboard I’ll get in this game… man, I miss hoverboards).
What I’m most excited about, however, is the new set of elite specializations. I like what I’m seeing for all of them so far. I’m excited for the thief to finally get rifle (mainly because they were lacking ranged options, but also because I have a bunch of cool rifle skins that I’ve never been able to use), and the dual-element, sword-wielding elementalist looks pretty interesting as well.
I think the pricing is pretty reasonable this time around. I didn’t think the price for Heart of Thorns was outrageous like some people did (isn’t $50 just what expansions cost? Isn’t that what WoW charges, with a subscription on top of that?), but given that there’s no new class this time around, it’s nice that they knocked a little off of the cost. The deluxe-ier editions seem like a better value too; I’d much rather have a character slot, a makeover kit, and a premium crafting area pass than a mini, a PvP finisher, and a boring glider skin any day. And, of course, if you’re going to get the deluxe edition, you might as well upgrade to the ultimate edition, since it’s got $50 worth of gems for only $25. Curse you and your marketing, ArenaNet!

Overall, this is a good time to be a Guild Wars 2 fan. Hopefully this expansion will be better received than the last, and the new zones will be less frustrating to navigate. I’ve started messing around in Guild Wars: Nightfall to catch up on my area lore. More on that soon? I’m really looking forward to this weekend, when we’ll actually get to get in and mess around with all of the new elite specs. And, of course, the expansion isn’t far behind that!