It was just announced at Pax South in San Antonio, Texas, that Guild Wars 2 is getting a full fledged Expansion pack called Heart of Thorns. Announcement was made by the co-founder Mike O’Brien and game director Colin Johanson during a Guild Wars 2 panel that was livestreamed in front of more than 65.000 viewers on Twitch. Here are the major points that were announced about the new expansion:
Check out the official Heart of Thorns announcement page here.
- Heart of Maguuma Jungle is where expansion takes place and where you fight Mordremoth
- There will be no raising the level cap – no gear treadmill
- New way of character progression called Masteries
- Jungle is a huge vertical space – you will have to master new skills and abilities to traverse the new zones
- New group challenges that will require you to master those new skills and abilities
- New profession specializations – customization of professions
- New guild support and new guild progression
- New challenges and achievement
- New Legendaries and precursors
- Brand new profession – The Revenant – Heavy armor
- New WvW Borderland map
- New PvP mode – Strongholds
- Guild halls
Mastery System
- Mastery system is account wide and all level 80 characters you have will have unlocked what you unlocked with the Mastery system
- Mastery points can be gained from single and group challenges, exploration, achievements and more
- Hand Glide ability can be gained through Mastery – flight for your character for better exploration of the jungle
- New civilizations and you can master their languages and access lore for those civilizations
- Mastery system will allow you learn new combat abilities as well
- Mastery system will allow you to build collections that will send you on a quest to get precursors for legendary weapons
Specialization System
- Help you grow your profession into something new
- Almost like a secondary profession
- Rangers will be able to master the abilities of a Druid. Rangers will be able to grow into a druid and get access to a new heal skill, new elite skill and new mechanic, if a Ranger decides to go for a druid specialization. Druid ranger will be able to use a staff,
- Necromancer specialization will allow Necros to use greatsword weapon
Here’s the official trailers.