With the new expansion Secrets of the Obscure, Guild Wars 2 gets a kind of season pass. For this, you should regularly complete tasks and in return receive cool rewards. However, the developers give up something very decisive: money.
How does the season pass work? The Wizard’s Vault is a feature of the new expansion that gives you daily, weekly, and rotating tasks that you can complete. In return, success points and the new currency Astral Fame await you.
With this, you can shop in a special store. The rewards there are supposed to rotate seasonally and include not only useful items like Mystic Coins, Laurels, or Resurrection Orbs but also some skins for equipment and mounts.
What makes the system so fair? The Wizard’s Vault only offers free rewards. There is no premium pass. You can’t buy Astral Fame for real money either. You have to earn everything by playing.
Moreover, Guild Wars 2 does without FOMO, i.e. the fear of missing out. Because when the shop rotates, all old skins end up in a “legacy tab,” where you can always buy them, although for a bit more currency.
A first insight into the new areas of the expansion is given by this video:
“Works similarly to a seasonal pass”
Is this really a season pass? The new Wizard’s Vault replaces the previous login rewards and daily achievements. These simply disappear. Also, there is no clear reward pass that you need to follow. You can simply buy from the shop whatever you feel like most.
Yet, the system has a lot of features typical of season passes, and even the developers make the comparison themselves.
They emphasize that the system “works similarly to a seasonal content pass in other games” and write:
There is no premium tier of the Wizard’s Vault that offers additional rewards, and players cannot buy Astral Fame with gems or real money.
How is this received? Very well. On Reddit, it is called the “best feature of the expansion” and the “fairest battle pass in the world.” Especially the fact that it does without FOMO is highly praised. Some comfort features are also highlighted.
For example, you can check whether you want PvE, PvP, or WvW missions. If you remove a check, you get more tasks from the other contents displayed. This way, you can obtain rewards through only PvE or only PvP tasks.
WoW went in a similar direction with the trading post that was released this year. Recently, there was criticism because the associated currency was integrated into real money bundles. Furthermore, here you can actually “miss” skins, even though these might be brought back later.
What do you think about the Wizard’s Vault? Is it a useful addition or are such daily incentives unnecessary? And what are you looking forward to most with Secrets of the Obscure?
I myself was able to spend about 100 minutes in the new expansion and have written a first conclusion here: Played the new expansion Secrets of the Obscure – 5 things are really strong, but one thing is annoying.
