Guild Wars 2 gets its second big expansion. But what kind of experience awaits you with Path of Fire? Will it be another annoying grind like in Heart of Thorns, or does the Crystal Desert offer something new and exciting for the fans?
Guild Wars 2 will become quite a bit larger on September 22 with the release of Path of Fire. But will NCSoft’s MMORPG become better because of it? At least the last expansion Heart of Thorns was poorly received by many players and was mainly criticized for the endless grind for mastery skills and legendary items, as well as the often convoluted maps.
I also didn’t like Heart of Thorns as much as I had hoped. But I have a better feeling about Path of Fire.
Path of Fire – Desert is better than Jungle
Unlike Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire takes you to the Crystal Desert and northern Elona. Elona was the setting of the grand expansion Nightfall for Guild Wars 1. This expansion is still one of my absolute favorite expansions, partly due to the cool story and the fresh setting in the Oriental and African look.
The Crystal Desert is even more historic for Guild Wars veterans. Who doesn’t remember the countless hours in Guild Wars 1, where you trudged through the eternal wasteland full of tough enemies in search of the “Ascension”? It was all laborious and exhausting, but in the end, you were proud to have accomplished it.
Also cool and back again: The Domain of the Undead Despot Palawa Joko, who was somehow a cool guy. So the setting of Path of Fire is full of beautiful memories and feelings that the annoying and convoluted jungle of Heart of Thorns never evoked for me.
Dragons are boring villains
Path of Fire also solves another problem that has been annoying me in Guild Wars 2 for a long time: Dragons are not good main villains! Sure, huge lizards that spit fire or whatever and wipe entire raids away in one hit are cool end bosses. But they are totally uninteresting for a dramatic story. A dragon doesn’t speak, it doesn’t act in a humanly understandable way, it is just boring!
That’s why I celebrated the appearance of the Sylvari rogue Scarlett Briar, who was an extremely cool rogue in the joker format. When she was finally defeated after many story episodes, instead came the utterly boring plant dragon Mordremoth. Sure, the dragon was a cool threat as a primal force, but as a charismatic villain, he was lacking.
Gods are better villains than dragons
At the beginning of Season 3 of the story, it seemed like more dragons were up next: “Okay, Zhaitan and Mordremoth are gone, Jormag, Kralkatorrik, and the new fire creature are still missing! All right, we can handle that! Taimi, get the Dragon Blaster ready!”
But then the big surprise: The new main villain is not the dynamic dragon duo of Jormag and Primordus! Your arch-nemesis is none other than the old war god Balthazar!
Balthazar was my favorite god from GW lore, and I’m really curious what the noisy brat with the horned helmet is really planning. Especially the fact that I now apparently have to protect the dragons from the wrath of the god because otherwise the world would burst is a genius twist. This time I’m really excited to see how it ends. In Heart of Thorns, however, I didn’t really care about the story. It was clear that Mordremoth would die in the end.
Mounts are cool!
Lastly, I’m really looking forward to the new mounts from Path of Fire! The four beasts are all cool, and I will hardly be able to decide between the magnificent dinosaur, the cute bunny, the sleek ray, and the teleporting fox creature.
That the mounts also take on the masteries is another plus point. I prefer upgrading my cool raptor’s jump power rather than learning a skill that allows me to crawl through dirty tunnels in the jungle.
My conclusion – Path of Fire will be better than Heart of Thorns!
Sure, the new mount masteries could turn out to be the same boring grind as in HotS, and the story about Balthazar and the dragons could turn out to be a dud.
Nevertheless, I have a good feeling, and the features of Path of Fire appeal to me overall much more than they did in Heart of Thorns. So I’m looking forward to my new trip to Elona.
How are you doing? Let me know your opinion on the launch of Path of Fire in the comments!
Need more information about the new expansion? All other known information about Path of Fire can be found here. And here you can get information about the release date of Path of Fire and the first mount.
