In Guild Wars 2, there has been a sort of summer break for the Living World in recent weeks. However, the next updates have now been announced. 4 new episodes and several festivals are planned in the next 7 months.
What comes next for Guild Wars 2? In September 2019, the Icebrood Saga started as the fifth season of the Living World. So far, it has included 6 story episodes, including a look back into the past. Recently, a new fractal, the Sunqua Peak, was released to bridge the summer break.
For the next 7 months, 4 more updates are planned. They will be released under the motto “The Icebrood Saga: Champions” and are intended to conclude the season.
The patches will be released every 2 months, in November, January, March, and May. Between these updates, festivals are planned, including the annual Winter’s Day, the Lunar New Year, and the return of the Super Adventure Box in April. This keeps ArenaNet true to their promise that something exciting happens in the game every month.
New Rewards and New Group Content
What do the new episodes bring? The developers have already revealed some initial details about what to expect in the new story episodes in the blog post about the roadmap:
- Each episode is supposed to contain a Dragon Aid mission. This can be completed alone or with 5 players. These missions are repeatable and revolve around fights against the Dragon servants.
- “Mobilization Events” are planned in which you can forge friendships with other factions that will then assist you in the Dragon Aid missions. Where these will take place and which factions there will be is still unknown.
- New Masteries are planned.
- There will be faction vendors and new weapon recipes.
- Each episode brings new achievements, collections, and rewards as usual.
The first trailer for Chapter 1: Truce is scheduled for November 5th.
What else is happening? The old episodes “No Mercy” and “Jormag’s Awakening” were released without voice acting due to COVID-19 restrictions in the spring. This is expected to be added on November 17th in an update.
Also in November, the release of Guild Wars 2 on Steam is planned:
Will the expansion come after season 5?
What happens after the roadmap? It is rather unusual for ArenaNet to publish such a detailed roadmap until May 2021. Until now, there has only been an overview of the upcoming 3 months.
The plan makes it clear how long the Icebrood Saga will run. What comes next is not known, but it is likely that there will be no major updates until the upcoming expansion “End of Dragons” which is supposed to be released in 2021.
The last two expansions were released in October and September. This timeframe also seems probable for “End of Dragons”. So far, it is only known that it will lead to the continent of Cantha. A leak already promises many great contents for the expansion, but actually, it sounds too good to be true.
