Our author Alexander Leitsch had the chance to interview Guild Wars 2 Game Director Mike Zadorojny. He revealed some details about the Living World Season 5 and the regularity of updates.
What is the interview about? On August 30, the MMORPG announced the new Icebrood Saga. This is a series of story updates that will expand the game and tell the story around Norn, a malevolent cult, and the Ice Dragon Jormag.
Game Director Mike Zadorojny has answered some questions for me accordingly.
Lessons from previous seasons of the Living World
What will the Icebrood Saga do differently? First, Mike and I talked about the lessons developers have learned from the previous four seasons of the Living World.
The Icebrood Saga intends to do some things differently in terms of innovations and structure. It will be particularly based on the first seasons:
Don’t expect a new map with every update. We will also work with existing maps and expand them. It will be comparable to Season 2, just a bit more significant and larger than the two maps back then.
We will initially start with a new large map and then implement things that we haven’t done before.
According to Mike, the first season was also a great inspiration because it was a lot of fun for the developers and kept players engaged.
What changes in storytelling? Guild Wars 2 has also evolved over the years in the way stories are told. Mike mentioned a very specific example:
In Season 2, we introduced Belinda and killed her shortly after. We had something similar with Blish in Season 4, but the character was much more developed.
The outcry: “You created this character just to kill her” was much smaller than back then.
He also proudly states that the way the story is told has positively changed. It has become much more focused than in the early days.
What about our hero group in the story? If you’re a fan of the characters Marjory and Kasmeer like I am, you’ll be happy to hear about their return. After they completely disappeared after Path of Fire, they will now return in the Icebrood Saga.
Mike describes the story of the new Icebrood Saga as darker and more Cthulhu-style. Therefore, it’s fitting that especially Marjory, as a necromancer, has a return.
Overall, there will be more rotations in our hero group. This way, players won’t interact with too many characters at once, yet the group will remain consistent.
Exciting events every month
How regularly do episodes of the Living World 5 appear? Of course, I wanted to know from Mike how often we can expect new episodes.
From the last seasons, we were used to a rhythm of 2-3 months, but the developers now want to change that:
Actually, we want to be faster than in the last season. Our current priority is to try to have something exciting in the game every month.
For that, we have the Living World, but also festivals that take place regularly. In addition, there are the bonus events, as we internally call them, in which you are supposed to defeat world bosses, for example.
Based on Mike’s description, the update calendar for 2019 could look something like this:
- September – Prologue
- October – Halloween
- November – Episode 1
- December – Christmas
The calendar will then be supplemented by bonus events that have been taking place regularly lately. Currently, there is one specifically for returnees and newcomers.
Northern Shiverpeaks and new challenges
Where are we heading first in the Icebrood Saga? On September 17, the prologue “Bound by Blood” will be in the game, which will already bring some innovations.
But it will really kick off with the first episode of the Living World Season 5. It will definitely be released this year. The first area will be the Northern Shiverpeaks.
Mike describes this as a particularly beautiful place:
You can look forward to some incredibly beautiful vistas. The art team has worked hard and also drew a lot of inspiration from the Guild Wars 1 maps.
Are there new world bosses? The new world boss Drakkar has already been announced during the event, and Mike was able to tell me a little about it. He is supposed to be more challenging than the last released world bosses:
The Shatterer in Jahai was a good intermediate step, but he was not as challenging as the three-headed jungle worm. The new world boss will be big and is supposed to bring players together.
However, it will not be on the new map from the start, but will be added later.
From the announcement, we already know that Drakkar is intended for the second episode.
How do assault missions work? In addition to world bosses, we also discussed the new assault missions. In this, 10 players face a boss that is supposed to be challenging.
Mike describes this new challenge as follows:
Assault missions are instanced content that can be entered in two ways. If you just want to fight, you can enter the site and be randomly matched with other players, similar to the riftstrider events.
Way number 2 is a separate entrance for your group. There you can gather and defeat the boss, even in smaller groups than intended.
New fractals and raids are still being worked on, as Mike confirmed to me upon request.
We also briefly discussed repeatable challenge modes in raids. These are being discussed internally, but there is no new information about them yet.
Currently, ArenaNet is very satisfied with the development of the Living World. However, paid expansions for the future are not ruled out, as revealed in another interview:
