With the upcoming expansion Janthir Wilds, a new housing feature will arrive in Guild Wars 2. Now there are new insights into the homesteads and the features of the housing system.
What is known about the new housing? Arenanet first announced the feature and the associated expansion Janthir Wilds on June 4, 2024. In collaboration with the developers, the website PC Gamer has now released an exclusive preview of the homesteads. Below, MeinMMO summarizes the most important points for you.
- The new homesteads are an evolution of the home instances, which will still exist.
- All items collected in home instances can be seamlessly integrated into the new homesteads.
- Arenanet has fundamentally revised and expanded the building editor for the homesteads in Guild Wars 2. Similar to the grand housing of WildStar, it will also be possible, for example, to scale items in size or have them float in the air.
- To unlock the building instructions, the developers are introducing a new mastery. More than 300 decorations are planned for the launch. Over the next year, the number is expected to rise to about 800.
- Your home will be a kind of exhibition for all your skins, armors, weapons, characters, and mounts. You can place all your GW2 heroes on the property (and have them perform those animations), visit your mounts in the stable (and admire your favorite skins), display peacekeepers in weapon racks, and throw stylish outfits over mannequins to showcase them in all their glory.
- In the homesteads, you can expect various activities such as harvesting nodes, watering flowers, fishing, swimming, chopping trees, or watching “cats doing cat things” (via Arenanet). Yup, your collected house cats will find their new home in the homestead.
- At the associated dock, you will find the skiff with which you can cruise down the local river.
- You will gain access to the feature early during the story campaign of the new expansion.
- Unlike in other MMORPGs, you do not have to win a lottery or pay enormous amounts of in-game money to secure your own property. There is also no rent or other regular costs.
The announcement trailer for the Janthir Wilds expansion of Guild Wars 2:
New System with Potential
What does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz say about the new housing? In recent years, I have often felt that Arenanet is only doing the bare minimum to keep Guild Wars 2 alive. It fits with the fact that Guild Wars 3 is supposed to be in development.
Therefore, I am positively surprised by how powerful and well-thought-out the new housing system of Janthir Wilds seems so far. We can definitely expect more than just an alibi home system that offers little more than the home instances. Regarding the variety of options in the editor, the homesteads even remind me of perhaps the best housing system in the MMORPG genre.
From my perspective, this was present in WildStar, which went offline in November 2018 and therefore does not appear in our Top 5 of currently the best housing systems in MMORPGs. In the colorful online adventure from Carbine and NCSoft, it was also possible to have items float in the air or scale their size to one’s liking.
I think it’s great to have so many possibilities to display all the collected achievements – after all, Guild Wars 2, with its horizontal progression, is THE MMORPG for the long-term expansion of your collection.
What I still miss are one or two more contents that are linked to the homesteads. Here again, my gaze turns to WildStar, as there were the so-called housing expeditions that could be completed alone or with friends to earn exclusive decorations.
How has your first impression been so far? What feature do you miss? What do you particularly like? Let me know in the comments! More information about the new expansion, set to be released on August 20, 2024, can be found here: Guild Wars 2 Janthir Wilds – Everything Important About Release, Housing, Warclaw Mount, and Weapon Type Spear
