Last weekend, I released an article where I theorized about the potential direction of future Guild Wars 2 expansions—where we might go, what mysteries we might solve, what enemies we might fight. It was my longest post yet, but the effort ended up being worth it, as it's actually become my top-performing post, which is something I certainly wasn't expecting at all.
Though I say this in basically every post, one of my primary motivations for making these and for sharing them on the subreddit is to spark conversation and discussion about the game—and this article was a bit less of a spark and a bit more of a bonfire. There are nearly 300 comments on the Reddit post of discussion, various other players' own theories and future hopes, and quite a lot of people who obviously didn't read the article and were just responding to the question posed by its title.
That last category aside, I wanted to make a post dedicated to responding to many of these comments in detail, similar to the follow-up I made previously for my post about the DRMs. I'll share some of the more interesting or frequently-mentioned ideas, critique them, and provide some answers and clarifications for some of the questions, misconceptions, and questionable takes found throughout the comments.
Before we get started, I'd like to make it clear that me correcting or disagreeing with one of the commenters isn't an invitation for other people to go track down their comment and harass them. Cyberbullying is uncool, and people are entitled to having their own opinions, even if they're misinformed or wrong.
God Stuff (and Menzies Stuff)
The top comment on the post proposes that we have an expansion dealing with various plot points related to the Six Human Gods. It reads as follows:
"Based on the Mists focus of SoTO and JW, I'm guessing the next xpack will be about the gods: Location Dzalana, Braham is the major companion(like Zojja in SoTO or Caithe in JW), Will cover the Harpies, and their lore being fallen servant of Dyawna, Badguy possibly Menzies, Lyssa will be there, will explain why she was helping Balthazar, Lore behind what destroyed the original human homeworld, Lore behind where did the gods actually go."
This ended up as the top comment for a reason. Veteran players have been proposing variations of a God-centered expansion for years, and those suggestions only increased in number once the new content model was revealed, making it actually plausible that we could get such an expansion.
There are some interesting notes when it comes to this particular variation of the idea. Focusing on Harpies is a fun idea, given how little lore we've received for them since core. As several other commenters pointed out on the post, singling Braham out as the main companion for a God expansion is a bit odd, given Kasmeer is the obvious top choice.
This commenter brings up Menzies as the potential villain. In case you don't know, Menzies is a character from the original Guild Wars. He's Balthazar's half-brother, who was fighting an eternal war with him in the Mists; the shadow monsters we encounter in Dragonfall are actually a portion of his army. There are various credible theories that Menzies is related to or directly responsible for the reappearance of the titans in Janthir Wilds. Menzies was actually brought up in a few other comments, as well.
"I'm pretty sure we'll continue where [Janthir Wilds] cuts off, with the reveal of the baddie behind the Titan outbreak (Probably Menzies) - and maybe something else God-related."
I expressed mixed feelings on this sentiment. On one hand, the new expansion model has shown that new expansions are still very interconnected, despite what many doomers would have you believe—the Kryptis invasion in SotO is the direct cause of the Tyrian Alliance forming, the Astral Ward continues to be a major force in the story, and the Eye of Janthir appeared in the fight against Eparch, implying a larger connection—and having the next expansion directly continue the story from JW's ending would align with that very well, and it would be a very effective way for the team to show that they learned the right lessons from SotO.
On the other hand, revealing Menzies to be the mastermind behind JW but not actually taking him out in this expac might be a bit anticlimactic, and it leaves me to wonder who the final boss would be instead. This isn't an impossible question to answer—it could be another titan or a Mursaat, who have been revealed via a teaser and blog post to be almost certainly present in Bava Nisos—but it is an important one to ask nonetheless.
I have my own idea for how this could play out in a satisfying way: Menzies is the final boss of JW, but he wins. Similar to our early encounters with his brother in PoF, our fight against Menzies could, after a long and great struggle, end as a scripted loss. Perhaps to keep it from feeling frustrating or cheap, we could succeed in stopping some evil plan of his—perhaps destroy whatever he's using to make titans—but allow him to escape in the end. Ending the story on a loss would be a very unique and poignant plot beat, and it would certainly build hype for the next expansion, giving players an inherent motivation to buy the next release so they can get their revenge.
Another commenter included this idea in their message, which I find very interesting:
"If I had to guess, we'll probably be chasing Menzies (presumed person behind it all) to locations to further other plotlines before making our way there."
The idea of a "Core Tyria wrap-up" is something I posed in my original article, and something that several other commenters suggested in the comments. We have actually had a release cycle in the past that followed this premise, to a degree: Living World Season 3, where we got to explore various locations across Tyria and solve some smaller problems while our main focus was on chasing down Balthazar. Repeating the same thing with his half-brother would be kind of hilarious, and it would provide a perfect opportunity to revisit Core Tyria.
You could even expand this idea to incorporate one of my suggestions from the article, having Menzies be a mastermind manipulating various lesser antagonist factions to slow us down or get us off his trail. This could even continue the running plotline of the Commander's recent characterization and their friction with Isgarren—perhaps he (and/or the world leaders of the Alliance) insist that we focus solely on hunting Menzies, while the Commander refuses, choosing to "save the farm" and help out the people threatened by each of these smaller factions.
Whether we're visiting Dzalana, Xotecha, or one of the Gods' domains, venturing into the Realm of Torment to take the fight to Menzies, or chasing him around Tyria, I think a future expansion focusing on the Gods and/or Menzies to some degree is very likely, especially with how popular a suggestion it is among longtime fans.
Depths of Tyria, Fractals of... Also Tyria
"Depths of Tyria. Exploring the old asuran civilisation, re-uniting the fractal dwarves with their surviving stone-kin, and discovering the asura who remained behind in the depths."
"I want the next expansion to be about going back to the original underground home of the Asura before they were driven out by Primordis. I would love a massive underground map."
"Haven't had much Asura focus since HoT. Would be nice to have one about reclaiming old Asuran cities since Primordus is gone."
Wow, everyone, that's an amazing idea! Man, it's so good, I can't believe I didn't think to dedicate an entire section of the original article to discussing it! oh, wait, I did. I mean, even this guy basically just restates one of my main criteria for plausible theories:
"This is my bet as well, because I think they're settling into a pattern of taking an existing mastery and building on top of it rather than adding more mastery tools."
All jokes aside, it's not like I'm genuinely upset by these comments—even if it's blatantly obvious they didn't read the article at all, they did still participate in the discussion, which was my main goal. That said, there are some interesting additions to discuss here.
That first comment brings up the idea of reuniting the dwarves from the Droknar's Light fractal with the stone dwarves of Tyria, and that is a genuinely interesting idea that I didn't consider in my original article. This idea stretches beyond just the dwarves, in fact—while we brushed past it pretty quickly, given we had a more pressing Kryptis invasion to focus on, what happened to the people in Skywatch Archipelago is a real tragedy. We basically took a bunch of echoes who didn't really "exist" and pulled them into reality, turning them into real people who realistically need to be housed somewhere other than a bunch of unstable fractal islands.
In response to some discussion about a depths expansion, one commenter said the following:
"By that point I think most of the people would agree an expanded Icebrood Saga under the mini-expansion model would be a better alternative than a new storyline. Just go back and give Primordus the screen time he deserves."
I have to disagree that most people would agree with that—and, also, I disagree with that, so let's talk about why. First, the logistics of working with this type of story would be incredibly difficult. We already fought and killed Primordus, so you'd either be directly retconning a major event—not just background lore, but an actual major story mission that concluded IBS—or implanting new story into the space between the start of Champions and the finale of Dragonstorm. In both cases, we'd be going back in time—Primordus 100% has to be dead for the story of EoD to happen as it did, which it did, so even if we retcon part of Champions we'd be going backwards in the timeline. Players will naturally be confused as to why we've cut back to a previous point in the timeline, and why we're dedicating a whole year of expansion story to somebody we already killed.
This is where the logistical issues meet more basic issues: what the hell would we even do for a whole Primordus expansion? He's by far the least interesting Dragon in terms of his personality and his powers & minions. How would the story end? Would it literally just cut to Dragonstorm again? Would we retcon that event entirely to replace it with a new fight? Would we somehow stick an encounter with just Primordus into the timeline somewhere before Dragonstorm? This entire premise is just incredibly messy, and for very little payoff. I do think it's a shame that Primordus was scammed out of the screentime and developments he deserved as an Elder Dragon, but we need to let sleeping Dragons lie; there's really no point in trying to go back and rewrite history.
There is one idea, however, that could allow Primordus to return to the story in an interesting way that doesn't completely destroy the timeline and any sense of coherence in the story: fractals. EoD made it very clear that there are hundreds of echoes of everyone out there in the fractals, and SotO showed us that it's possible to pull fractals into reality and make them "real" with enough wizard bullshittery. Theoretically, an echo of Primordus—or any past antagonist you really want to see again—could be summoned into reality by a future antagonist. Now, would ArenaNet ever do a plot like this? I kind of doubt it, but you never know.
I Hate to Break it to You, But We Aren't Getting Guild Wars 3 Any Time Soon
"I feel like whatever it is, it will be built around some sort of hall of monuments concept with GW3 looming"
"I also have a feeling it will lead into gw3 a portal to follow aurene"
"imo there shouldnt be another expansion and the next major plot should be GW3"
This seems to be a very common misconception among the community as a whole, so I wanted to dedicate an entire section to this and make this point very clear: we aren't getting a Guild Wars 3 any time soon.
Firstly, there isn't actually any indication that ArenaNet or NCSoft have any intention of ever making a GW3, period. GW2 is a game that thrives off of horizontal progression, with most of its rewards being skins, titles, achievements, and the like; making a new game, and thus divorcing your playerbase from the last decade of hard-earned rewards, is a good way to lose a lot of players. I can pretty confidently say that I, personally, would continue to play GW2 as my main game even after a sequel was released, and there are no doubt many other players who feel the same way. The idea that there "needs" to be a GW3, or that GW2 is on its way out and will naturally require a sequel soon to keep the franchise running, has no basis in reality; it's just the word of doomers who've been saying the same things since PoF, convinced that the game is unsuccessful or dying because they personally don't like its design as a whole and/or the direction of recent expansions.
"What about the leak?" That's a genuinely good question, so let's address it. Last year, there was a big hubbub because an NCSoft executive dropped the name "Guild Wars 3" at a shareholder meeting. There was no official announcement or anything of the sort—just a term thrown out at a meeting in order to impress rich investors. ArenaNet addressed the rumors at the time, stating they were not aware of nor were they working on any project for Guild Wars 3. It's very possible that there was never any real plan for a Guild Wars 3, or that if there was, it was in very early conceptual stages and not in actual development—if the latter is the case, it's also possible those ideas could have been shelved or abandoned for a variety of reasons. All this is to say, the leak isn't exactly a reliable source.
One commenter replied to one of the above quotes; I'll include only a portion of their retort here, but they did a very good job putting into words one of the many issues with the common ideas regarding GW3:
"Let's say for the sake of argument that Arenanet's current unannounced project is indeed GW3 and thus is an MMORPG. Let's say it is in development since around the first relevant job posts so 3.5 years ago. I am ever the optimist here, let's say full development will take 6 years and everything is going fine and dandy, so game will release 2.5 years from now, so 2027 August. Even with the current plan of them releasing one more GW2 mini expac, that lasts till 2026 May with quarterly updates and everything. So that would mean a 15 month of GW content drought, right?"
Even with very generous assumptions and estimates, GW3's development wouldn't finish for several years; we already know for a fact we're getting another expansion after JW, and even in this very generous estimate, there'd likely be yet another after that before GW3's release. Of course, I need to be very clear that this is all an incredibly unlikely estimate based primarily on the assumption that ANet's "secret project" is GW3, which it almost certainly isn't.
If we were to instead assume that development on GW3 began immediately after the leak—also a very generous estimate—and that it only takes somewhere between 4-6 years to develop (possible for a game of its assumed size, but also a very generous number as it could very easily take much longer), then we wouldn't be seeing it until around 2030. With every generous assumption and estimate, we still have 5 years—and, thus, 5 yearly expansions—before we could possibly see GW3.
So, let's summarize: there's no solid indication that there ever will be a GW3, and even if there will be, we won't be seeing it for years at the least. As a community, we need to stop operating under the assumption that GW2 is on its way out and/or that GW3 is coming soon; neither of those statements are true in the slightest.
Underwater Combat? More Like Discontinued Game Mechanic
"I wouldn't say no to an underwater expansion. Give us a reason to actually do more underwater content."
"The Thousand Seas Pavillion has an interesting facet that hasn't gone anywhere: An underwater golem set for practicing underwater combat. With SotO and Janthir fleshing out what GW2 can do with variable water levels, it stands to reason that we will eventually get a big underwater combat revamp and with it a good underwater-centric set of maps."
"I would like a underwater theme expansion but with limited underwater content."
"Still waiting for an underwater expansion into the Unending Ocean where we get to see the Largos in more detail, (and of course giving underwater combat some much needed TLC)."
"I really wish they'd do something underwater. They completely dropped underwater content but I think there's a ton of stuff they could still do with it."
The idea of an underwater-focused expansion is a very popular one. Not only is the monster in the ocean depths a fascinating mystery, and not only is the ocean home to one of the most secretive and intriguing races in the game's lore, the Largos, but underwater gameplay itself is a very unique aspect of Guild Wars 2 that's been all but abandoned since Core Tyria; it's only natural that many players would want to see it fleshed out and iterated on, and an underwater expansion provides the perfect opportunity to update underwater systems while also addressing the various secrets hidden in the ocean trenches.
While I did discuss the possibility of an oceanic story in my original article, I didn't give it its own section, as I didn't find the idea of an entirely underwater expansion likely; instead, I looked for ways that the idea could be roped into another expansion idea, allowing only a portion of the expansion to be dedicated to actual underwater content.
The reasoning behind this is pretty clear, and even expressed in one of the quotes above from a commenter: many players are interested in the themes and lore of the ocean, but don't actually have any interest in doing a large amount of underwater content. While I have full faith that underwater content could be amazing with a few significant tweaks, building an entire expansion on that assumption would be a risky move for ArenaNet. Many players might refuse to engage with an underwater-focused expansion, which would be a huge loss; furthermore, if the changes they did make to underwater content weren't enough to satisfy most players, they'd be stuck in a losing battle for an entire development cycle.
I could go at length about the various issues with underwater content and how it could be improved, but that seems more like a topic for another post.
Things That Are Not Expansion Story Ideas
There were some responses that focused more on the types of content or features they'd like to see in future expansions rather than the story or general concept for the expansion itself. I believe these are worth responding to as well, but as they are a step removed from the main point of this and the original article, I'll group them all together here.
New Races and Classes
"But in my ideal world, setting aside actual likelihood, it would be the Dominion of Winds and playable tengu, or the deep ocean and playable largos."
"Still hoping for something to the effect of; [...] Addition of Tengu & Largos as playable race, Ritualist & Monk somehow are added to the game, along with Fist Weapon type."
"Old forgotten lands where the ritualist class will be back in the game"
"Do you think Dervich or paragon will come to live?[sic]"
People have been asking fro playable Tengu and Largos for as long as I can remember, and the same goes for the professions that didn't make the jump from the original Guild Wars to GW2—paragons, dervishes, monks, and ritualists.
It's been said many times by many people, but the possibility of us ever getting a new race are slim to none. A new race means re-recording over a decade's worth of voicelines—twice—and potentially refitting over a decade's worth of armor skins to a new model. This alone is enough to make it a no-go, but it fails to account for the incredible number of other logistical issues. How would the Commander being a Largos or Tengu impact the story? Will they need to go through and add small dialogue changes to ten years of story content like there are for the other races, or will they just awkwardly leave it all unchanged? Will they create a new Personal Story for the new races, or will they simply not have one? Will the new races come with capital cities and leveling maps, or will they be awkwardly inconsistent with the others? Most of these issues aren't deal-breakers on their own, but they add to the necessary workload and make the idea overall less appealing.
New playable classes, while still unlikely, lack a lot of these foundational issues. They'd only need to record a small number of combat and skill voicelines for each race, and the class's impact on the story is much smaller. While it would be a bit odd to play, say, a ritualist in pre-EoD content, we actually have a precedent for this type of oddity with revenants, as they don't canonically exist in-universe at all until HoT, but the class can be used in the personal story. In general, the inconsistencies a new class might have with old content and/or other classes feels a lot easier to handwave than inconsistencies with a new race.
The real issue with adding a new class is figuring out where they fit into GW2's existing build ecosystem. With 9 classes each with 3 elite specs already, most unique roles in the game are filled. The monk's healing skills and the paragon's shouts and spear skills are already distributed among all of the existing classes, which would make it difficult to give either of them a unique skillset. While ritualists are very unique thematically, the role of minion-conjuring is already filled by both necromancers and mesmers, and the concept of summoning spirits in particular is covered by rangers.
Of the old classes, I believe dervishes are the most likely to make a return, as their enchantments and scythe skills could grant them a genuinely unique skillset that fits in with the other classes. The one issue with them is how their scythes would be handled. Scythes could potentially be added as a new weapon—if the dervish was the main new feature of the expansion, perhaps every class would get a set of scythe skills just like the spear in JW?—or they could be handled as a visual effect, similar to how the reaper spec replaces its actual equipped weapon with a scythe when entering its shroud.
Core Overhaul
"Core game overhaul"
"100% unironically this. Polish the zones of the original game, remake the Personal Story removing all of the filler, and turn Zhaitan's encounter into an open world meta event."
"Half of the expansion can be free content, then they can add new stuff like new weapons, a new playable race, hard mode, whatever, and make that be behind the paywall."
This is an issue I'm mixed on. On one hand, I would absolutely love for the team to spend some time overhauling the more dated aspects of the core game—fix some mount-unfriendly geometry in Core Tyria, rework some events and hearts so the game has a built-in tutorial, give the Personal Story missions and dungeons some modern polish and bugfixes, give us a real Zhaitan fight, all that good stuff. On the other hand, I seriously doubt we'll ever actually get this, and I believe the team trying to do this in place of a real expansion would spell disaster.
First, let's talk money. This suggestion sparked a bit of an argument in the comments, and one commenter posted this in support of their claims:
"The core of the game's finances run on microntransactions, for all we know whole game could go F2P tomorrow and make more money than it does now."
While it is true that microtransactions from the gem store make up a significant portion of GW2's earnings, the rest of this statement is laughably false and speaks to a severe lack of understanding of game development in general, as well as GW2's own history. We know that expansion sales make up a necessary portion of GW2's profits—while there's never been an official statement regarding it, it can be inferred rather easily that the Living World system, which allowed players to claim new releases for free if they were actively playing, was a major financial drain on the team, and likely one of the main motivations for the swap to the new release format.
We also already got to see how the community reacted to a release cycle dedicated to old content. Following EoD's release, the team got to work rebuilding Living World Season 1 nearly from scratch, reimplementing content that hadn't been playable since the event almost a decade ago. Many players expressed misgivings with this period, upset that the team was "wasting time" with "old" content—and this was despite the fact that they were adding a ton of functionally new events and story missions. Imagine how much worse the backlash could be if the team dedicated a year, or even just a quarter, to improving core systems without adding anything new.
All that said, I definitely do want to see various core game improvements make their way into future development plans. I sincerely believe that certain issues—such as the Zhaitan "fight"—serve as real quitting points for new players, and that other changes, such as revamped dungeons or better open-world tutorialization, would have huge positive impacts on the game as a whole. These are not changes that the dev team have the luxury of dedicating sole focus to, however; they are things we can only hope will release alongside the primary new content that actually makes them money.
A PvP or WvW Expansion
"Wvw and Pvp. Micdrop."
"Make a PvP expansion. Give us a Mortal Kombat arc or something and breathe life into PvP."
"Hey, this is an idea for a new expansion! Why is it included under the "things that are not expansion ideas" header?" That's a good question, but actually it isn't, and I think the answer is kind of self-evident.
I do not personally play a lot of PvP or WvW—I'd even go far as to say that I despise the time I'm forced to spend in the latter. Even so, I have all the respect in the world for the people who do primarily enjoy those gamemodes. I can recognize that both competitive gamemodes have been the victims of neglect at the hands of their creators, and I'd go so far as to say that the players of those gamemodes are entitled to more and better content, just as PvE players are. I will absolutely advocate on behalf of those playerbases.
With all that said, a PvP-focused expansion is perhaps the most self-evidently stupid suggestion I've ever seen for this game. I am kind of impressed, to a degree.
The PvP and WvW communities make up only a small portion of the GW2 playerbase. The vast majority of players are (casual) PvE players. This presents core issue number 1: the majority of players would have little to no interest in a PvP-focused expansion. Some commenters suggested the new PvP updates could include PvE elements, such as bosses designed to be soloed. While this would help, at the end of the day the result would just be that the majority of the playerbase receive less content for no benefit to them.
Now, core issue number 2: how the hell would this make money? Seriously, think about it. WvW and PvP are entirely encapsulated in the core game, with the only impacts new expansions have on them generally being the addition of new specs or other features (such as relics) that allow for new builds. Let's say a new PvP-focused expansion added a new WvW borderland and a bunch of new PvP maps. Would it just be lumped into the rest of the game, thus losing ANet a bunch of money developing something just to give it away for free? Or would it be awkwardly sequestered behind a paywall, dividing these gamemodes—which already suffer from diminishing player counts—into those who do and don't own the expansion?
While I could probably go on about this idea in more detail, I think the main point is clear: this is a terrible idea, and it'll never happen. I do hope they give you competitive players something to actually chew on sometimes soon, though.
Conclusion
And that's about everything I really wanted to comment on. There were some really great and interesting suggestions among the comments, some really terrible ones, and even an excuse for me to rant about the whole GW3 misconception. As seems to just inherently be the case with these sorts of follow-up posts, this was a lot less coherent than my proper articles, but there was a lot of interesting stuff to discuss here, so I'm glad to have gotten it out.
Do you have any additional ideas that weren't covered in this, the previous article, or the comments? Any further thoughts on what's discussed here? Speak your mind in the comments, and maybe I'll make a follow-up to this follow-up (this is a joke, I will not do this).
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