How Would A Guild Wars 2 Expansion Work?

Hello all! During your break in helping to save citizens from the utter carnage in Lion’s Arch, I’d like to drop this question onto you: How would a Guild Wars 2 expansion work? I’m hoping we’ll hear something about expansions if ArenaNet are at PAX East this year. Before discussing GW2 expansion possibilities, let’s first look at GW1‘s expansions.

Guild Wars 1 Expansions

You could say there are two types of “expansions”. The first type of expansion is the campaign. There are three GW1 campaigns: Prophecies (The very first GW1 campaign) for the continent of Tyria, Factions for Cantha and Nightfall for Elona. They act like traditional expansions but the interesting part is that each campaign could be played as a standalone title.

The second type of expansion is the traditional kind. There was only one boxed expansion called Eye of the North. You have the traditional expansion stuff like skills, quests, dungeons and, in GW1‘s case, hero mercenaries. You needed at least one of the three campaigns to play EotN. Other than that there was a Bonus Mission Pack players could buy online and a few free content updates collectively called Guild Wars Beyond.

Possible Guild Wars 2 Professions and Races

Assuming ArenaNet go more the traditional route for expansions, there are a few races that exist in the world of Tyria that could become playable in the future. I see Tengu coming as a possible future race first, especially if Cantha comes out. The Kodan are another possible race that players have brought up. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of visual diversity between each Kodan in my opinion so ArenaNet may needed to work on that a bit.

New weapons, skills and professions are pretty much a given for expansion material. For now, let’s look at the remaining GW1 professions ArenaNet didn’t use for launch to be possibly brought into GW2:

• GW1 Dervishes are basically devoted priests to the Six Human Gods. The other races don’t pray to these gods, especially the Charr. So the lore would have to be worked out somehow to bring in the profession.
• GW2 Monks I can see as more melee/fighting type of monk rather than the healing type.
• GW1 Assassins are pretty much GW2 Thieves.
• GW1 Ritualists and Paragons share some similarities to GW2 Mesmers and Guardians respectively and are different from the norm profession-wise in MMO games. A rework would probably be in order.

Tell Me A Story ArenaNet

Let’s talk a bit about personal story. The Zhaitan fight at the end of GW2 personal story wasn’t that great in my opinion. Based on my experience in GW1, I was hoping for a more of an engaging fight against Zhaitan but I didn’t feel that at all. Also, I felt as if I was a secondary character in my personal story after Traherne was the designated as the “chosen one”. For personal story I feel that you, the player, should be an important center piece of the history taking place. I think being more of an observer of history in the making is better suited for living story.

Speaking of living story, I think that’s the hardest part of making a GW2 expansion. Love it or hate it, living story is going to stick around; at least for another season. If an expansion comes out, how does living story work? I’d assume that each continent would have it’s own living story. If that’s the case, then would that be too much living story for a player to do for all the achievements? Is their any interconnection between expansions and the base game for living story? If so, by how much since not everyone will necessary buy the expansions. There’s quite a lot of factors ArenaNet have to consider.

So I dropped a few concerns and possibilities I have for expansions, how about you? What would you like to see in a Guild Wars 2 expansion? You probably have an idea or two, or seven. So by all means, share them in the comments below!