ArenaNet’s Mike O’Brien appears to be continuing his shakeup of Guild Wars 2 with today’s forum post on the planned spring update. Pushing past the legendary weapon controversy, he outlines three of the big changes coming to the game.
First, fractal tiering is due for alteration, and some fractal-related achievements will be retired and replaced.
Second, scribing costs will be heavily revised and reduced:
“We’ll reduce material costs on recipes: for example the Basic Ink Set will no longer require a Simple Ink Set, and each Sandpaper recipe will now require less Sand. Reducing the demand for basic materials will reduce their prices. We’ll add significant new supplies of Resonating Slivers, so that they no longer serve as a barrier to scribes who don’t have a guild supporting them. And we’ll increase drop rates of certain other components.”
Finally, O’Brien says ANet is planning to bring back the Alpine borderlands by popular request — but it won’t happen in time for the quarterly release. “Instead we’ll launch the quarterly update with improvements to Desert, use that as an opportunity to get the community’s feedback on those changes, then we’ll swap to Alpine when it’s ready,” he explains. “Changing borderlands maps like this will disrupt matches in progress, but we think that making changes on live servers, where everyone can test, is worth the cost.”
