Just a few weeks ago, ArenaNet stunned Guild Wars 2 players with the news that in addition to a post-End of Dragons living story season and expansion in the more distant future, the game will see the restoration of 2013’s living world season one in proper permanent episodic format over the course of 2022. The first episode, Flame and Frost, is to roll out on April 19th, and it’s the subject of the studio’s blog post today.
“As originally released, Living World Season 1 wasn’t designed to fit within the Story Journal, so we’ve restructured the content to feel more natural alongside our modern content,” ArenaNet explains. “These old instances didn’t need to be played in a specific order, so we wanted to make sure that Season 1 felt playable in a more linear fashion. We’ve also made small, impactful adjustments to make the story feel complete and fleshed out given these changes. Our standard of storytelling has evolved over the last ten years, so we’ve taken this opportunity to edit some of the older text and add some additional lore books in Episode 1 to meet our current standards and characterization.”
Worth noting here is that these episodes will be free for all core players, meaning you won’t need to log in to claim them or buy them if you miss them as we have for past episodic content.
The blog post concludes with a treat for End of Dragons endgamers, as the challenge mode for the Aetherblade Hideout strike mission will also release on the 19th.
