Furbish up your “Fashion Wars” jokes, friends, because Guild Wars 2 is leaning hard into it. This morning, ArenaNet announced that this week’s update (dropping April 16th) will “help level the playing field for new and aspiring fashionistas” by way of an inspect feature, so you can finally figure out what the people standing at the bank are wearing.
“After countless requests and much anticipation, the stage is finally set for a revolution in Tyria’s fashion scene with the introduction of cosmetic inspection! In tomorrow’s release you’ll find a new option titled ‘Inspect Cosmetics’ in the context menu (accessed by right-clicking on another player’s portrait). Selecting this option will pop open a new panel that allows you to view that player’s equipped outfit, weapon, and armor cosmetic appearances and their associated dye choices. This dialog can also be opened by entering the “/inspect” chat command with another player targeted. You’ll notice that some items have been updated with text that outlines how that item can be obtained, and we’ll be adding even more source descriptions in coming releases.”
ArenaNet does note that you won’t be able to see weapon types in PvP, and the system won’t give detailed info on attributes, rarity, or upgrades at all.
We’re getting more than this in tomorrow’s patch, of course; although ArenaNet hasn’t hyped it, Super Adventure Box launches tomorrow with “updated rewards and some additions to the World 3 Test Zone” per the February roadmap.
The devs also discuss plans for continuing texture compression under DX11. “One of the engine improvements we’re working on right now is an upgrade to BC7 texture compression, a significant jump over the technology that we’ve been leveraging since the launch of the game,” the studio says. “This will improve the clarity and fidelity of in-development and future textures, most notably for weapons, visual effects, environments, and creatures. In the longer term, we’ll be evaluating the feasibility of upgrading existing, already-shipped textures to BC7 compression, but there are some technical hurdles for us to overcome before we commit.”
ArenaNet ends the blog with a teaser pic for the 2024 expansion, and good luck guessing; we’re thinking it looks like Charr homeland stuff, but it could really be almost anywhere.
