So, how well did Secrets of the Obscure do for Guild Wars 2? We’re not getting hard numbers in ArenaNet’s blog post this afternoon (unsurprisingly), but the team does say that it performed “even better than expected,” as “so many people turned up to play SOTO on launch day that [it] had to quickly spin up more game servers than [it]’d anticipated needing to accommodate the influx of players.”
All those hungry players will want to know what’s next for the MMO, and the studio is delivering that too. Notably, Fractal Rush is running right now, then GW2 will see continuing triage for SOTO issues on September 26th, followed by the expected profession balancing patch and festival (Halloween, we assume, this time), all in the run up to the first of three post-SOTO quarterly patches. That update, incidentally, is now just two months out.
On the downside – or upside, depending on your view – is that the studio says it won’t beta test WvW alliances this year, in favor of finishing the world restructuring project first.
“Up until recently, we have been considering the Alliance management UI a required part of shipping the World Restructuring system, which means that players are not currently getting much value from all of the work we have already put in. Many of the backend functions for balance and matchmaking already work at the WvW guild level. It’s extremely valuable for us to get consistent live data from players about how it’s working for them, so getting that system permanently online is now our first priority. With the reprioritizing, we will not be opening the Alliances system to beta testing this year. We will refocus on delivering an always-on version of World Restructuring to players as soon as possible. From there we want to evaluate the new player experience, collect your feature requests, and monitor live data to allow us to make World Restructuring the best system that it can be. One major priority in the perpetually active version of World Restructuring is growing and tuning the various criteria we use for matchmaking to create our WvW teams. Our goal here is to build a system with enjoyable experiences across a variety of player types so matchups feel as rewarding as possible. We don’t have a timeline to share now, but we’ll keep you updated.”
Incidentally, ArenaNet invited players to pitch new bonus events for the event rotation in the future.
