Guild Wars 2 has been talking a lot about updating and streamlining its various features and game modes. Sadly, it looks like at least one of those modes is going to have to wait a bit longer.
Colin Johanson, game director at Arenanet, went onto the forums to give an update on the progress being made on their hopeful updates and improvements to their World vs World PvP system. The purpose of the forum visit seems primarily to head off likely disappointment, as he very quickly stated in no uncertain terms that the anticipated WvW updates will not be implemented until March.
His reasoning was that the system itself is complicated, with some of the eventual improvements being capable of wide-spread mayhem if implemented improperly or without thorough bug-testing.
The positive side of the forum announcement is that he listed out many of the features that Arenanet is hoping to incorporate when they do manage to get their World vs World system updated.
So what’s in March?
A new progression/ranking system will be implemented, with titles readily visible to other players and specific abilities and benefits players can earn as they increase their WvW rank.
They’re hoping to have a better build for their loading software as well, to allow for Guild Wars 2 to display more characters at once and actually apply names to more of them at a time. This follows along with their long-term goal of eventually being able to remove culling altogether.
Incentives for actually doing well in PvP beyond the weekly WvW score are also in the works, including giving more immediate benefits to reward temporary successes. They’ll also be seeing about some progression rewards that are more in-line with the equivalent PvE progression benefits.
Other than those updates, they’re mostly working to polish the total experience and come up with new ways to introduce players who’ve not yet tried it. More details and information will be made available as 2013 continues regarding the future of World vs World in Guild Wars 2.
