It has been 2 years since ArenaNet launched their last major expansion to their fantasy MMORPG, Guild Wars 2, followed by the addition of Living World Season 3 a year later as well as the conversion of the core game from buy-to-play to a free-to-play model much like other games online like free play bingo. The free to play version of Guild Wars 2 comes with some restrictions (mostly chat restrictions) and other improvements though. In a live stream done by ArenaNet last August 1, 2017, they announced their new expansion, “Path of Fire” which was released last September 22, 2017.
The story of Path of Fire is set in the Crystal Desert and Elona (for those familiar with the name, you may have heard it from playing Guild Wars 1: Nightfall) and takes place after their previous victory over Mordremoth in the Maguuma Jungle. The fallen god of war Balthazar is on the loose and it is up to the heroes of Tyria to search and spoil his plan in hunting the other elder dragons.
I do feel that the story doesn’t live up as well as it should, it ends on a cliffhanger pretty much which is to be continued in the upcoming Living World Season 4 (TBA). It does have some good storytelling parts but it just didn’t feel like Balthazar was that much of a threat than Mordremoth. The number of characters that accompany you are also smaller compared to the previous stories which helps develop the characters and what their purposes are for joining the player.
The Crystal desert is split up into 5 maps which is probably the best map addition the game has had so far, learning from the nauseating design of the Maguuma Jungles, ArenaNet has focused on making the new maps feel more open which may be due to the the other feature which is the implementation of mounts.
Over the course of the story, you will be able to obtain most of the mounts and you will need to get some mastery points and do some events in order to level your “Mastery” in order to get more out of your mounts. Each mount has 1 attack to engage combat and a movement skill that immensely help the player traverse all the maps (with some restrictions on different locations). This game by far, was the best implementation of mounts as not only are they for display purposes, they actually have specific uses, getting full mastery for each mount also does not take a long amount of time.
The game introduces 9 new elite specializations for each of the 9 classes:
- Revenants gain access to the Renegade and the Shortbow weapon
- Guardians gain access to the Firebrand and the Axe weapon
- Warriors gain access to the Spellbreaker and the Dagger dual-wielding
- Engineers gain access to the Holosmith and the One-handed Sword
- Rangers gain access to the Soulbeast and the Dagger dual-wielding
- Thieves gain access to the Deadeye and the Rifle weapon
- Elementalists gain access to the Weaver and the One-handed Sword
- Mesmers gain access to the Mirage and the Axe weapon
- Necromancers gain access to the Scourge and offhand Torch weapon
Each class gets their own specific mechanic that adds more choices in terms of play-style for each players, with the Soulbeast being able to absorb their pets to access different skills and buffs while the Scourge allows Necromancers to trade their “Shroud” ability in favor of summoning “Shades” that buff or inflict debuffs on their enemies. Their is also a new “Barrier” mechanic that are available for some of the new specializations as well as access to new traits and skills.
While it always is a welcome addition for the game to have more elite specializations it does feel that the team should have balanced each class more carefully as there were some reports of some specific specializations being overpowered while some do feel under-powered which doesn’t encourage the players to use the new weapons that were unlocked for the new specialization (IE. Sword for Weavers), some nerfs had already been implemented (Firebrands being tuned since someone posted 49k burn ticks). There are some websites and guilds that indicate the numbers of the classes that are considered best for certain situations (aka “Meta”) which may force players to play a specific build, it does however help them as well since they will be learning some other spec that they were not used to before.
One of the noticeable changes however was the implementation of “Bounties”, which are bosses scattered around the different maps that range from champions to legendary bounties that is better done with a group. Unfortunately, there are no dungeons, fractals or raids added which does raise some concern as to the life of the expansion as Living World isn’t exactly “paid” content as ArenaNet allows players to get the whole series usually just by logging in and the MMO community usually expects these content to be in the game or at least even a part of a raid and the devs don’t seem to have any plans so far regarding this issue.
I do think that ArenaNet does need to review most of their content, especially with the tuning of all classes, events and the grind. The games doesn’t make you feel about the grind but when you do reach 80, be ready to sink those hours, not to mention that “legendary” armors require materials that can only be obtained in specific content (which deviates a bit from their former statements). There are some “meta” events from the expansion that needs intense tuning such as “Serpents’ Ire”, and maybe a specific story boss encounter.