The first major update for Guild Wars 2®: Visions of Eternity™ is on its way and coming with it are a new raid encounter as well as major updates for raids and the raid encounters formerly known as Strike Missions. Our goal with all of these is to unify Guild Wars 2‘s challenging instanced endgame content while making it easier to navigate. We introduced some of our thinking behind this change shortly before the expansion launched, which you can read here, and now we’re ready to share some additional details.

Starting with the upcoming release, Strike Missions will be known as raid encounters, and they will be available alongside raid wings in the Looking for Group panel as well as the new raid UI and every raid portal. Through the raid UI, squad leaders will be able to select which encounter to enter, including specific bosses of multi-encounter raid wings and all challenge modes. The UI will also track encounter clears for the week.

Squad leaders will also be able to move the squad directly between raid maps without first needing to exit a raid before entering a new one, leading to a more seamless experience with fewer loading screens!

From the raid UI, selecting Quickplay will allow you to enter the queue. When the queue completes and you accept the raid, you and your new squadmates will be transported into the raid. Nobody will be assigned a commander or lieutenant role by default, and all players will have the option to put down markers and start ready checks. All players in quickplay will have an effect applied that provides moderate bonuses to help groups succeed regardless of party composition. Upon successful completion of the encounter, you’ll be presented with the option to stay in your party and go to the Lion’s Arch Aerodrome or leave the party and return to the map you were in before entering.

Like the quickplay queue for Fractals of the Mists, the raid quickplay queue does not try to do any matchmaking for party composition. Likewise, it has also been curated to include encounters that pose a roughly similar challenge to randomly matched groups of players. At launch, that list will include:

• Aetherblade Hideout
• Whisper of Jormag
• Boneskinner
• Cosmic Observatory
• Temple of Febe
• Xunlai Jade Junkyard
• Old Lion’s Court
• Kaineng Overlook

Because of its newness, the new raid encounter will not be part of the quickplay pool and there is no bonus event planned for raid quickplay at its launch.

Rewards have been normalized across raid wings and encounters. This includes the conversion of Prophet Shards to Magnetite Shards; Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals will be the currency for raid rewards moving forward. To accommodate that change, the weekly cap for Magnetite Shards has been raised to 800.

Raid bosses have been grouped into five categories based on difficulty, and each boss in the same category will award the same amount of Magnetite Shards. The higher the difficulty, the more rewards! Quickplay raids provide reduced amounts of the same currency as their non-quickplay version. Additionally, the reward for raid encounters is now gated weekly to be consistent with raid wing bosses.

Three new raid-exclusive rewards, including a new Dhuum-themed skyscale skin, have been added to the raid system as part of this update. These are not locked behind the same weekly gate as other rewards. Separately, a new raid rewards vendor will offer both one-time and weekly items in exchange for raid currencies.

A new daily achievement category, Raid Boss Bounties, will highlight raid encounter and raid wing bosses for bonus daily rewards. The Raid God achievement and several other new raid achievements have been added, and updates have been made to several wings and encounters to create achievement parity, including mentor achievements for the raid wings that didn’t have one.

Raid achievements that are not associated with quickplay cannot be completed in quickplay raid encounters. However, two new quickplay-specific achievements have been added. There is a weekly achievement with rewards for completing up to 10 quickplay raids a week, plus a single-time multi-tier achievement for completing quickplay raids that awards new relics from the upcoming release.

We’re also thrilled to introduce new raid leaderboards for challenge mode completions! These are similar to those used for adventures and will display global top completion times as well as your own time for raid challenge mode.

Everything we discussed today and more will be shown in detail during our livestream this week! Tune in to our Twitch channel this Friday, January 23, at noon Pacific Time (UTC-8) to see it all for yourself, and then start getting ready; you’ll be able to put the new raid UI to the test and access an all-new raid encounter when the update lands on February 3! This will be followed three weeks later by a challenge mode.

We’re excited to have everyone jump in to experience quickplay and our other raid improvements. As always, let us know what you think on our official forums.

Good luck, and happy raiding!

Guild Wars® Reforged is now available to buy and play! We’re excited to be making new improvements to the adventure that started it all for us. This update makes entering the original Guild Wars story better than ever and extends new options for hardware compatibility to invite still more heroes into Tyria. For information on all the changes, read the full release notes for today’s update.

Beyond today’s update, Guild Wars Reforged represents our commitment to ongoing improvements for Guild Wars. You can read our original announcement for more context on this project and our partnership with 2weeks that is making it possible.

Stephen Clarke-Willson, the game director for Guild Wars, said, “The positive reception to the 20th Anniversary Masterpiece Collection reinforced our drive to keep this classic MMO thriving. As new players joined and experienced players rejoined the community, we discovered that people were playing on big-screen TVs and Steam Deck and other handheld devices, and so we decided to lean into supporting these playstyles fully with deep integration of controller support and big-screen TV support. Controller support has been a tough nut to crack for MMOs, and I think we dialed it in.”

If you’ve ever purchased a Guild Wars campaign, Guild Wars Reforged is waiting for you now, with quality-of-life improvements, graphical and audio updates, extended hardware support, and more. This updated edition makes all three campaigns for the original Guild Wars available at a new, discounted price, which means that anybody who has previously purchased any of the campaigns will now have access to all three. The Guild Wars : Eye of the North™ expansion and the Bonus Mission Pack are still available separately.

If you haven’t ever purchased a copy of Guild Wars before, Guild Wars Reforged is available now on our freshly updated official store and Steam pages. As you play Guild Wars® Reforged and earn various achievements and items, you’ll make progress in your Hall of Monuments—which will unlock rewards in Guild Wars 2®!

Please note: You’ll only be able to connect your Guild Wars Reforged and Guild Wars 2 accounts if you use the same log-in information (ArenaNet or Steam) for both. Because of that, we highly recommend that Guild Wars 2 players who log in to the game with their ArenaNet account purchase Guild Wars through our website, and that Guild Wars 2 players who log in to the game with their Steam account (which is different from merely having the game added to your library) purchase it through Steam. Visit our account-linking support article for more information.

It’s been a thrill to celebrate 20 years of Guild Wars this year, and we can’t wait to see what this new chapter brings.

It’s the coziest time in the Tyrian calendar—Wintersday has come again! From now until January 2, players of any level can enjoy partaking in traditional Wintersday games and entertainments while earning seasonal rewards. Check out the full release notes for all the details, and head to Divinity’s Reach in the game when you’re ready to experience the magic for yourself.

Wintersday activities award Wintersday gifts containing an assortment of holiday treats and surprises. Festival currency includes snowflakes, snow diamonds, and karma, which you can exchange for minis, new Wintersday-themed guild hall decorations, recipes, tonics, and more. New to the reward lineup this year is the chillingly cute Plush Jorms Backpack and the Mini Plush Tiger.

Winter Snow Goggles await all those who finish off the festival meta-achievement, and you can complete the refreshed annual meta-achievement or weekly achievements to earn your choice of a Sugardrift weapon.

The Wizard’s Vault also has new special objectives directing you toward all sorts of Wintersday activities. Earn that astral acclaim and collect your rewards!

A letter from Toymaker Tixx should already be in your in-game mailbox, offering a handy invitation that will teleport you straight to Divinity’s Reach. Portals in major cities like Lion’s Arch and Hoelbrak also lead to the bustling heart of the festival.

Visit locations marked by peppermint candies on your map to participate in Wintersday activities. Don’t forget to visit Wintersday trees and Toymaker Tixx himself each day to collect gifts.

You’ll also receive a letter from Orphan Laine, who needs your help with a scavenger hunt. The hunt will require you to travel to some areas intended for level-80 players, but once you’ve unlocked it, you can complete it at any time, even after Wintersday ends.

And for adventurers roaming Central Tyria, keep an eye out for enormous, mysterious presents that hide holiday surprises—and sometimes mischievous skritt!

Join the Bell Maestro in the enchanted snow globe for a collaborative rhythm game! Play iconic songs alongside fellow Tyrians to earn karma, Wintersday gifts, and more. Speak to the Bell Maestro near the Royal Terrace in Divinity’s Reach and enter the enchanted snow globe to take part!

Speak with the Charity Corps Seraph in the Crown Pavilion to purchase rolls of wrapping paper. These rolls can be combined with various items earned from Wintersday activities to create wrapped gifts. Give these gifts to orphans throughout Divinity’s Reach and get some well-earned karma for your good deeds.

Speed through the snowy streets of Divinity’s Reach in the mount race! Even if you don’t own a mount, you can rent a raptor for just 10 silver.

Enter a snow-covered battlefield for a capture-the-flag-style brawl. Choose your role—supporter, heavy gunner, or scout—and help your team collect Wintersday gifts to claim victory. Speak with the festive Lionguard near the Royal Terrace in Divinity’s Reach to enter and choose your role!

Assemble a squad and enter the portal southwest of the Crown Pavilion to take on Freezie himself! Heal his frozen heart in this epic Strike Mission, available to players at level 80.

Help Toymaker Tixx keep his workshop running smoothly in this dynamic dungeon. Team up and work together to tackle malfunctioning toys and haywire machinery. Enter Toymaker Tixx’s airship from the candy cane portal just west of the Crown Pavilion to assist the asura craftsman.

Team up with friends to defend Tixx’s gift dolyaks from waves of mischievous malfunctioning toys in this tower defense-style challenge. Speak to the toy captain just south of the Crown Pavilion in Divinity’s Reach to enter this game mode.

For jumping puzzle enthusiasts, Winter Wonderland offers a frosty challenge. Choose one of three paths, dodge exploding presents, and leap across melting snowflakes to claim your reward! Speak to the festive youth at the Crown Pavilion to enter.

As the nights grow longer and the temperatures drop, we have even more reason to be grateful for the things in our lives that bring us light and warmth. We remain deeply appreciative of the Guild Wars 2 community and all the joy you bring to us and to the world. May your time in Tyria ever feel like home, and may you make memories here that you cherish.

What better way to close out one year and celebrate the next than with an epic adventure? Our Year-End Sale features price reductions on past Guild Wars 2® expansions, plus the Complete Collection that bundles them together:

• Expansion 5—Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ (Standard & Deluxe Editions)—20% Off
• Expansion 4—Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure™ (Standard & Deluxe Editions)—30% Off
• Expansion 3—Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons® (Standard & Deluxe Editions)—40% Off
• Expansions 1 and 2—Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns® and Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire®—60% Off
• Guild Wars 2—The Elder Dragon Saga Complete Collection (Complete, Deluxe & Standard Editions)—50% Off

The sale will be available through the Guild Wars 2 store and third-party retailers from December 11 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific (UTC-8) until December 18 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific (UTC-8). It will also be available on the Epic Games Store from December 11 at 8 a.m. Pacific (UTC-8) until January 8, 2026 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific (UTC-8).

This sale is not currently available on Steam, but check back soon—Steam discounts begin December 18 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific (UTC-8).

Our expansion sales are also available from the following third-party retailers:

Americas:

• Amazon
• Level Up
• Nuuvem

Europe:

• Amazon UK, DE, ES, FR, IT
• Gameliebe (Germany)
• Gamecardsdirect (EUROPE)
• Gamecardsdirect (France)
• Gamecardsdirect (Netherlands)
• Key4you (Czech)

With the holiday season upon us, the studio is preparing to take a short break to recharge, spend time with our loved ones, and of course, complete our annual Wintersday achievements. Before we log off for the season, we want to take a moment to reflect on the year we’ve shared and express our gratitude for the incredible Guild Wars 2® community.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, and the release of Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity™, our sixth expansion, stands as one of the accomplishments we’re most proud of as a studio. The team poured their hearts into this release, and it’s been gratifying to see how strongly the community has responded to the changes and improvements we introduced with this expansion.

At this point in its release cycle, Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity has already outperformed Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ from a sales perspective, and the momentum from the expansion’s release has helped grow the game, generally speaking. In recent months, we’ve seen periods where more new players joined us than at any point since our 2022 Steam debut (which itself was a high-water mark). Veteran players have been returning in droves, and overall player activity is higher now than it has been in years. It’s been energizing to see momentum like this, and it’s exceeded our expectations in nearly every way.

This year also marked two big anniversaries for us—the 25th anniversary of ArenaNet and the 20th anniversary of the original Guild Wars®. Reaching those milestones while Guild Wars 2 itself is thriving feels especially significant. In celebration, we released a studio retrospective documentary in partnership with Second Wind, tracing our journey from the earliest days of ArenaNet to the world we build together today, a reminder of where we began and how far we’ve come. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it, you can check it out here.

At the same time, we announced Guild Wars Reforged, a renewed commitment to supporting the original Guild Wars game with a bundle that includes all three classic campaigns in a refreshed package with updated UI, modern platform support, and improved accessibility for returning and new players alike. It’s our way of honoring the legacy of the franchise and welcoming both veterans and fresh faces back to the world that started it all. You can learn more about Guild Wars Reforged here.

This year, we also explored new, bolder ways to introduce Guild Wars 2 to a wider audience. In June, we partnered with Summer Games Fest to showcase the game on one of the biggest stages in the industry, and just last week we premiered a new trailer during the preshow of The Game Awards, the premiere event in global gaming, reaching millions of viewers around the world. It was a proud moment for all of us and a wonderful opportunity to showcase Tyria on a truly global stage. If you missed it, you can watch the new trailer below:

Having those anniversaries, the documentary, and Guild Wars Reforged land during a year of resurgence, driven by Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity, makes this one of the most meaningful chapters in Guild Wars history. It reminds us: our story isn’t just about today, but about a legacy that continues to evolve.

To everyone experiencing Guild Wars Reforged or Guild Wars 2 for the first time, returning after time away, or continuing your long journey with us: thank you for making this world and this community feel so vibrant.

The team is hard at work on the upcoming quarterly releases for Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity, and we’ll be sharing more details, and our next quarterly roadmap, around the release of Quarterly Release 1 early next year. In the meantime, here are some key dates to look forward to:

• December 9–January 2: Wintersday Festival
• January 13: Skills and Balance Update
• January 13–20: Fractal Rush
• January 20–27: WvW Rush
• February 3: Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity Quarterly Release 1
  • New Raid Encounter
  • Raid/Strike System Unification with Quickplay
  • Fashion Templates
  • Wizard’s Vault Update
  • New Legendary Ring

Speaking of the new legendary ring, here’s a little tease of the visuals that come with wearing it:

Thank you for an incredible 2025. See you in the new year, and happy Wintersday!

—Josh Davis, Game Director, Guild Wars 2

Hello, Tyria,

I’m Chloë Mills, Story Design Lead for Guild Wars 2®: Visions of Eternity™. I’d like to give you a look under the hood at what went into making the Unending Ocean story instance in Chapter 1: Unscheduled Departures, including the design process for this instance, some technical details of its implementation, and a few interesting challenges we solved. This is a technically complex and ambitious piece of content, so hopefully you find it as interesting as I do!

This blog contains light story spoilers, in case you wish to avert your eyes now.

At the beginning of Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity, the Inquest have a head start in traveling to the mysterious island of Castora, and the commander and their allies hastily assemble a crew to set sail across the Unending Ocean aboard two ships: the Dark Leviathan and the Martingale.

From early on, we had several key goals for the start of the story and the journey to Castora that helped shape the setting and gameplay:

• Set the tone for the expansion overall and address player feedback about pacing and participation from Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ by beginning the story on an adventurous note and more quickly and frequently inserting the player into the action.
• Ground Castora in the setting by physically traveling there. Castora is an uncharted landmass separated from mainland Tyria by a massive ocean and without pre-existing lore, so we wanted to show the player making that journey rather than taking a portal and—poof!—arriving with little thought, difficulty, or frame of reference for the vast distance.
• Set up and foreshadow important narrative elements that arise later in the story. The magical fog, Isgarren’s cagey behavior, and Kela attacking the Martingale unseen from beneath the waves all plant seeds for later story development centered around the seers. We wanted to demonstrate that reaching—or leaving—Castora would be fraught with danger, contextualizing the castaways’ story and why Castora has remained shrouded in mystery, only roughly charted from afar by passing sailors.

During the early planning process for any expansion, we outline a rough estimate of scope for story design work. We consider the number of chapters, the number of story instances, and how complex each section will need to be. This is all based on factors including (but not limited to) the development timeline, designer and writer bandwidth, and the emerging needs of narrative beats. Story sections containing narrative focal points usually need extra attention and require higher design scope, so I designated the scope for the Unending Ocean story instance as “extra large,” meaning that it would have many moving parts (literally) and a high amount of bespoke, complex implementation.

The entire story instance takes place aboard the Dark Leviathan and the Martingale. This presents an interesting challenge because the physical play space is much more limited. To help compensate, I tried to get the most out of using vertical layers of the ships and design variety in what the player must do. Initially, only Sayida’s ship, the Dark Leviathan, was planned, but in early prototyping, it became apparent that the small main deck of the ship and limited upper-deck space would not provide a large-enough playable area. And thus, Canach’s ship, the Martingale, was born. And just as quickly, the fate of his ship was also sealed when we realized that there was an existing ship model with a spectacular break-apart animation just begging to be used.

The instance is split up into two distinct sections: traversing the vast expanse of the Unending Ocean during a storm and navigating within a dense fog offshore from Castora. These create distinct, contrasting periods of the journey that show the array of dangers faced trying to reach Castora.

Pretty much everything else in the instance centers around these two concepts.

The storm section opens on a black screen with dialogue in the background as the commander emerges from their cabin on the Dark Leviathan. Story designers need to consider both the design of individual story sections and how different parts of the story flow between each other. The player enters the instance from Lion’s Arch, and jumping directly to the middle of the ocean would be abrupt, so I wanted to make sure this transition felt natural by setting the stage with dialogue, sound effects, and a visual transition before setting the player loose.

This section demonstrates how dangerous the voyage is even before getting anywhere near Castora and the seers’ defenses, while acknowledging the Unending Ocean’s existing lore. Creatures of the deep—including krait, karka, reef riders, and even kraken tentacles—all attack the ships in a frenzy while lightning-strike fires lend gameplay variety between combat.

Playing Return of the Obra Dinn left a strong impression on me, and I think its influence can be seen in some of the tone and framing of this section: creatures of the depths chaotically boarding ships as crew scramble to react to each unexpected layer of danger, all while a storm rages above.

In contrast to the violent storm, the tone in the fog section is eerier and apprehensive, punctuating the end of an already dangerous voyage. The concept was born from harrowing, real-world incidents such as the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1914–1917, where the ship Endurance faced difficult navigation through dangerous ice floes in uncharted territory. This, combined with tales of the Bermuda Triangle, began shaping our ideas.

Both sections are distinct from each other from a design standpoint, too. Each has its own set of ships, NPC spawns, and other objects, but all objects for the fog section are initially invisible. Sneaky smoke and mirrors are at play in the transition from storm to fog: as the screen fades to black, all the fog objects are turned on, the player is teleported forward to the duplicate Dark Leviathan, all of the storm objects are turned off, and then the black screen fades back to gameplay.

Having two copies of everything surprisingly simplifies the design, because the greater the number of scripted behaviors an object must perform, the more chances there are for bugs caused by interfering interactions. This strategy lets us build the story in one instance, allowing the two sections to flow together as one immersive experience while keeping scope manageable.

Smoke and mirrors continues to be a theme for the fog itself. Normally, a foggy environment in Guild Wars 2 is something called an “environment zone,” which is an environment object set up by the map artist that can be turned on by the designer at designated times (this is how the stormy weather earlier in the instance is set up). However, fog created in this manner has limited maximum density.

Here, the fog needed to act as a gameplay mechanic by drastically reducing sightlines. The solution for this? The fog is actually a large visual-effects sphere created especially for this instance. It is attached to the Dark Leviathan and moves with it, offset to the left to encompass the Martingale when the two are side by side. When the Martingale swaps to the Dark Leviathan‘s right side for necessary positioning later along the route, a second fog bubble offset to the right replaces the first, which turns off for a seamless swap.

The environment outside the fog bubble is actually a perfectly clear, sunny day. To maintain the illusion, a tripwire sphere slightly smaller than the fog bubble prevents players from leaving its radius. This also helps ensure that design, QA, and art staff don’t have to account for players wandering out of the designated play space.

Let’s get more technical and talk about how the ships function. In the fog section, the two ships actually move through the water, all while allowing the player to move around and engage freely. The ships are what we call “prop gadget moving platforms.” A gadget is the term we use for interactive objects: books, gathering nodes, or destructible objects such as barricades. Sometimes gadgets are placed in the world by designers, especially when we need flexibility on where they spawn. Two examples from this story instance are the launch pads that fling the player from ship to ship and the magic orbs the player collects to navigate through the fog.

Larger objects that need collision and must be properly affected by light and shadows will be placed by a map artist as an environment prop. A designer can then designate this prop as a gadget and tell it to function in certain ways, and this is called a “prop gadget.” Very large bosses such as Soo-Won or Drakkar are prop gadgets. Furthermore, prop gadgets can be designated as moving platforms and scripted by a designer to move on rails, maintaining collision and allowing players to travel with it without just sliding off. This is how the commander can move around and engage freely while the ships in this instance travel through the water.

However, for anything else that needs to move with the ships—such as NPCs—a little more legwork is required. The moving platform must be specifically referenced on their spawn objects so the game engine knows to spawn them on the ship rather than floating in midair or snapping to the terrain below. With that in place, everything associated with the ships—the NPCs, the launch pads, the magic orbs, the enemy spawns, the ratlines to climb to the crow’s nest—moves with them as a group and can be placed where the ships initially start out, even if they are meant to spawn later along the route.

All of this becomes invaluable when implementing the main aspect of ship gameplay design: giving the player agency to choose a direction for the ship to travel.

This is where things get fun. To successfully navigate through the fog, the player must choose correctly between navigating the ship left, right, or straight at four different points. If they choose correctly, the ship travels on the main route. If they choose incorrectly, the ship heads off in a secondary direction and enemies attack the ship, taking a looping detour back to where it started for the player to try again.

Both ships travel together on these possible routes. You may see where this is going, dear reader. Between two ships—each with four legs of a correct route and four legs of incorrect looping routes, plus two bonus rails for making the ships bob up and down in the water when not traveling forward—there are a total of eighteen different rails controlling the ships’ movement over the course of the instance. Here is a visual representation of my self-inflicted pain:

When the Dark Leviathan begins moving, the Martingale will also move after a short delay to prevent the two ships from clipping through each other as they turn. Moving platforms can only move on one rail at a time, so just before it’s time to start moving on a forward rail, the ships will pause their up-and-down bobbing loop on the vertical rail to prepare for this.

While moving, the launch pads for jumping between the ships are temporarily disabled, both to reduce bug potential and because the ships need to spread out while traveling. This moves the Martingale out of the fog bubble, so players who happen to be aboard the Martingale when it gets too far from the Dark Leviathan get teleported to the Dark Leviathan to maintain the fog illusion.

As mentioned previously, many interconnected components increase the likelihood for accidental buggy script interactions. Spreading the layers of functionality for complex gameplay, progressing quest steps, triggering dialogue lines, and much more across several different controller scripts keeps them clean and organized.

There is so much more to the development of this story instance and Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity as a whole that I couldn’t ever possibly cover here. So much work and talent from every discipline goes into making Guild Wars 2; games truly are the ultimate collaborative medium. It’s such a joy to be able to share with others what you’re passionate about, and for me that is story design. I strive to challenge myself as a designer by pushing what is possible in our game engine to create exciting and novel story experiences. I hope you enjoy them.

See you soon in Tyria!