Post by Indigo on Oct 16, 2015 7:31:05 GMT 1
With Heart Of Thorns just a week away, we have lots of information flooding in about the expansion. In this thread I'll give overviews on the information regarding HoT and I'll link to sources where possible, so you can read more if you're interested in a particular section. I've split this into 3 sections; release info, changes and new stuff. The new stuff section maybe a bit spoilery, so if you've been actively avoiding HoT information maybe avoid the last section. I'll also add a SPOILER WARNING before I go into that section. With that being said, let's get to it!
Release Day
October 23rd - 8:00AM BST - COUNTDOWN TIMER
At roughly midnight Pacific time, 8am British the big "ON" switch will be flipped for Heart Of Thorns and all those who have purchased the expansion will be able to access the new content. The switch will also turn on the Halloween Event (HALLOWEEN EVENT INFO) The Halloween event is due to last just under 2 weeks.
Changes
Heart Of Thorns brings a few changes that will effect us as a guild and this is information you should be at least aware of.
First up, the World Vs World reset day is changing to Saturday. The time will stay the same. (WVW RESET CHANGE INFO) To facilitate the change, on October 22nd (Thursday) WvW will close. It will reopen on the Friday with the launch of Heart Of Thorns and we will have a mini WvW matchup that lasts until the next day, a Saturday. WvW will then reset on the Saturday and the matchups will return to the normal length of a week.
The other change that is likely to effect the average guildie is Guild Missions. We will have new opportunities to do guild missions in WvW and PvP. The old missions of puzzles, challenges will still be available. Generally this will allow more flexibility for us to do guild missions. The video below will show off the guild mission changes in action. (If the video doesn't start in the correct place, start at 16 minutes in.)
Finally the WvW upgrade system has changed. Keeps, towers, camps etc upgrade automatically with time, they no longer cost gold to happen. Dollies are still a thing, however they function as a time saver for the new upgrade system. These numbers aren't correct but as an example, a tower will take 30 minutes to upgrade to tier 1 (upgraded walls, oil, siegemaster, added guards). The tower will take no longer than 30 minutes to upgrade, but if a dolly successfully arrives at the tower, it'll take 10 minutes from the time away, and now it'll only take 20 minutes. To reiterate, those numbers are completely wrong, just used to illustrate how the new upgrade system works.
That's basically the 3 changes to old mechanics that will effect the average guildie.
NEW SHINIES
POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING!
You were warned. Everything beyond this point should be NEW stuff. There's a lot to cover and I have no doubt I'll miss something but here we go, be prepared for links and videos.
NEW CLASS - Revenant, Heavy Armoured REVENANT INFO HERE
SPECIALIZATIONS - Every class has a new weapon, trait line and a new way to play. Elementalists can equip Warhorn, Necromancers a Greatsword, Warriors a Torch, Engineers a Hammer, Mesmers a Shield, Guardians a Longbow, Rangers and Thiefs a Staff, SPECIALIZATION INFO HERE
MAGUUMA JUNGLE - A large tiered PvE map (MAGUUMA JUNGLE INFO HERE) Here's a quick video showing off the Maguuma Jungle.
MASTERIES - New endgame progression, designed for people who have hit level 80 already, 7 tracks with 39 tiers. This will add new abilities, but also add things like the mentor tag and craftable precursors. This is somewhat forgotten feature of HoT but one you will want to get familiar with when it launches. MASTERY INFO HERE
NEW PVP GAME MODE - Stronghold, a sort of moba style game mode. Buy troops, siege a small base, kill the enemies Lord to win. (STRONGHOLD INFO HERE)
NEW PVP REWARD TRACKS - With the new gamemode brings new rewards. REWARD TRACK INFO HERE
GUILD HALLS - A place for your guild to live, maps need to be liberated to facilitate your guild hall. They can be upgraded with useful functions for your guild, market access, crafting access, a PvP arena, decorate the hall how you wish. My previous HoT considerations thread has some nice links/videos for information on the Guild Halls. GUILD HALL INFO HERE , the trailer below is worth checking out at as well.
WvW - NEW BORDERLANDS MAP - The Desert Borderlands, we finally see a big change to WvW, the borderlands maps will change. A few of us in GANK were lucky enough to try out the maps. It's defintely a very different feeling map, it also feels a lot bigger. I urge all GANKERS to check out the new map information. BORDERLANDS INFO HERE
GUILD CLAIMING - With the new WvW upgrade system, is a new guild claiming system. This will allow guilds to claim objectives easier, and also opens up a load of new objective specific upgrades. Things like invulnerable keep walls, armoured dollies, auto turrets, sentry towers, emergency waypoints. GUILD CLAIMING UPGRADE INFO HERE Most of these will need to be unlocked in the guild halls, but there's some cool upgrades there and it's worth reading up on.
RAIDS - 10 man dungeons, "challenging content". Designed to be challenging to the average player, these longer, tougher dungeons will reward pieces to build precursor armour, which in turn will allow you to make legendary armours. Check out the trailer below. RAID INFO HERE
FRACTALS - New limit of level 100 and they are also being made more accessible. You can do 1 of the 4 fractal instances at a time. The new limit will allow access to a new tier of fractal skins, and access to a backpack precursor which will allow a legendary backpack. We will also see ascended salvaging and finally Fractal Leaderboards. FRACTAL INFO HERE
LEGENDARIES - I've already mentioned that Legendary Armours and Backpacks are being added with HoT, but we will also see 16 new Legendary weapons. They'll be released in phases, the first 3 we know already. The Axe - Astralaria, The Staff - Nevermore and The Pistol - H.O.P.E. LEGENDARY WEAPON INFO HERE
PRECURSORS - A new system is being implemented which allows you to craft your own precursors, basically it's 3 or 4 large collection achievements with some crafting. Most start at 5g and 25k Karma. PRECURSOR INFO HERE
And with that I think I've covered everything... there's actually a lot more than I remembered when I initially made a list of all the features I needed to cover, but going through all the information showed me how much is actually there. We have a week to go! There's going to be so much to do! And we've got a Halloween event to have fun with!
Release Day
October 23rd - 8:00AM BST - COUNTDOWN TIMER
At roughly midnight Pacific time, 8am British the big "ON" switch will be flipped for Heart Of Thorns and all those who have purchased the expansion will be able to access the new content. The switch will also turn on the Halloween Event (HALLOWEEN EVENT INFO) The Halloween event is due to last just under 2 weeks.
Changes
Heart Of Thorns brings a few changes that will effect us as a guild and this is information you should be at least aware of.
First up, the World Vs World reset day is changing to Saturday. The time will stay the same. (WVW RESET CHANGE INFO) To facilitate the change, on October 22nd (Thursday) WvW will close. It will reopen on the Friday with the launch of Heart Of Thorns and we will have a mini WvW matchup that lasts until the next day, a Saturday. WvW will then reset on the Saturday and the matchups will return to the normal length of a week.
The other change that is likely to effect the average guildie is Guild Missions. We will have new opportunities to do guild missions in WvW and PvP. The old missions of puzzles, challenges will still be available. Generally this will allow more flexibility for us to do guild missions. The video below will show off the guild mission changes in action. (If the video doesn't start in the correct place, start at 16 minutes in.)
Finally the WvW upgrade system has changed. Keeps, towers, camps etc upgrade automatically with time, they no longer cost gold to happen. Dollies are still a thing, however they function as a time saver for the new upgrade system. These numbers aren't correct but as an example, a tower will take 30 minutes to upgrade to tier 1 (upgraded walls, oil, siegemaster, added guards). The tower will take no longer than 30 minutes to upgrade, but if a dolly successfully arrives at the tower, it'll take 10 minutes from the time away, and now it'll only take 20 minutes. To reiterate, those numbers are completely wrong, just used to illustrate how the new upgrade system works.
That's basically the 3 changes to old mechanics that will effect the average guildie.
NEW SHINIES
POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING!
You were warned. Everything beyond this point should be NEW stuff. There's a lot to cover and I have no doubt I'll miss something but here we go, be prepared for links and videos.
NEW CLASS - Revenant, Heavy Armoured REVENANT INFO HERE
SPECIALIZATIONS - Every class has a new weapon, trait line and a new way to play. Elementalists can equip Warhorn, Necromancers a Greatsword, Warriors a Torch, Engineers a Hammer, Mesmers a Shield, Guardians a Longbow, Rangers and Thiefs a Staff, SPECIALIZATION INFO HERE
MAGUUMA JUNGLE - A large tiered PvE map (MAGUUMA JUNGLE INFO HERE) Here's a quick video showing off the Maguuma Jungle.
MASTERIES - New endgame progression, designed for people who have hit level 80 already, 7 tracks with 39 tiers. This will add new abilities, but also add things like the mentor tag and craftable precursors. This is somewhat forgotten feature of HoT but one you will want to get familiar with when it launches. MASTERY INFO HERE
NEW PVP GAME MODE - Stronghold, a sort of moba style game mode. Buy troops, siege a small base, kill the enemies Lord to win. (STRONGHOLD INFO HERE)
NEW PVP REWARD TRACKS - With the new gamemode brings new rewards. REWARD TRACK INFO HERE
GUILD HALLS - A place for your guild to live, maps need to be liberated to facilitate your guild hall. They can be upgraded with useful functions for your guild, market access, crafting access, a PvP arena, decorate the hall how you wish. My previous HoT considerations thread has some nice links/videos for information on the Guild Halls. GUILD HALL INFO HERE , the trailer below is worth checking out at as well.
WvW - NEW BORDERLANDS MAP - The Desert Borderlands, we finally see a big change to WvW, the borderlands maps will change. A few of us in GANK were lucky enough to try out the maps. It's defintely a very different feeling map, it also feels a lot bigger. I urge all GANKERS to check out the new map information. BORDERLANDS INFO HERE
GUILD CLAIMING - With the new WvW upgrade system, is a new guild claiming system. This will allow guilds to claim objectives easier, and also opens up a load of new objective specific upgrades. Things like invulnerable keep walls, armoured dollies, auto turrets, sentry towers, emergency waypoints. GUILD CLAIMING UPGRADE INFO HERE Most of these will need to be unlocked in the guild halls, but there's some cool upgrades there and it's worth reading up on.
RAIDS - 10 man dungeons, "challenging content". Designed to be challenging to the average player, these longer, tougher dungeons will reward pieces to build precursor armour, which in turn will allow you to make legendary armours. Check out the trailer below. RAID INFO HERE
FRACTALS - New limit of level 100 and they are also being made more accessible. You can do 1 of the 4 fractal instances at a time. The new limit will allow access to a new tier of fractal skins, and access to a backpack precursor which will allow a legendary backpack. We will also see ascended salvaging and finally Fractal Leaderboards. FRACTAL INFO HERE
LEGENDARIES - I've already mentioned that Legendary Armours and Backpacks are being added with HoT, but we will also see 16 new Legendary weapons. They'll be released in phases, the first 3 we know already. The Axe - Astralaria, The Staff - Nevermore and The Pistol - H.O.P.E. LEGENDARY WEAPON INFO HERE
PRECURSORS - A new system is being implemented which allows you to craft your own precursors, basically it's 3 or 4 large collection achievements with some crafting. Most start at 5g and 25k Karma. PRECURSOR INFO HERE
And with that I think I've covered everything... there's actually a lot more than I remembered when I initially made a list of all the features I needed to cover, but going through all the information showed me how much is actually there. We have a week to go! There's going to be so much to do! And we've got a Halloween event to have fun with!