Hey, Guild Wars community,

I’m Josh Davis, Game Director for Guild Wars 2®. Before we close up shop for the studio’s annual holiday break, I’d like to take a moment to express my deepest appreciation to you for making this another great year. The team and I couldn’t be more grateful for your passion and ongoing support.

In August, alongside our 11th anniversary, we launched Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure™. This brought some long-overdue changes to how we develop and release expansion content. These changes, born from our desire to better serve our players, involve adopting a more consistent release cadence and eliminating extended content droughts. This new approach not only ensures a more predictable development cycle but also allows us to make strides toward improving work/life balance for our developers.

Big changes like this are just as nerve-racking for us as they are for you, but it’s safe to say that we’re breathing a lot easier these days. I’m incredibly proud of what the team delivered with Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure. In addition to being a great content update, it was also a financial success for us. Given the uncertainty in the economy as a whole and the gaming industry in particular right now, we’re feeling very blessed and grateful to our fans for the level of stability we’ve been able to maintain through this change.

Another benefit of our new expansion model is that we’re able to take a much more proactive and long-term approach to planning, which has been challenging to do since 2019. We’ve been able to apply a lot of the lessons we’ve learned to our fifth expansion in very meaningful ways—lessons that impact both the developer and player experiences. Additionally, not only is the fifth expansion in active development, but we’re also already having conversations about what comes after that! We’re not ready to share any new details today, but what I can say is that we have plenty of thrilling adventures, captivating stories, and exciting updates ahead of us. We can’t wait to embark on this next chapter with you next year!

But first, we have two major updates for Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure coming in the first half of next year. In February, you’ll get new story chapters, the Temple of Febe Strike Mission challenge mode, nine new weapon proficiencies, the ability to unlock new legendary armor, a Wizard’s Vault reward refresh, and more. We’ll also be running a World vs. World Restructuring Beta event from January 12 until February 2. You’ll hear more about these updates early next year on the forums and in our blogs.

Before we sign off for the holidays, please enjoy this musical Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure interlude composed and performed by one of our amazing coworkers, Paul Kwinn, to celebrate the release of the expansion earlier this year.

Thank You, adventurers!

Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or joined the adventure more recently, know that you are an integral part of this incredible journey, and we are honored to have you by our side. Your passion, boundless creativity, and unwavering support are the pillars upon which this community stands.

On behalf of the entire ArenaNet team, thank you for being the heart and soul of Guild Wars 2. We’ll see you in 2024.

Happy Wintersday,

Josh Davis, Game Director