In preparation for Guild Wars 2’s new Heart of Thorns expansion, ArenaNet say they’ll be ‘deprecating current liquid world experience consumables’. There’s no direct translation to English, but the gist is that they plan to phase out existing items which grant XP in World vs World multiplayer.
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“In the interest of fairness to PvE players, we didn’t want to allow any WvW players who may have been stockpiling liquid world experience to instantly rank up a bunch of times and immediately begin unlocking the new expansion hero challenges the moment the expansion released,” the developers reason.
When the patch goes live – presumably with Heart of Thorns on Friday – leftover liquid consumables will be converted into 50% WXP boosters, with durations varying between 15 minutes and 10 hours. In every other case, liquid WXP will be replaced with other, instantly-used consumables of equivalent value.
The wider context for this is that ArenaNet are folding a new system into WvW, through which players can complete every hero challenge in the game without dipping into another mode. It’s a continuation of the reach-cap-however-you-want philosophy the studio have pushed since launch: they want WvW fans to be able to earn their chosen profession’s elite specialisation playing only large-scale multiplayer.
As a WvW player increases rank, they’ll gain new Proof of Heroics items – exchangeable for the Notarized Scrolls sold by new vendors at every WvW spawn point. When consumed, those scrolls will complete one random hero challenge in either Central Tyria or Maguuma.
Any of you lot take part in ArenaNet’s inter-server scuffles?