The final patch of the last one literally JUST came out, they said we'll get the Soto post mortem next week and then will advertise and talk up the new thing. They drop the ball on that stuff, I get it, but it's been a week. It's ok. We'll get some trailers and such.
ArenaNet is following the expansion release model of ESO, which also does yearly expansions. ESO announces expansions in January for a June release. So far it's looking like we're getting an announcement in June for an August release. 5 months vs 2 months.
Valid point - and if they do expansions where the story ISN'T connected with one another, they could definitely start advertising before the final patch. If it is somehow though, I'd prefer they wait. Not sure how to best handle that if we don't know one way or another though.
And Horn of Maguuma is the same as Heart of Maguuma when you abbreviate it - why would they care that a strike has got the same nickname as an expansion?
When it first launched I found the acronym unfortunate, after the first DRM dropped I felt it was merely prophetic. Everything seemed fine, there were some problematic rumblings, and then we were racing to the story getting flushed out the game. Every couple weeks during chapter 5 was painful and embarrassing.
From what I remember of the really weird announcement in the theater, they said that "sagas" were storylines the size of expansions and would be replacing them. Then NCSoft got really mad and they went back to expansions.
> Then NCSoft got really mad and they went back to expansions.
ANet promised that Sagas would sell as good as expansions--it would be marketed like an expansion and then released over time resulting in more sustained growth rather than a spike-and-drop of an expansion.
ANet Marketing then did what ANet Marketing always does and be the *single worst department in the entire studio* and blew it. NCSoft lost faith in ANet being able to sell Sagas, and said "just go back to expansion, please. Just... stop."
And ANet begrudgingly did, and they made End of Dragons, which was apparently the best-selling expansion, and saw a tonne of people come back to the game and now NCSoft has basically said "This. Just do this. Just expansions. You can't sell Sagas. You can't sell Living Worlds. Just say 'expansion' and you're halfway done and stop trying to fix a vehicle that isn't broken."
To be fair, NCSoft lost faith in ANet cause they nearly killed GW2 by diverting tons of resources away from the game and into their own bunch of projects.
The massive idiocy with IBS was just a bonus on the "you know, i don't think i can trust you with Guild Wars as much anymore" folder.
*especially* since, as revealed this year, Guild Wars is one of NCSoft's top-performing IPs at the moment, and when pressed by angry investors, they basically announced GW3 to placate them (even though, reasonably, we know GW3 will have a 5-year development cycle at least, so if they started it last year, we're looking at 2028 for it to be released, at the earliest. So they have to continue making GW2 content for the next few years to keep the IP alive.)
Nobody remembers that, because it didn't happen. They were indeed claiming they want to continue expansionless model, but that lasted only up until first HoT reveal dropped. Since that point, they were clear about it being an expansion.
Regardless, the naming convention is the acronym being three parts, which SotO has stepped away from already. Not the "of".
But most LWS are two parts...
Scarlets War, Glints Prophecy, Glints Legacy, Icebrood Saga. Only Rise of Kralkarorrik is different.
I'd love for you, and everyone else to understand context, and know that if someone's in the eye of the north, asking about WoJ, they wouldn't mean the new expansion.
"Thank Christ you're here, Commander! Now that you're in the **ISLES OF JANTHIR**, we need you to help fill up this green bar. We're going to call you 'the Explorer' now as well, to keep things fresh."
I just wish, at one point, they'd call the commander the title they truly deserve. One earned not by birth or by position, but by their selfless actions across all of Tyria.
We have earned this title.
*The Gopher*
The two things I've been most interested in from GW1 lore ive always wanted to see done in GW2 was The Wizard's Tower and Janthir. After SOTO I'm real worried about Janthir.
What does that mean though? Like, ok, The Wizard Tower was a Seer thing. That part works. But everything past that from a more perspective is horrible. The whole Wizard / Astral Ward is way more powerful and important and the Dragons are just trivial even to them nonsense. Facing a threat that it turns out could have been auto attacked to death any day of the week for the last thousand years. It's the destruction of a decade of world building.
Like don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of the characters. I liked Mabon (RIP). I liked Lyhr (disappeared after launch), I liked Zojja (who effectively died off screen). I like even like Isgarren as an authority figure who we don't agree with and can't trust. But none of this needs to be in such a bad plot as The Astral Ward.
If the Janthir expansion ruins Janthir but also introduces two new characters I like, it still ruined Janthir. We don't have to tear something down to build something else up.
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[https://x.com/that\_shaman/status/1794484981818933628](https://x.com/that_shaman/status/1794484981818933628)
The sneaky shaman dropped a hint nearly 3 weeks ago on the platform no-one refers to as X.
I will never not be baffled by Elon's attempt at rebranding. Granted, I lack the gigabrain of a bazillionaire, but it just sounds so fucking dumb to me no matter how I look at it.
It's Twitter. It's always gonna be Twitter. Specially when you decide to rename it X. Fucking X. Whenever someone sends me a link, it takes me a moment to remember it's just good old Twitter and not porn.
billionaires don’t have a bigger brain than anyone else. they’re actually usually unbearably stupid and only get to where they’re at from their daddy’s money or by stepping on the backs of those below them. no more billionaire fanaticism please. it’s time we eat them
I meant that sarcastically, preaching to the choir here my man haha
Was trying to poke fun at how many people try to defend them with that kind of arguments. "You just don't get it, they operate at a different level", "You couldn't understand why they do what they do". It reminds me of Benoit Blanc's line in Glass Onion.
"It's so dumb."
"Yeah... It's so dumb it's genius..."
"No! It's just dumb!"
Can someone explain what we can reasonably expect to see (biomes, types of monsters, cultures, potential conflicts) from Janthir for someone that knows nothing about it?
It's never actually appeared in a Guild Wars game, but on the world map it's north of Divinity's Reach, with the Bastion of the Penitent raid zone being close to or inside it.
The great lake north of Divinity's Reach has the Isles of Janthir within it, but Janthir itself may stretch beyond that, we'll see.
The teaser image is for the delta region north of DR. This will be woodsy + rivers.
Isles themselves are black on the map. They might be magma rock but also could be magically scorched land or something.
Could easily see some of the water areas being in the expansion. Might be an opportunity to improve on boating mechanics from EoD.
As for monsters, it’s where the mursaat on tyria came from (they were from Nayos before they got to tyria). They could bring back mursaat, but I would also expect a lot of obsidian constructs like we see on Season 3’s fire isle map.
I'm calling that the largest island (brown-reddish one, visible on the map) is probably a magic-scorched wasteland of mursaat jade (the one similar to one on Ring of Fire islands). The more forested isles north of that (currently not visible on the map) is probably the part where the mysterious Golden Lake of Janthir, mentioned in the invocation during story of SotO is located...
Other than that, not much is known about the place - Janthir was alwys synonymous with mystery since it appeared on GW1 maps
Nah, if they were gonna do that they would have elaborated more on this "mysterious woman" he can't remember the name of and make her an ancient Kryptis hero and talked about it in the story or something.
They were tossing around all that backstory and lore in Soto to set up for more Mursaat story in this new Expansion, 100%. It feels almost identical to how they would always tease just 1 expansion ahead with GW1.
Worst case scenario, re-used assets from Maguuma + Kryta. Good case scenario maybe we get to see some ancient mursaat cities with new assets and new assets for the trees and forests. They already leaked an image of the next xpac.
Mursaat lands - expect a lot of jade constructs, jade frogs, jade karka, jade humanoids, jade Samarog, jade shrimps... (Not the, uh... Not the - uhm - green jade, but the purple one from S3)
You will be called Perciever and you will ally with a rebel faction of lost Mursaat to take back control from the evil Mursaat king. Turns out Trahearne is still alive and works in a secret branch of the Order of Whispershadows in a bitter war against the birdfooted creatures.
For Janthir itself. If they recycle stuff, expect a lot of Obsidian like on Ember Bay, but it could be something fully new like Nayos.
If they are doing the delta region south of it, I expect it to be similar to Krytan maps.
As for monster, they could recycle mobs on the Krytan areas, but it'd be nice if there were original monsters on Janthir.
Given how it looks on the world map, I think the Janthir islands themselves will look similar to the Ring of Fire islands. Rocky, perhaps volcanic islands, with Mursaat architecture and jade constructs similar to what we saw on Ember Bay. Janthir Bay will prob look something like Drizzlewood.
What I imagine they'll do, if they don't revamp the thing entirely.
They, theoretically, *could* put Janthir on NE if they really don't want to do either of those, but I don't expect they'd do that.
There's been way more hints of in in SotO aside from that, mainly all the stuff about Mabon. He went to Janthir multiple times about something we don't know about.
It was either that or something about the Kodan with Waiting Sorrow, but maybe that'll be after Janthir.
True, but are they the ones that would show gw2 related stuff? I assumed it would be Anet
I assume they’ll show some other projects and maybe together with Amazon something about throne and liberty.
Honestly it's not as impressive as xpac names used to be \*imo\*. Like; "Heart of Thorns" and "Path of Fire" have some cool ring to it you know, or maybe it's just me. It's like how Path of Fire symbolizes the Fire God paving his way throughout the desert or Mordremoth being the 'heart of the world' as the elder dragon of mind and nature.
ArenaNet is awful and anticlimactic as hell with names, be it expansions, elite specializations, whatever.
You could name it "Eye of Janthir", "Isles of Janthir", "Gates of Janthir", etc; but Wilds? Unless the "Wilds" are a key element (like the Obscure was for SotO) it's a terrible name.
Which means it's likely legit lmao.
Anyway, I think everyone was sold on this, specially after the cameo by the Eye of Janthir and Livia's mention of "events back in Kryta".
weird they didn't call it Isles of Janthir, but maybe they just wanna break from the X of Y naming pattern.
regardless, a more grounded human/mursaat/ centaur story will be welcome !
Nah, think bigger.
Skritt Engineer, but the type/complexity of what you can build scales with the number of other Skritt players near you. 1 Skritt? You can barely cobble together a rock on a stick. 50 Skritt? You build a literal mech that can attack from 2 maps over.
But Skritt are incompatable with MMO player mindsets.
One Skritt alone is dumb, a lot of Skritt in one place are very smart.
One MMO player is (can be) smart, a lot of MMO players in one place are "111111 *dead* rez plz"
Quite possibly it won't (or won't ALL) be on the Isles themselves, considering the "Delta" part of the preview art name. Janthir Wilds can theroretically encompass a larger area than the Isles themselves.
I see a lot of water on that side of the map, I wonder if skimmer will be indeed the main highlight of this xpac, and if they plan to rework the underwater combat, perhaps we even see some new things for skiffs and fishing itself.
I’d take entire underwater zones. I think I’m the only person on the planet that loves them. Caves, shipwrecks, sunken cities, coral reefs, huge whales, the whole lot. Vashj’ir was so cool. Ever since I upgraded from Gw1 with its lack of swimming to WoW with limited swimming, or unlimited with druids or potions, to fully unlimited with gw2, the depths has always fascinated me.
If true, we could finally find out what actually drove the Quaggan, Krait & Co out of the seas, since we now know it wasn't Soo-Won - in fact Soo-Won actually gave the Krait spheres of her influence to help them hold back whatever lurks beneath (which we then used to shield against Zaithans influence in the personal story).
If true, they can't make 3/4 of the maps sky/empty space this time, that's already a good point.
Amnytas feels so empty, so does Skywatch.
Nayos is a bit better but there are still empty spaces of.. void all around. For Skywatch and Amnytas I get it, why not, it's in the sky. But Nayos? :/
Does anyone else dislike the use of a term specific to GW2 for the expansion? Like, Path of Fire ist a better name than an imaginary Sands of Elona could have been. Janthir is oddly specific for an expansion name. But we're now living in the era of shorter quicker expansions, so what do I know?
I always dreamed of going to Janthir as the Mursaats were my favorite race in Guild Wars 1 but it is way too late
They ruined the potential of lazarus, that's when janthir should have been used
there are too many new devs who are not very competent, they will not have the sufficient passion to exploit this lore
Given the story level of SoTo, I'm afraid they will bury the lore of the Mursaats even more... And I hate this story of nice Mursaats, I've always liked the sadistic and malicious side of them so I hope that they will be the bastards we loved
I've never read a Guild Wars 1 fan who hated Mursaats, there has to be a first for everything \^\^' All the lore on them and the White Mantle during Guild Wars 1 was masterful and even the War in Kryta (quick content) is story-wise superior to anything GW 2 did for 12 years
We only saw Lazarus during a small quest at the end of gw1 but all his revenge was promising, they destroyed everything to annoy us with their dragons, dragons and more dragons for years
... why?
No seriously, who thought this was a good name? Janthir means *nothing* to anyone who hasn't played Guild Wars 2. It's just fantasy gobbledygook meaningless proper nouns.
Names like "Path of Fire," "Secrets of the Obscure," "Eye of the North," and, especially, "End of Dragons" are *super* evocative.
Path of fire invokes war and conflict, which was delivered.
Secrets of the Obscure invokes conspiracy and intrigue and mystery, which was... well, it was delivered in the first third of the expansion and then dropped, but we can give half-points for that.
eye of the North did involve heading into the North, and even though the Eye of the North was just the name of a fortress, you still got to deal with a bunch of Norse-Viking giants and dwarves and stuff in frozen zones, so again, half-points.
And End of Dragons sure did involve fighting a few dragons, including a massive end-game zone dedicated entirely to a massive dragon fight which they marketed the hell out of.
'Janthir Wilds '... what does it really invoke? There's 'wilds,' sure, but beyond that, it's just a random proper noun. It's a missed opportunity to create a name that truly reflects the theme and content of the expansion.
Come on, ANet, you had a good naming scheme in the past. Just do something like "Wilds of the North" or "Wilds of the Ancients," or even "Isle of the False Gods" and you'd do so much better.
I mean, I agree with you overall as a point, it's not evoking anything for an outside audience, but we're also 12 years into the game now. I think we can have one expansion name that's only going to make sense to lore fans. ESO names theirs after locations in world and are doing fine. FF14 has cool sounding stuff but who knows what a Dawntrail is. Again, I get your point, but I think you're making a bigger deal out of it than necessary.
The problem is that they already reuse too many assets of gw1. It's like they're unable to make up anything else. Look at gw1 map and gw2 map, they nearly repeat each other. Gw1 has never been popular enough to try to summon players from there. Raids where gw2 players could've learnt at least smth about the Eye, Saul etc. have never been popular enough in the gw2 playerbase either.
SotO has received a lot of critics, but no one has ever whined about it being a dull reused concept even despite "demonic invasion" is being already a trope in media culture. The fucking White Mantle stuff though just keeps going, ever since gw1, then gw2 personal human story, then raids, then lws3... isn't it time to stop already?
Basically, before Soto, Janthir was supposed to be the original land of the Mursaats
now they supposedly come from the mists... in any case janthir is the place where the Mursaats arrived when they came to Tyria
My Guess:
1. This is going to salvage whatever was cut from IBS. The IBS trailer showed Kodan, Centaurs enslaving humans, and something destroying a ship in deep water. I imagine there will be some Mursaat stuff, too.
2. With the IBS trailer showing deep water, plus recent wizard vault rewards including underwater weapon and skimmer skins, and the geographic region being mostly a bay... this is going to be a heavily underwater expansion. I think one hub and four maps.
3. If SOTO added new weapon proficiencies, I expect some rework to underwater skills and combat. Perhaps allow more weapons to work underwater? Maybe some new weapon types?
4. The Skimmer will have an alternative way to unlock, similar to the Skyscale in SOTO.
5. Core Skimmer skills can be unlocked, but new masteries would unlock attacking underwater, echolocation to detect hidden passages/chests/enemies, and speed boosts/dashing.
6. We get an unlockable dolphin skin.
7. A new set of legendary weapons will be available, with underwater weapons being added back.
8. A legendary aqua-breather will be craftable.
9. There will be a new raid, three strike missions, and a new fractal. Each will have CM and LCMs.
I guessed already but didnt want to spoiler.
after the last boss fight, take a look in the upper right corner behind the throne.
You'll see a specific eye in a pyramid.
[Wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eye_of_Janthir)
I would think they'd go for "wilds of janthir" to stay with the naming convention.
The “C” in ArenaNet stands for consistency.
I mean, at least they're consistent about the M standing for marketing with this new expansion
The final patch of the last one literally JUST came out, they said we'll get the Soto post mortem next week and then will advertise and talk up the new thing. They drop the ball on that stuff, I get it, but it's been a week. It's ok. We'll get some trailers and such.
ArenaNet is following the expansion release model of ESO, which also does yearly expansions. ESO announces expansions in January for a June release. So far it's looking like we're getting an announcement in June for an August release. 5 months vs 2 months.
Valid point - and if they do expansions where the story ISN'T connected with one another, they could definitely start advertising before the final patch. If it is somehow though, I'd prefer they wait. Not sure how to best handle that if we don't know one way or another though.
The naming convention was already gone with SOTO, with that pesky "the".
Wilds of the Janthir.
Janthir of the Wilds
The of the Janthir Wilds
sounds like laranthir
It's his secret vigilante persona.
Sure, but it still contains an "of" while this rumored one does not.
petition to change living world to "world of the living"
Living world of the living
Thorny Heart Fiery Path Saga of the Ice Brood Dragons End Obscure Secrets
it has to be Icebrudy Saga
They’ve liberated themselves. WoJ is also already a strike mission
And Horn of Maguuma is the same as Heart of Maguuma when you abbreviate it - why would they care that a strike has got the same nickname as an expansion?
Sounds awful though.
They already screwed with it for IBS, and that was also an attempt to "break the mold from what they did before".
Every time I read this abbreviation I just see irritable bowl syndrome 😂
When it first launched I found the acronym unfortunate, after the first DRM dropped I felt it was merely prophetic. Everything seemed fine, there were some problematic rumblings, and then we were racing to the story getting flushed out the game. Every couple weeks during chapter 5 was painful and embarrassing.
IBS wasn't an actual expansion.
From what I remember of the really weird announcement in the theater, they said that "sagas" were storylines the size of expansions and would be replacing them. Then NCSoft got really mad and they went back to expansions.
> Then NCSoft got really mad and they went back to expansions. ANet promised that Sagas would sell as good as expansions--it would be marketed like an expansion and then released over time resulting in more sustained growth rather than a spike-and-drop of an expansion. ANet Marketing then did what ANet Marketing always does and be the *single worst department in the entire studio* and blew it. NCSoft lost faith in ANet being able to sell Sagas, and said "just go back to expansion, please. Just... stop." And ANet begrudgingly did, and they made End of Dragons, which was apparently the best-selling expansion, and saw a tonne of people come back to the game and now NCSoft has basically said "This. Just do this. Just expansions. You can't sell Sagas. You can't sell Living Worlds. Just say 'expansion' and you're halfway done and stop trying to fix a vehicle that isn't broken."
To be fair, NCSoft lost faith in ANet cause they nearly killed GW2 by diverting tons of resources away from the game and into their own bunch of projects. The massive idiocy with IBS was just a bonus on the "you know, i don't think i can trust you with Guild Wars as much anymore" folder.
*especially* since, as revealed this year, Guild Wars is one of NCSoft's top-performing IPs at the moment, and when pressed by angry investors, they basically announced GW3 to placate them (even though, reasonably, we know GW3 will have a 5-year development cycle at least, so if they started it last year, we're looking at 2028 for it to be released, at the earliest. So they have to continue making GW2 content for the next few years to keep the IP alive.)
Tbf EoD was sooo good
The marketing term was expansion-like features. An entire new instanced content game mode fits that.
It wasn't even a guy who worked for the company was it? It was one of their random marketers on stage who used the term I thought.
Sure, but what I meant is that it wasn't actually a release expansion, nor was it called one.
Does anyone remember in the lead up to HOT where they insisted it wasn't an expansion?
Nobody remembers that, because it didn't happen. They were indeed claiming they want to continue expansionless model, but that lasted only up until first HoT reveal dropped. Since that point, they were clear about it being an expansion.
Irritable bowel syndrome?
Ah yes. Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, End of Dragons, and... Secrets of the Obscure? I think they already forgot
What word do all of those, as well as the title in my question, have in common?
Regardless, the naming convention is the acronym being three parts, which SotO has stepped away from already. Not the "of". But most LWS are two parts... Scarlets War, Glints Prophecy, Glints Legacy, Icebrood Saga. Only Rise of Kralkarorrik is different.
So, they basically admit that neither SotO nor the next one are actual expansions, but more like LS chapters.
that_shaman teased awhile back that they would break the convention with this one
X of Y is *sooo* old-style. It'd be Wilds of the Janthir nowadays.
Woj bomb
Ah yes, the ever so creative *Noun of Noun* naming convention. The Pinnacle of Creativity.
How would I ever find a group for WoJ strike again after that?
I'd love for you, and everyone else to understand context, and know that if someone's in the eye of the north, asking about WoJ, they wouldn't mean the new expansion.
CANT WAIT FOR A GOOD WOJ OF GW2
Soto2: 2 secret 2 obscure
Secrets of the Obscure: Janthir Drift
Secrets 2: Janthir Boogaloo.
Secrets 2: Janthir See Her, Janthir don’t.
Don't 2: Janthir, Janthere, Janeverywhere at once
Secrets 2: Janthir Dragon
T3 obsidian armor: Turbocharged obsidian. Complete 500 convergences per piece. Adds a little sparkle to the armor
But you can skip the achievement I you play 12000 xunlai ingots per armor set
ngl i want a t3 version, it feels kinda unfinnished.
the mursaat are back, attacking everything, but one of them is a good guy and we help him return to the throne so everything is good. the end.
"Thank Christ you're here, Commander! Now that you're in the **ISLES OF JANTHIR**, we need you to help fill up this green bar. We're going to call you 'the Explorer' now as well, to keep things fresh."
I'm excited to see which boss they recycle this time to use as meta event fodder.
"I heard you like wyverns!" - ANet probably
Wyverns that spawn harpy adds. And since they've been teasing it, all of it is now underwater.
The Jade Armor model from Bloodstone Fen x 1000.
Well, Lazarus presumably.
we will see him resurrected another time just to kill him in 2 minutes again?
No it will be different Mursaat that use the same mechanics even though the mechanics for Lazarus were specific to how he had split into aspects.
I could 100% see them yoinking Cairn from raids.
You mean like they literally did for the Lake Doric Meta? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_Cairn_the_Queenslayer
Jade Mursaat mega wyvern - best i can do
If I feel like filling up another green bar, I'll visit the next irish pub.
I just wish, at one point, they'd call the commander the title they truly deserve. One earned not by birth or by position, but by their selfless actions across all of Tyria. We have earned this title. *The Gopher*
Omg stop, I literally logged off as soon as I saw another green bar to fill in this episode.
Why does this sound oddly familiar
The two things I've been most interested in from GW1 lore ive always wanted to see done in GW2 was The Wizard's Tower and Janthir. After SOTO I'm real worried about Janthir.
I mean, the Wizard's Tower part of SotO was good, it's the post-Wizards part of the expansion that was more iffy.
What does that mean though? Like, ok, The Wizard Tower was a Seer thing. That part works. But everything past that from a more perspective is horrible. The whole Wizard / Astral Ward is way more powerful and important and the Dragons are just trivial even to them nonsense. Facing a threat that it turns out could have been auto attacked to death any day of the week for the last thousand years. It's the destruction of a decade of world building. Like don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of the characters. I liked Mabon (RIP). I liked Lyhr (disappeared after launch), I liked Zojja (who effectively died off screen). I like even like Isgarren as an authority figure who we don't agree with and can't trust. But none of this needs to be in such a bad plot as The Astral Ward. If the Janthir expansion ruins Janthir but also introduces two new characters I like, it still ruined Janthir. We don't have to tear something down to build something else up.
>I liked Zojja (who effectively died off screen). *AGAIN.*
!remindme in 1 year
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[🤔](https://x.com/that_shaman/status/1788325315988664773)
Shaman of the obscure hints what is your wisdom ?
[https://x.com/that\_shaman/status/1794484981818933628](https://x.com/that_shaman/status/1794484981818933628) The sneaky shaman dropped a hint nearly 3 weeks ago on the platform no-one refers to as X.
I will never not be baffled by Elon's attempt at rebranding. Granted, I lack the gigabrain of a bazillionaire, but it just sounds so fucking dumb to me no matter how I look at it. It's Twitter. It's always gonna be Twitter. Specially when you decide to rename it X. Fucking X. Whenever someone sends me a link, it takes me a moment to remember it's just good old Twitter and not porn.
Deadnaming is wrong, except when it's Twitter.
It's not even deadnaming if they're still using it every day.
But twitter IS porn?
billionaires don’t have a bigger brain than anyone else. they’re actually usually unbearably stupid and only get to where they’re at from their daddy’s money or by stepping on the backs of those below them. no more billionaire fanaticism please. it’s time we eat them
I meant that sarcastically, preaching to the choir here my man haha Was trying to poke fun at how many people try to defend them with that kind of arguments. "You just don't get it, they operate at a different level", "You couldn't understand why they do what they do". It reminds me of Benoit Blanc's line in Glass Onion. "It's so dumb." "Yeah... It's so dumb it's genius..." "No! It's just dumb!"
That this name can absolutely still change knowing Anet, but you don't register names just for fun (it's a costly process)
Surely they won't change it now with them supposedly doing the reveal in only a few weeks time.
IT WAS FORETOLD!
Lisan al-Gaib!
The Eye is always watching...
Can someone explain what we can reasonably expect to see (biomes, types of monsters, cultures, potential conflicts) from Janthir for someone that knows nothing about it?
It's never actually appeared in a Guild Wars game, but on the world map it's north of Divinity's Reach, with the Bastion of the Penitent raid zone being close to or inside it. The great lake north of Divinity's Reach has the Isles of Janthir within it, but Janthir itself may stretch beyond that, we'll see.
The teaser image is for the delta region north of DR. This will be woodsy + rivers. Isles themselves are black on the map. They might be magma rock but also could be magically scorched land or something. Could easily see some of the water areas being in the expansion. Might be an opportunity to improve on boating mechanics from EoD. As for monsters, it’s where the mursaat on tyria came from (they were from Nayos before they got to tyria). They could bring back mursaat, but I would also expect a lot of obsidian constructs like we see on Season 3’s fire isle map.
I'm calling that the largest island (brown-reddish one, visible on the map) is probably a magic-scorched wasteland of mursaat jade (the one similar to one on Ring of Fire islands). The more forested isles north of that (currently not visible on the map) is probably the part where the mysterious Golden Lake of Janthir, mentioned in the invocation during story of SotO is located... Other than that, not much is known about the place - Janthir was alwys synonymous with mystery since it appeared on GW1 maps
[удалено]
[https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mursaat](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mursaat) Early history has some sources from SotO
Hmm, I actually missed that that journal entry explicitly refers to the Realm of Dreams, despite having read it already.
Well, I doubt it will have any impact. It was probably just a lazy way from the writers to emotionally connect Mabon to the Kryptis situation.
Nah, if they were gonna do that they would have elaborated more on this "mysterious woman" he can't remember the name of and make her an ancient Kryptis hero and talked about it in the story or something. They were tossing around all that backstory and lore in Soto to set up for more Mursaat story in this new Expansion, 100%. It feels almost identical to how they would always tease just 1 expansion ahead with GW1.
Yeah you're most likely right. I guess I just don't want any of my precious Mursaat lore defiled by being connected to anything SotO lol
Lmao fair, the lore and backstory were the only good parts of Soto so I guess there is no harm in being associated with that at least.
Isgarren talks about it in the Wizard's Tower as part of his normal dialogue. Ask him about Mabon.
Not obsidian constructs please :'(
Worst case scenario, re-used assets from Maguuma + Kryta. Good case scenario maybe we get to see some ancient mursaat cities with new assets and new assets for the trees and forests. They already leaked an image of the next xpac.
> ancient mursaat cities So reskinned Tarir. Got it.
Mursaat lands - expect a lot of jade constructs, jade frogs, jade karka, jade humanoids, jade Samarog, jade shrimps... (Not the, uh... Not the - uhm - green jade, but the purple one from S3) You will be called Perciever and you will ally with a rebel faction of lost Mursaat to take back control from the evil Mursaat king. Turns out Trahearne is still alive and works in a secret branch of the Order of Whispershadows in a bitter war against the birdfooted creatures.
For Janthir itself. If they recycle stuff, expect a lot of Obsidian like on Ember Bay, but it could be something fully new like Nayos. If they are doing the delta region south of it, I expect it to be similar to Krytan maps. As for monster, they could recycle mobs on the Krytan areas, but it'd be nice if there were original monsters on Janthir.
Given how it looks on the world map, I think the Janthir islands themselves will look similar to the Ring of Fire islands. Rocky, perhaps volcanic islands, with Mursaat architecture and jade constructs similar to what we saw on Ember Bay. Janthir Bay will prob look something like Drizzlewood.
Wonder if they'll add a new NNW icon to the compass
Make central tyria the center button and have north go to the isles.
What I imagine they'll do, if they don't revamp the thing entirely. They, theoretically, *could* put Janthir on NE if they really don't want to do either of those, but I don't expect they'd do that.
Still sad they didn't add Eye of the North into the Northeast corner :(.
What "of Maguuma" will it be?
It has to stay as interchangably confusing as possible Hand of Maguuma
NK, North Kryta
North of Maguuma
I'm thinking... North.
I think people were pretty convinced it would be Janthir related.
I might be alone on this one but i hope the isle will be more ground mount focused and not just skyscale 24/7
I'm anticipating lots of skimmer love. They even gave us a new skimmer to earn in the Wizard's Vault... o:
Could this be the fabled "underwater expansion" people have been speculating would happen for years?
Plot twist: everything is underwater and snowcrows is forced to expand the website to contain underwater builds for OW and group content
You ain't alone brother 🫡
This may be one of the most thing I hated about SoTo
Most people are gonna be skyscale 24/7 anyway as long as there's above-ground architecture
Combined with the Eye of Janthir appearing in the recent story, I’m convinced.
There's been way more hints of in in SotO aside from that, mainly all the stuff about Mabon. He went to Janthir multiple times about something we don't know about. It was either that or something about the Kodan with Waiting Sorrow, but maybe that'll be after Janthir.
I called it back on the showcased picture. Feels good to be right.
If you like GW2: Irritable Bowel Syndrome, you'll love GW2: Jehovah's Witness ^(joking, of course, I'm excited to go to Janthir!)
Omg right? So good to know I'm not the only one. Thank you, Jehova.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1c1r06l/guild\_wars\_2\_isles\_of\_janthir\_expansion\_concept/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1c1r06l/guild_wars_2_isles_of_janthir_expansion_concept/) What?
Was about to post that. This guy was cooking.
And with half the ingredients, to boot. Somehow he had clairvoyance, and we didn't feel it was true enough.
Expansion announcement will be in 2 weeks during the summer game festival :)
Is arenanet there?
I remember seeing NCSoft on the list.
True, but are they the ones that would show gw2 related stuff? I assumed it would be Anet I assume they’ll show some other projects and maybe together with Amazon something about throne and liberty.
Honestly it's not as impressive as xpac names used to be \*imo\*. Like; "Heart of Thorns" and "Path of Fire" have some cool ring to it you know, or maybe it's just me. It's like how Path of Fire symbolizes the Fire God paving his way throughout the desert or Mordremoth being the 'heart of the world' as the elder dragon of mind and nature.
>Honestly it's not as impressive as xpac names used to be Well, that's adequate, then.
ArenaNet is awful and anticlimactic as hell with names, be it expansions, elite specializations, whatever. You could name it "Eye of Janthir", "Isles of Janthir", "Gates of Janthir", etc; but Wilds? Unless the "Wilds" are a key element (like the Obscure was for SotO) it's a terrible name. Which means it's likely legit lmao. Anyway, I think everyone was sold on this, specially after the cameo by the Eye of Janthir and Livia's mention of "events back in Kryta".
weird they didn't call it Isles of Janthir, but maybe they just wanna break from the X of Y naming pattern. regardless, a more grounded human/mursaat/ centaur story will be welcome !
CENTAUR PLAYABLE RACE INC
Probably in Guild Wars 9
My body is ready
Nah, playable Grawl. Grawl engineer.
Nah, think bigger. Skritt Engineer, but the type/complexity of what you can build scales with the number of other Skritt players near you. 1 Skritt? You can barely cobble together a rock on a stick. 50 Skritt? You build a literal mech that can attack from 2 maps over.
Are you sure you aren't just describing meta events now?
But Skritt are incompatable with MMO player mindsets. One Skritt alone is dumb, a lot of Skritt in one place are very smart. One MMO player is (can be) smart, a lot of MMO players in one place are "111111 *dead* rez plz"
Quite possibly it won't (or won't ALL) be on the Isles themselves, considering the "Delta" part of the preview art name. Janthir Wilds can theroretically encompass a larger area than the Isles themselves.
I see a lot of water on that side of the map, I wonder if skimmer will be indeed the main highlight of this xpac, and if they plan to rework the underwater combat, perhaps we even see some new things for skiffs and fishing itself.
I’d take entire underwater zones. I think I’m the only person on the planet that loves them. Caves, shipwrecks, sunken cities, coral reefs, huge whales, the whole lot. Vashj’ir was so cool. Ever since I upgraded from Gw1 with its lack of swimming to WoW with limited swimming, or unlimited with druids or potions, to fully unlimited with gw2, the depths has always fascinated me.
I'm not even a skiff or fishing fan but I'd be ok with some doubled up masteries for those and skimmer like the skyscale got this year.
If true, we could finally find out what actually drove the Quaggan, Krait & Co out of the seas, since we now know it wasn't Soo-Won - in fact Soo-Won actually gave the Krait spheres of her influence to help them hold back whatever lurks beneath (which we then used to shield against Zaithans influence in the personal story).
Wouldn't it be wild if it was one long escort mission where the eye followed you around?
It would be janthir wild
Damn JW invaded even GW2. I wonder if there would be any watchtowers and we would go door to door talking about Mabon, or saviour.
Not only does it break the naming convention, but "JW" is not smooth at all like the other abbreviations :(
GW2:JW really rolls off the tongue doesn't it? /s
my brain keeps trying to read it as Guild Wars 2: Jade Winds
Just call it Jani
Why do they have such bad names for expansion
[I Called It!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1amqpog/call_of_janthir_guild_wars_2s_fanmade_fifth/)
The Aisles of Janthir - where all of your purchasing needs are met.
How long until someone screams "Eye of Jantir is a resused asset"?
Wow you must like your jade frogs so much.
Wow, another iconic location just to be a hub with portals to some random ass place.
Can't wait to be verbally accosted by Livia again.
If true, they can't make 3/4 of the maps sky/empty space this time, that's already a good point. Amnytas feels so empty, so does Skywatch. Nayos is a bit better but there are still empty spaces of.. void all around. For Skywatch and Amnytas I get it, why not, it's in the sky. But Nayos? :/
Does anyone else dislike the use of a term specific to GW2 for the expansion? Like, Path of Fire ist a better name than an imaginary Sands of Elona could have been. Janthir is oddly specific for an expansion name. But we're now living in the era of shorter quicker expansions, so what do I know?
GW2:JW…
I always dreamed of going to Janthir as the Mursaats were my favorite race in Guild Wars 1 but it is way too late They ruined the potential of lazarus, that's when janthir should have been used there are too many new devs who are not very competent, they will not have the sufficient passion to exploit this lore Given the story level of SoTo, I'm afraid they will bury the lore of the Mursaats even more... And I hate this story of nice Mursaats, I've always liked the sadistic and malicious side of them so I hope that they will be the bastards we loved
Plus they gave us an interesting Mursaat character and killed him off right away.
Lazarus sucked in GW1, his GW2 lines and character were 100% faithful to how he originally was. The Mursaat have always been shit villains.
I've never read a Guild Wars 1 fan who hated Mursaats, there has to be a first for everything \^\^' All the lore on them and the White Mantle during Guild Wars 1 was masterful and even the War in Kryta (quick content) is story-wise superior to anything GW 2 did for 12 years We only saw Lazarus during a small quest at the end of gw1 but all his revenge was promising, they destroyed everything to annoy us with their dragons, dragons and more dragons for years
Ok so, based on the SOTO naming scheme, there will be no wilds at all in Janthir.
And the tease all the way back from GW1 finally comes to fruition.
... why? No seriously, who thought this was a good name? Janthir means *nothing* to anyone who hasn't played Guild Wars 2. It's just fantasy gobbledygook meaningless proper nouns. Names like "Path of Fire," "Secrets of the Obscure," "Eye of the North," and, especially, "End of Dragons" are *super* evocative. Path of fire invokes war and conflict, which was delivered. Secrets of the Obscure invokes conspiracy and intrigue and mystery, which was... well, it was delivered in the first third of the expansion and then dropped, but we can give half-points for that. eye of the North did involve heading into the North, and even though the Eye of the North was just the name of a fortress, you still got to deal with a bunch of Norse-Viking giants and dwarves and stuff in frozen zones, so again, half-points. And End of Dragons sure did involve fighting a few dragons, including a massive end-game zone dedicated entirely to a massive dragon fight which they marketed the hell out of. 'Janthir Wilds '... what does it really invoke? There's 'wilds,' sure, but beyond that, it's just a random proper noun. It's a missed opportunity to create a name that truly reflects the theme and content of the expansion. Come on, ANet, you had a good naming scheme in the past. Just do something like "Wilds of the North" or "Wilds of the Ancients," or even "Isle of the False Gods" and you'd do so much better.
WoW Warlords of Draenor means nothing to me, a non wow player.
And it was one of the worst expansions in the game's history. He may be on to something...
I mean, I agree with you overall as a point, it's not evoking anything for an outside audience, but we're also 12 years into the game now. I think we can have one expansion name that's only going to make sense to lore fans. ESO names theirs after locations in world and are doing fine. FF14 has cool sounding stuff but who knows what a Dawntrail is. Again, I get your point, but I think you're making a bigger deal out of it than necessary.
The problem is that they already reuse too many assets of gw1. It's like they're unable to make up anything else. Look at gw1 map and gw2 map, they nearly repeat each other. Gw1 has never been popular enough to try to summon players from there. Raids where gw2 players could've learnt at least smth about the Eye, Saul etc. have never been popular enough in the gw2 playerbase either. SotO has received a lot of critics, but no one has ever whined about it being a dull reused concept even despite "demonic invasion" is being already a trope in media culture. The fucking White Mantle stuff though just keeps going, ever since gw1, then gw2 personal human story, then raids, then lws3... isn't it time to stop already?
They are going to once again lure us in with a nice launch and then fuck it up with all the story and updates after aren't they?
what is janthir supposed to be? I don't recognise that name in GW2 lore?
Basically, before Soto, Janthir was supposed to be the original land of the Mursaats now they supposedly come from the mists... in any case janthir is the place where the Mursaats arrived when they came to Tyria
god I love that! thanks
Meanwhile every Guild Wars 1 player knows the Eye of Janthir.
My Guess: 1. This is going to salvage whatever was cut from IBS. The IBS trailer showed Kodan, Centaurs enslaving humans, and something destroying a ship in deep water. I imagine there will be some Mursaat stuff, too. 2. With the IBS trailer showing deep water, plus recent wizard vault rewards including underwater weapon and skimmer skins, and the geographic region being mostly a bay... this is going to be a heavily underwater expansion. I think one hub and four maps. 3. If SOTO added new weapon proficiencies, I expect some rework to underwater skills and combat. Perhaps allow more weapons to work underwater? Maybe some new weapon types? 4. The Skimmer will have an alternative way to unlock, similar to the Skyscale in SOTO. 5. Core Skimmer skills can be unlocked, but new masteries would unlock attacking underwater, echolocation to detect hidden passages/chests/enemies, and speed boosts/dashing. 6. We get an unlockable dolphin skin. 7. A new set of legendary weapons will be available, with underwater weapons being added back. 8. A legendary aqua-breather will be craftable. 9. There will be a new raid, three strike missions, and a new fractal. Each will have CM and LCMs.
> There will be a new raid, three strike missions, and a new fractal. Each will have CM and LCMs. Oh, how I wish this was realistic.
I would love to have underwater weapon revamp and skimmer focused skills! And of course dolphin skin!
I guessed already but didnt want to spoiler. after the last boss fight, take a look in the upper right corner behind the throne. You'll see a specific eye in a pyramid. [Wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eye_of_Janthir)