First Raid Wing to Open Next Week

ArenaNet has announced that the first wing of the brand new Guild Wars 2 raid will open on Tuesday, November 17th. The raid will open after the Spirit Vale update, the first major patch after the launch of the Heart of Thorns expansion.

Starting with Spirit Vale, players will quickly discover that raids in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns are all about the same distinct game play mechanics that they have come to appreciate in the core game, with action-oriented combat where success is based on skill and the focus is on real-time strategies. Conquering the challenges in Heart of Thorns raids will require active strategies, not UI-gazing, with weapon and ability changes on the fly, skill combos, dodge rolling, and positioning for attacks being keys for conquering the content. One of the main aspects of game play in Guild Wars 2 is the versatility of each profession in the game, including the ability for all professions to heal. This will give raiders a large amount of freedom with party composition without reliance on the conventional tank, healer and damage dealer ‘trinity’ to take on challenges. The game’s player community is also widely recognized as one of the friendliest in MMOs because of its style of game play including the way rewards are distributed to all players who participate in an event, and the same will hold true for raids in Heart of Thorns.

In addition to the first wing of the Spirit Vale raid, players can look forward to some new adventures as well:

• Allies in Need: a squad is missing and players are charged with tracking them down
• Enhanced Squad UI will arrive that allows players to group together in a brand new way
• Legendary Rewards: defeating raids will set off the quest to gather the needed components to create legendary armor

The Spirit Value update comes free of charge to all game owners and will launch after maintenance on November 17th. 

Find out more on the Guild Wars 2 site.