It's been a turbulent few years for Guild Wars 2, but the upcoming End of Dragons expansion promises to bring meaningful updates to its endgame in the form of Strike missions. While the expansion will continue adding to the game's collection of legendary weapons and long list of major world events, it's the new Strike missions which will arguably be the most important piece of content coming to the game.
Screen Rant was granted the opportunity to go hands on with some of the new content in Guild Wars 2's upcoming End of Dragons expansion. This guided preview with ArenaNet offered a more detailed look at some of the content that has already been revealed in the developer's live streams and was indicative of the kind of content that players have yet to see. While it's important to note that this was not the final version of the content releasing with the expansion, this preview did offer a glimpse at what End of Dragons is offering players in terms of endgame content, which has consistently been a hot topic in the Guild Wars 2 community for a long time now.
To this point, much of Guild Wars 2's endgame has revolved around massive event chains in the open world. These massive world events require large groups of players to come together in order to complete them and were a huge aspect of the game's first expansion, Heart of Thorns. But while those events are still popular to this day, the second expansion, Path of Fire, failed to deliver on these events and it's something that must be corrected in End of Dragons. While not identified as the main meta event in the Echovald Wilds, the Fort Aspenwood event is comparable to some of the other major event chains found throughout the game and more events like it will be critical in assessing how successful Cantha's open world will be. Though the new Guild Wars 2 fishing mechanic will be tied to the completion of the new set of legendary weapons, Strike missions will be the biggest key to End of Dragons' endgame.
Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons' Strike Missions Are Promising
When Guild Wars 2 first introduced Strike missions during The Icebrood Saga, they weren't particularly good and players weren't interested in playing them. Strikes were designed to introduce players to 10-man content and the kinds of mechanics that are encountered during raiding with enhanced versions of boss fights from the game's story, much like Trials in Final Fantasy XIV. Most of the Strikes were simply too easy, resulting in players dismissing the mechanics altogether in favor of simply out-damaging the boss with a minimal amount of coordination. As a result, Strikes did not actually accomplish the objective of bridging new players into raiding, which continues to be limited to a small fraction of the playerbase. With End of Dragons, ArenaNet appears to be taking Strikes closer towards what they were intended to be.
In the End of Dragons preview, Screen Rant was given the chance to play one of four new Strike missions releasing with the expansion. This Strike, set in an Aetherblade facility, featured a number of interesting and dynamic mechanics that were reminiscent of those seen in the Nightmare and Shattered Observatory Fractals that are currently in the game. Unlike the Strike missions that were initially introduced in The Icebrood Saga, it is clear that understanding each of these mechanics and working together as a team will be critical to the players' success. "Shortly" after the release of End of Dragons, these Strike missions will be receiving additional challenge modes that will offer players an even more intensive challenge. It'll remain to be seen how this affects raiding in the long term, but End of Dragons looks to be providing exactly what the playerbase wants in Strike missions.
Following the third elite specialization beta, there was a growing sense of disappointment in the new features coming with the End of Dragons expansion. In the time since then, ArenaNet made significant changes that addressed many of the complaints with the upcoming set of elite specializations and has now produced a promising sign of the content that's set to release in the expansion sometime next month. The success or failure of Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons will ultimately be determined by the playerbase but this preview showed promising signs that ArenaNet has taken the best aspects of the game and combined them into an expansion that was desperately needed.
Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons will be released for PC in February 2022. Screen Rant was offered a hands-on demo for the purpose of this preview.