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Guild Wars 2 Getting "Major" Updates Every Three Months

The Winter 2016 update is first, coming later this month.

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Still playing Guild Wars 2 and wondering what's coming up? Developer ArenaNet has now published a detailed blog post that provides an overview of the content and features expected to arrive in the next year. Game director Colin Johanson started off by saying 2016 will bring about a change to how ArenaNet approaches development on Guild Wars 2.

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"From 2012 to 2014, we were focused on developing regular updates through our Living World and feature pack releases," Johanson said. "In 2015 our focus predominantly shifted away from live updates and toward our first expansion. In 2016 we aim to provide a more balanced focus, which will see efforts divided equally between providing regular updates and working toward the next expansion."

Whereas the past three years saw ArenaNet focus on "breadth" of content, 2016 will mark the beginning of a shift toward "depth."

"Over the years, Guild Wars 2 has built up a wide variety of content and feature types. 2016 is the year where we'll be focusing on the parts of Guild Wars 2 that have been most successful and giving our full attention to those areas by adding depth to them," Johanson said. "This means a focus on new content and polish for our existing, successful parts of the game. Though our big overhaul for World vs. World is still not ready for prime time, all other parts of the game are at a point where we can focus entirely on polishing the systems we have and continuing to add new content via live updates and our next expansion."

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What does that mean exactly? First, players can look forward to major seasonal updates coming every three months or so. The first of these is the Winter 2016 update, which is pegged to debut January 26.

This update will introduce expanded functionality for the Gliding Mastery line, a new Mist champion called Tybalt Leftpaw, new world and raid boss decorations, additional key-binding options, and balance tweaks that will introduce changes to professions, specializations, traits, and skills.

Over the coming months, Guild Wars 2 players can also look forward to a New Year event, the arrival of the next raid wing, and the launch of the game's latest PvP competitive season.

Looking beyond all of this content, Johanson teased that there are "plenty of other things" coming to Guild Wars 2 later this year. He also cautioned that game development is a fluid process and things could change.

Johanson's full blog post goes into greater depth on ArenaNet's plans; you can read it here.

Guild Wars 2 was released in summer 2012 and sold more than 5 million copies before its free-to-play conversion in August. The game's Heart of Thorns expansion was released in October, and not long after, the game hit an all-time high of 7 million players.

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