Video: Playing Revenant in Guild Wars 2 expansion Heart of Thorns
Maguuma matata.
Heart of Thorns is the first expansion for MMO Guild Wars 2, and it was playable last week for the first time.
I captured footage as I took the new Revenant profession for a run and saw the densely detailed and vast new Maguuma Jungle for mein own eyes. I played the new Stronghold player versus player mode but unfortunately wasn't able to capture from it.
The Revenant is the profession that summons legends from Guild Wars history to use in battle. I tried the Legendary Dwarf Stance (Jalis Ironhammer) and the Legendary Demon Stance (Mall). It seems like you can switch between them without much cooldown, if any, allowing for some strong combination possibilities. There will be more legends to choose from eventually.
I also saw the new Mastery system that developer ArenaNet hopes to use (along with profession specialisations) to expand the game for years to come. This instead of raising the game's level cap. The mastery I tried was the talked-about hang-gliding - an ability that improves as you progress down the skill line. There was a mushroom bouncing skill line I didn't try.
There's still a lot left to be seen: the specialisations, for one, along with the new world versus world Borderlands map.
Heart of Thorns will be playable in London next week at Rezzed, and there are plans for closed beta tests to follow in the spring. There's no release date for the expansion yet - apparently it depends on testing.
