Guild Wars Reforged: The future and beyond
Hello Adventurers!
With Gems of War Update 8.4 and the return of Guild Wars on the horizon, we wanted to share one final blog to get into the revamped Guild Wars Reforged, what’s in store for its future, and where we want to evolve it as the feature rolls out in its initial form.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our recent Guild Wars Reimagined blog where Sirrian does a VERY deep dive into the systems and design work that went into Guild Wars Reforged.
So what does Guild Wars Reforged mean?
In a nutshell, Guild Wars Reforged is our next evolution of the previously popular, albeit flawed Guild Wars repackaged into a new version that not only puts a new skin on the feature but also introduces some mechanics that we felt would improve the gameplay experience for participants. We saw lots of feedback both negative and positive about the predecessor and during its year-long hiatus, we’ve done some tinkering to chip away at the pain points of the original.
As a reminder of the core elements that we’ve prioritized in Guild Wars Reforged. Here are the Four Pillars of game design that we’ve made top of mind during its development.
Four Pillars of Guild Wars Reforged:
- Real Gritty PvP – No pay-to-win and fights are meant to evenly match guilds against equally skilled opponents.
- Strategic Choices – Be it defense or offense, guilds can choose how they want to play Guild Wars Reforged. For a bit more regarding the new system’s flexibility for player choices, be sure to check out our Sneak Peek 2.
- No Hidden Scoring/Bonuses – As said earlier. More science than art when it comes to scoring so that your strategic choices feel like they’ve achieved expected outcomes instead of feeling a little nebulous.
- Real Guild Leaderboards – Brackets were bad, broken, and busted so we’ve introduced leaderboards utilizing ELO ratings which effectively is matchmaking based on a Guild’s trophy count.
These are just a few of the areas we’re looking to improve and we definitely have more in store as the feature gets put into players hands and feedback is shared with our team!
So Guild Wars Reforged isn’t in its final form?
That is correct. When 8.4 releases, Guild Wars Reforged will be ready for you to jump in with your Guild mates and start preparing for our first Guild Wars weekend later this month. There is still more work to be done though! From historical feedback from the community, as well as our most recent hard-working 8.4 beta players, there is still a lot we want to implement, but we’re not ready to ship it all in 8.4.
This initial launch also gives us room to keep taking feedback from a wider player base after Guild Wars has been played for a couple of events and continue to refine content to get it exactly where we all want it to be.
Here are a few examples of some features we already have slated for upcoming updates, based on testing and feedback during the beta.
Guild UI & Guild Scoring
Currently, there isn’t a good way to view all of your Guildmate’s scores. This is always something we wanted to do, but it became apparent during the beta that what we had planned wasn’t nearly enough for all the data-junkies out there! (Hey – we get it – we’re data-junkies too)
Defense Teams
We know that testing your Defense Teams is currently a bit annoying – you need to set up a team, play a battle in Central Spire, and then fight yourself. We have a plan to provide a comprehensive way to setup and test teams directly from a new location on the PvP World Map, where the whole loop of tweaking and testing a team is much more streamlined.
Note: In case you were not aware, you can still fight yourself via your own hero profile
The Old Guild-Wars-Exclusive Troops
Not an oversight in planning – this was an oversight in communication which was noted by players in the beta – we never shared our plan for the 6 old Guild-Wars-Exclusive Troops (such as the Penguin and the Peryton).
These are expected to move into Guild Chests sometime during 8.4 after the first Guild War event completed
Keep Guardians
We have quite a bit planned for Keep Guardians that never made it into version 8.4. At the moment, they guard the Gate, and they fill in for empty buildings in smaller Guilds. They also provide a defensive ability for all Guild Members that kicks in if a battle lasts more than 15 turns.
Without going into too much detail, we’d like to allow Guilds to purchase buffs for the Guardians… not so many that they could lock out newer players from competing in a Guild Wars event, but enough to make a difference in scores achieved against them.
In turn, Guilds who pooled together to buff their Keep Guardian will get a reduction to the turns required before the Gaurdian’s defense ability kicks in.
Longer Term Goals
While we’ll certainly be monitoring and adjusting Guild Wars continuously, this article is a good opportunity to share some of the other plans we have for the next 6-12 months.
One of our goals in 2025 is definitely to reduce the amount of things that feel like they need to be done every day. Currently, there are Dungeons, Underspire, Weekly Guild Events, Weekend Events, Campaigns, PvP Seasons, and now Guild Wars too!
While we love having a rich tapestry of tasks to choose from all the time, it just feels like a bit too much. The plan isn’t to remove things… it’s more about either consolidating things, so you can do two at once – or shortening things, so they take less time to complete. We’ll follow up with more details, but lookout for some really cool changes to Campaigns in 8.5!
What features are you looking to add to Guild Wars Reforged?
Going off on the four pillars of design for the feature, our next area of improvement for Guild Wars Reforged will be in the area of strategic choice and more transparency with how those choices pan out. Those areas will come by way of War Results and a few QOL changes to make your strategic choices easier like visibility into the opposing Guild’s defensive lines.
The future of Guild Wars Reforged
As we mentioned, there is more to come for Guild Wars Reforged, but we’ll outline those future developments after you’ve gotten a taste of what the newly minted Guild Wars Reforged feels like and battle it out against other guilds!
We’ve got our own list of priorities to tackle but would love to hear from you as you strategize around upcoming events and think of other improvements that could make the feature more enjoyable for anyone who participates.
We know the importance of Guild Wars to the community, and we are committed to continuing to work on this game mode in the coming updates. This is also why we want to ensure we are being completely upfront that Guild Wars on release, is an ongoing work in progress and there is more to come.
Thank you again for passionately sharing your feedback since we took down Guild Wars and those who participated in the 8.4 BETA!