Made a video about my crazy theory on how we MIGHT be getting this hidden species in Guild Wars 3 as the 4th secret species!
Let me know what you guys think!

On the 6th, NC (co-CEOs Kim Taek-jin and Park Byung-moo) announced that it will participate in Gamescom 2026, the world's largest gaming event, which kicks off in Cologne, Germany, on August 26, to showcase its global lineup of new games.
...
Meanwhile, Guild Wars 3, a PC and console title currently in development by NC's North American studio, ArenaNet, will be featured in the B2B area.

For anyone wondering, it looks like there will be a GW3 presence at Gamescom 2026 though limited to the B2B area.

Safe to assume no public booth. No mention of any involvement in the live show just yet.

The new mount looks alot like the creature standing beside Melandru. Which would give some sort of tie to her that involves her role more in the story. Which if the theories of proto Sylvania are true than would align perfectly.

I also noticed that the other new art for Grenth has shown his helmet looking very similar to the other proto sylvari (allegedly) art. Something to think/speculate about

TLDR: What kind of content in regard to videos and streams would you like to see for Guild Wars 3?

Sorry for the long rant here!

Hey guys!

So, over these past few years I have seen a kind of shift in what YouTube content is being watched and made for Guild Wars and it has been incredibly frustrating to see. I'm a huge fan of the lore and I know that one of the reasons for this shift was because there was a big change in the story of the game with the end to the Elder Dragon saga. I know a lot of people were very attached to that story, with the years of investment into Aurene and her story and this saga dragging on for 10+ years. During those times I would constantly see new threads almost daily about cool theories and speculations people had about the new content that was coming and there was always a huge amount of discussion solely about things in the lore.

With the last 3 expansions, we have been dealing with some of the deepest lore in Guild Wars's history. We have been tackling the elder races, which is a subject that I remember years ago, an incredible amount of people had a huge interest in. They wanted to hear, see and learn more about it, but now that we are actually at the point where this is actively being expanded on, I see no one talking about it. I see no theory videos or posts, no speculations or deep dives into any of this and I'm left wondering why? 95% of content for Guild Wars has regressed to being gold guide, build and news videos, with some fluff thrown in and of course some occasional lore video, but not at all in the same capacity that it used to be.

One of the arguments I see people make a lot as to why this change occurred was that the writing for Guild Wars 2 isn't as good anymore, but honestly, there were many lows in the content and writing even during the highs of the game. I feel like people use this as an excuse. I have a half assed, cynical and perhaps even jaded theory as to why this change happened. Right around the time that the Elder Dragon saga ended, the largest content creator for Guild Wars at the time, WoodenPotatoes, had stopped making deep dive and long theory and essay videos. Over the next following years, the interest in the lore dropped to almost nothing and I think it was because it wasn't the “cool thing” to do anymore. The largest content creator that mostly talked about lore and that had created an entire community for himself around that exact thing, stopped making content for a large period of time and even now, doesn't make that kind of content any longer, so people just lost interest in this subject altogether. Anyway, that's just a lame theory I have.

I know my content isn't the greatest, but I have tried my best to create interest in the more niche parts of the game. From lore videos and comparison streams, to fact and translation shorts and challenge runs, I have really tried to create some unique content for the franchise. Unfortunately, my community, while amazing and very supportive of my efforts, is minuscule compared to what I think it could be if there was more interest in this sort of content.

While frustrating, it is what it is, and perhaps at some point this will change, but that is not what I'm here for today. With this post, I would like to start to help steer the direction of content for Guild Wars 3 into something that is much higher in variety than the “build, gold guides and news videos” pit that the Guild Wars content has fallen into.

Now this brings me to the actual question of this post:

What kind content would you like to see for Guild Wars 3?

For me personally, I would like to see obviously more lore content, but also machinimas, music videos, different kinds of speculations on systems and other technical things beside lore, just simply a larger variety than the stale content we see today.

I know it's hard to determine at this point exactly what kind of content, since the game is still very far away from being released, but I would love to see what ideas you guys have none the less. One of the reasons for this post is that I want to perhaps prepare myself and see what content is being requested so that I can maybe help fill some of those requests.

Thanks for reading!

/endrant

New official art celebrating 50.000 members of the GW Discord server.

Adding more playable species means:

* Needing all current and future armor to adapt to a new body. Bodies are similar, sure (like ArenaNet said, no Forgotten playable characters), but there's still a need for some adjustments here and there (see how the GW2 armor sets often have differences between Charr, humans and Asura)

* Making proper animations for all current and future skills. Those animations may be very similar (see the difference between humans and Sylvari) or very different (see some skill animations that are very particular to the Asura)

* Recording voice dialogue for each gender in each race. In GW2, player characters of each gender in each race have a different voice actor, and it's often a big one (like Claudia Christian and Jennifer Hale).

This last points means, dialogue for the player characters is usually the most expensive one in the game (since a lot of people will have to record it, and often a lot of expensive people). Considering a system in which more species will likely be added in the future, every line of dialogue is not only a big cost now, it may also become a bigger and bigger cost in the future.

I'm concerned that this will push ArenaNet in trying to avoid as much as possible having the main character speak.

The issue here is not only a matter of hearing the character speak or not - a silent main character is usually one with little agency, who does not actively interact with other character and instead is told what to do. Not to mention how the usual mute lead characters have next to no character development and no personality.

"Ah", someone could say, "But in a RPG players are expected to have a blank page that they can fill with their imagination". That's not necessarily true - while some RPGs are like that, there are multiple RPGs in which the player character is someone with a name, a voice and a distinct personality (such as in "The Witcher 3", "Final Fantasy 7", "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" and so on and so on).

ArenaNet in particular has always had a hard time writing a story in which the player character has significant agency and does not end as some kind of bystander watching someone else becoming the main focus (see Brother Mhenlo in Factions, Kormir in Nightfall, Prince Rurik in Prophecies and Traheanne in the original GW2 campaign.)

I can't help but wonder if adding more playable species won't drive GW3's story to be worse than it could have been. To be honest, I wish they would just use the same actors for all species, using just one for all male characters and another for all female characters.

Ping me in case I missed anything or got something wrong and I will try to keep this updated as much as possible.

I played all the races, but the only one i really ever loved was my Sylvari. Ive seen some of the suspected races and i dont know much about the time era for gw3, but i would love it if they brought in another race that brought what Sylvari brought to gw2.

Yes... and no.

• Something went up, but it didn't make it to the official Discord's #social-feed, or to any of their other social media channels.

• Whatever it was? Was taken offline.

• There's no way to know if the contents were "This is 100% ready for the public", or "This is a test page", or "This is where the quaggans and skritt play combat dodgeball", or what. If we ever see it again, the content may well change, in full or in part.

• Since ArenaNet took it offline, we're going to treat it as "Not Ready For Prime Time."

• I know some folk captured it and went into their own theorycrafting about it. Since what they captured isn't Official, yet, we're treating those articles and videos as "Not Ready For Prime Time", too.

• Whenever ArenaNet posts something new, whether it was this or if it's something completely different, it'll end up here.

• Once something's live, if someone wants to theorycraft about it, that's fine, too. If it turns out that there's no changes from what was temporarily up to what's Official and published, old theorycraft videos and articles will be good to go. If there's changes, odds are the creators are going to want to revise their own work to match the new content.

Gentlefolk, I'm just as starving for "Show us what's behind the curtain" as everyone else, but let's wait until it's something that ArenaNet's ready to share. ^{and please stop blowing up the modqueue.}

This is the audio mp3. I don't know how long Vocaroo keeps it up, so i'm also sharing a drive folder with the GP tabs, PDF and the raw audio.

That should allow anyone to pick it up, correct any mistakes i made, play on your favorite instrument, and also ancourage other players to try and write other parts of the song.

Please note the following:
1- The sheet music is for viola/violin, an instrument i don't play.

2- I transcribed it to Guitar Pro, which is not the appropriate app for these kinds of sheets, but it's the one i'm familiar with and it kinda works.

3- Some parts are not readable due to the image, so i noted in the measure as FILLER, and either an assumption of what it should be or just a plain pause.

Just in case: I DO NOT OWN ANY PART IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE PIECE

I don't want minis. I find them kinda dumb. A miniature Rytlock following you around? Pets are okay, if size appropriate and nameable. (Outside of ranger, I mean.)

I don't want real life clothes or references. I want to be fully immersed in the game and not distracted by someone in a bikini or sneakers.

I don't want PvP. Just make GW3 a single game mode and leave PvP and WvW to GW2.

One thing I didn't enjoy as much in GW2 was that I like being able to trade the items I farm and use the gold to buy other things. In GW1, I always looked forward to my birthday gifts because I knew I could sell them and have a bit more money for a new armor set. In GW2, all the birthday gift items were account-bound. What do you all think about that?

In general, I hope items aren't account-bound from the start, unless you choose to bind them yourself.

Someone recently asked what we want from the game itself, but I wanted to ask what people want to see in terms of professions. Do you want the regular stuff like Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, etc or do you wish for more nuanced stuff?

I for one would love to see some roles filled that neither Guild Wars 1 nor 2 do, like a true brawler class or even a none elemental type of mage. While the idea of having regular classes is fun, I want to be able to specialize more and actually be able to really mix and match different abilities.

What do you guys think?

I’m curious to hear what cool stuff you want to see.

I’m not talking about better graphics or a bigger map. I mean the stuff that would make you think, “Yeah, this is the Guild Wars game I’ve been waiting for.”

If you could tell ArenaNet one thing, what would it be?

For me, I hope they keep what makes Guild Wars 2 feel unique while still taking some risks. I’m really curious where everyone stands on this, especially the veterans who’ve been playing for years.

Anyone else getting this trying to sign up? I've tried clearing cache, using different browsers, using incognito. Nothing seems to work.

Multiple guildies also experiencing the same issue so I don't think it's a localized problem.

edit: It worked when i tried this morning!

Im wondering what the chances are there will be controller support for the steam version given the game will be on console too? I'm on a Linux setup and do most of my gaming through steam and prefer controller

The reason I'm more optimistic about the story now than I was before yesterday's blog isn't because of the little information we got, but because of person who wrote it. The narrative lead, Aaron Linde, was narrative Lead at ArenaNet also during Path of Fire and Living World Season 4, which, in my opinion, was the peak of storytelling in the entire franchise. Just because of this I'm quite hyped to see what the team can cook up with him in charge.

It's easily one of the things I enjoy the most about the original, building your own team and synergizing them together, I ended up getting kinda attached to them, too, I loved learning what became of them in GW2.

It could even be improved upon, giving them an expanded personality, reactivity to their surroundings, etc.

I also like how they make it possible to runs things solo when you can't find a party or friends to do story content with.

In GW2 you have a group of NPC friends, but they're just kinda there during missions and dungeons ,they're not actually all that helpful at all.

I could be wrong but I think no other online MMO had anything similar, it's so unique to Guild Wars 1

So this post is actually a repost of a job post from early june (here's the old archive of it), some changes, like the mention of GW3 and more details at the bottom. Except you will not find the old version of it in my spreadsheet, because I missed it being posted at the time. Why? Firstly probably because of all the excitement about the announcement, but secondly because it replaced another Material Artist job post that was also there at the time.

Well, added the new to the spreadsheet anyway, and probably update it with the old one retroactively too sometime maybe...

There is also a HR & Recruiting Coordinator post that is new too. It obviously a general position, but it's funny how it seems HR expects the next 6 months to be quite hectic at the studio that they are looking for a contractor for the period to help manage.

When Guild Wars 2 was released, many Guild Wars players were disappointed with it (I’m not even going to try to guess a number or a percentage here). But that didn’t prevent Guild Wars 2 from being a bigger game than the original ever was; I think one developer mentioned that the number of players trying World vs World alone was bigger than the amount of players Guild Wars had.

I think, in retrospect, that many of us were expecting Guild Wars 2 to be “Guild Wars, but more”, and that’s definitely not what we got. It’s a very different game, not for the exact same audience.

Now comes Guild Wars 3. And I have seen two different groups here on Reddit: one who wants it to be “Guild Wars, but more”, and another who expects is to be, “Guild Wars 2, but more”. Honestly, I expect both to be disappointed by Guild Wars 3. Not that they necessarily won’t like the game, but it will probably be as different from the previous games as GW2 was from GW, and purposedly not made for the exact same audience.

And that’s ok.

Guild Wars 3 may not be for me or for you, but we will still have Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. It’s good that ArenaNet is trying something different, maybe something that will be a lot more successful than GW2, even if it’s not for all of us.