‘Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns’ Reveals Thief Elite Specialization, Beta

“We’re making the base game free because we’re confident that anyone who loves Guild Wars 2 will consider buying Heart of Thorns, continuing their experience into the expansion and beyond with Living World and our newly announced raids”.

“Since launching three years ago-almost to the day, today-we’ve sold more than 5 million copies of the game”, reads a statement on the Guild Wars 2 website. You can catch the livestream of the fan press conference from 6:30pm on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel. Players who pre-purchase Heart of Thorns will get benefits such as unique virtual items and access to Beta Weekend Events between now and launch. At the event, the game’s future, as well as its upcoming features, is going to be discussed, so it stands to reason that the free-to-play move and the addition of raids might be presented to the world. Guild leaderboards have also been added to heighten competition between them. Aside from these, gamers will also be able to play the game’s new elite specialization system that grows any character profession into new elite specializations.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will hit PC and Mac on October 23. The actual reveal is set to be made tomorrow, at PAX Prime, as the studio has a big panel scheduled to take place at the event.

We’ll also be turning on our new Stronghold PvP game mode for all players for the duration of the weekend, along with the new Mist Champion selection system.

Players who have pre-purchased the expansion will see a new button appear on the character-creation screen that allows them to create and play a fully geared, level 80 beta character of any race for the duration of the weekend.

Following this week’s earlier leak on the subject, ArenaNet has officially revealed that their MMORPG Guild Wars 2 will be going free-to-play. While enemy hordes and platforming will be a major aspect of the Raids, so will massive boss encounters, designed specifically to take on 10-person teams.

For details regarding today’s announcements including a letter from Mike O’Brien to players on making the core Guild Wars 2 game free as well as a blog post highlighting raids coming to Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, please visit www.guildwars2.com.

Heart of Thorns continues the storyline that has the game world of Tyria facing off against the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. From there, they will land in Verdant Brink, the first map of the expansion.