Tina Lauro

So then, it’s true! Guild Wars 3 is officially on its way at last! With the short run-up, I honestly expected a much smaller announcement from this past weekend’s Summer Game Fest announcement. Feel free to drop your “I told you so” down in the comments, but I suppose I would rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. Normally, I would be ecstatic at any veterans of the MMO industry announcing a brand new MMORPG — one that’s not ashamed to explicitly call itself an MMORPG to boot.

The first patch (and second component) of Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity launches today, and while it doesn’t bring with it any story progression, it is no less a patch that has something for just about everyone. We previewed the content last week, so while you patch up, let’s dive in to what you can expect! The feature I’m most excited for is the new fashion template system. If you’ve ever used gear templates, you probably have a rough idea of how putting an outfit together works.

While most MMORPGs offer a variety of ways to play a character, Guild Wars 2 offers a huge variety of builds for each of its nine classes to appeal to every type of player, and every type of content. There is a wonderfully wide variety of playstyles in this game, which is a large part of why I have an embarrassing number of alts, and I play most of them more regularly than you might think.