Although the game was neglected in favor of it's korean-style cash shop mmo / wowclone sequel for most of the past thirteen years, we got new things every fifth anniversary.
In 2015 the fancy but irrelevant decade weapons that replaced the inscription slot with 20% damage during festival events.
Then in 2020 we got the anniversary weapons, atypical weapons for each profession (paragon daggers, warrior spear, ranger sword, necromancer scythe, monk hammer), as well as new pve-only anniversary elite skills that either opened up new builds (Seven Weapons Stance, Together as One), were largely irrelevant (Time Ward, Vow of Revolution), complete garbage (Over the Limit), or just straight up broke the game (Heroic Refrain, Soul Taker).
Now in the 2025 anniversary the two developers (one who usually maintains GW1, and another who formerly worked on it but had to be pulled off another project) cooked up some new technology, allowing certain new weapon suffixes in PvE to give an unmodifiable primary attribute of 4-5, even if for a completely different primary profession. For example, a weapon of the monk gives 4-5 (depending on the affix roll) divine favor even to a necromancer. Or, a weapon of the necromancer gives the best passive energy management to any other primary profession.
All this is fairly straightforward maintenance mode "afterlife" for an online game, but last year's anniversary hit a lot harder than arenanet anticipated, prompting them to strike a deal with a team of former GW1 developers to start working on reforged mode, which came out last december, bringing UI improvements, Steam integration, and controller support at first (I also got an account for free
), then the team dropped reforged mode which is an alternative containing some experiments (scaling henchmen, different mobs in pre-searing), and hardcore mode, that gives all titles achieved before your first death a badge.
I did not end up playing either mode so far, but I wonder what they'll come up with next.
In 2015 the fancy but irrelevant decade weapons that replaced the inscription slot with 20% damage during festival events.
Then in 2020 we got the anniversary weapons, atypical weapons for each profession (paragon daggers, warrior spear, ranger sword, necromancer scythe, monk hammer), as well as new pve-only anniversary elite skills that either opened up new builds (Seven Weapons Stance, Together as One), were largely irrelevant (Time Ward, Vow of Revolution), complete garbage (Over the Limit), or just straight up broke the game (Heroic Refrain, Soul Taker).
Now in the 2025 anniversary the two developers (one who usually maintains GW1, and another who formerly worked on it but had to be pulled off another project) cooked up some new technology, allowing certain new weapon suffixes in PvE to give an unmodifiable primary attribute of 4-5, even if for a completely different primary profession. For example, a weapon of the monk gives 4-5 (depending on the affix roll) divine favor even to a necromancer. Or, a weapon of the necromancer gives the best passive energy management to any other primary profession.
All this is fairly straightforward maintenance mode "afterlife" for an online game, but last year's anniversary hit a lot harder than arenanet anticipated, prompting them to strike a deal with a team of former GW1 developers to start working on reforged mode, which came out last december, bringing UI improvements, Steam integration, and controller support at first (I also got an account for free
), then the team dropped reforged mode which is an alternative containing some experiments (scaling henchmen, different mobs in pre-searing), and hardcore mode, that gives all titles achieved before your first death a badge.I did not end up playing either mode so far, but I wonder what they'll come up with next.