Guild Wars 2 Free As A Bird Soon, AND THIS BIR- Ok, Ok

If I could skateboard (I gave up trying to learn after clumsily busting a board) I'd skate everywhere. When rolling is an option, walking is surely pedestrian. Beyond the bounds of the skatepark, I'd insist upon skating down to the shops, over hills, through bogs, and up the stairs in my building. Walking be damned! And yet MMOs keep adding fancy new modes of locomotion which are restricted to certain zones.

Good news on that front for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns [official site], as the expansion's gliding is coming to the rest of Tyria.

When the update hits, folks who've learned Basic Gliding Mastery will be able to glide across most of Central Tyria, including into places where they perhaps shouldn't be.

Developers ArenaNet experimented with gliding all over the world while prototyping it for the Heart of Thorns expansions, they explain in a blog post, but it needed more work. At launch, it was limited to Heart's new zones, which were designed with soaring in mind. They won't be reworking Central Tyria to be as glider-oriented as Maguuma jungle when they let folks start soaring, but isn't gliding at all enough?

It won't work in story instances or dungeons, mind, and gliders will collapse if you fly too close to secret things like jumping puzzle solutions. ArenaNet also say "These new freedoms might allow you to get to places in these maps we did not originally intend you to see. As long as your explorations remain harmless, it's all part of the fun!" Sounds great, that. I have always enjoyed exploring secret and forbidden places.

ArenaNet have laid out the rest of their plans for early 2016 too, including a new Shatterer fight, World vs. World tweaks, a Brew of the Month Club, a big rebalancing, a Lunar New Year event, and plenty more. Hit that post for more info. I just focused on the gliding because I'm... as free as a bird now, AND THIS [yes, that's quite enough Skynyrd lyrics for now, thank you -ed.].