Guild Wars 2's next Living World episode features a heist, and a spooky magi-technological lab
Okay, the cat pun was maybe a bit much
Guild Wars 2 fans, it's time to mark up your calendar again. As has become the standard format for the successful MMORPG, a second episode of Living World content - this one titled A Bug In The System - is on its way, bringing new sights to see, new monsters to bop and new loot to hoard.
It's been three months since the release of Daybreak, the first episodic update bridging Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire expansion to whatever new release awaits next, and while we're still a bit short on hard details (other than the launch date, March 6th), from the looks at the trailer within they're doing something a little different this time.
While the trailer may open with tongue firmly in cheek, setting things up for wacky heist action with your regular party of NPC followers, it seems that the lab you're about to delve into isn't the happiest of places. In fact, it looks like it may have gone a little bit System Shock in there. Spooky, but a pleasant change from wandering the desert, kicking over bands of meandering undead and angry, fiery war-constructs.
As with the previous episode, A Bug In The System should feature a complete new zone to explore; this time it looks like we're venturing into Asura territory, and probably deep underground. As with the previous episode, a new raid seems likely as well, giving the more hardcore-focused guilds something fresh to chew on.
As a broad aside, it's interesting to see more MMOs settling into this kind of episodic structure, with major expansions bringing new core features and high-budget encounters, but it's the episodic releases in-between that really build on the foundation set down by those major content launches.
A Bug In The System hits Guild Wars 2 on March 6th, and anyone logging in between then and whenever episode 3 launches will find it permanently added to their account, free. You'll of course need Path of Fire, the game's latest expansion to access it. Guild Wars 2 itself, however, remains free to play.