The Case for 'The Heart of Maguuma'

What’s up internet? I have been looking for the right time to get back into writing GW2-articles. Lately I haven’t been able to because of basically life getting in the way. But the announcement of the first expansion pack for GW2: Heart of Thorns (from now on referred to as HoT) seemed like the perfect moment to get back into it. Over the next couple of articles I’ll discuss all of the HoT-features as announced by ArenaNet at Pax South. I’ll give you an overview of the information we have available as of now, give my own two cents, speculate and try to remove some misconceptions. Anyways let’s get started with the first feature: the Heart of Maguuma.

Heart of Maguuma basically entails the entire new area we’ll be venturing into in HoT. This is what Colin Johansonsaid about it at Pax:

“Now as Mo [Mike O'Brien] said earlier, the maps in the Heart of Maguuma are some of the richest, deepest content experiences that we have ever built in GW2. The game space is tremendous, the amount of space that you can play in, and the jungle is made up of three distinct biomes: The Core (the jungle floor itself), The Roots of the jungle that run deep beneath the jungle itself, and The Canopy, high above, where the remains of the Pact fleet are scattered across the top of the jungle.” (source reddit)

The very pessimistic among us will gather from this that we only get one new map. The little bit less pessimistic will take from this that we’re only getting three maps. In reality we don’t know how many maps we’re going to get. All we know is we’ll have more than one as you can read the word ‘mapS’ in the beginning of the quote. My personal guess is we’ll get somewhere in between five and ten maps although Colin said that we shouldn't expect a slew of new maps.

"I think historically you'll see expansions for MMOs do a bunch of maps that players progress through very quickly and leave a wasteland of empty worlds behind them. We're really focusing on doing less total maps and instead making them really, really deep, filled with a ton of replay value; a ton of content to explore and see."

 "And so we're really focusing on: let's do a little bit in the grand scheme of things; let's do a smaller sized area for total scope, and focus really on depth."

(source pcgamer)

Something else we have to keep into account is that Dry Top and Silverwastes might have been intended for HoT but because of the growing discontent amongst the player base they decided to release it earlier to quell the discontent.

Those two maps are a nice Segway into another part of the above mentioned quote, namely the three biomes. So these are not maps but rather levels/dimensions in a map. The best way to explain is to point towards Dry Top and Silverwastes. As I mentioned in a review of the Living Story-episode that introduced Dry Top (S02E01;S02E02), it’s not only a breathtaking but also very clever map. At the face of it, Dry Top is a small map but by dividing it into multiple levels they’re roughly tripling the explorable terrain. The same goes for Silverwastes. Just imagine that for HoT. If we get somewhere between five and ten maps and each one is divided into three biomes we’re getting somewhere in between 15 and 30 maps of explorable terrain.

Based on the trailer we can expect mainly lush jungle in the new areas with some desert wasteland areas. It also looks like we’re only getting new areas in Maguuma although what we know now is still very rudimentary. There are some people that think that Primordus will play a part in Maguuma based on the fiery monsters in the trailer but that seems very vague to me right now. I do hope that we’ll get some minor map changes in the original areas so the dragons don’t feel as isolated from each other.  For example they can change Gendarran Fields into Gendarran Icefields to show that Jormag’s corruption is growing. In the same way you could make Kralkatorrik’s Brand branch out into other maps or let a volcano erupt causing serious damage in a map adjacent to Primordus’ territory. It would keep the threat of the other dragons present and would also fit nicely in their Living World-philosophy. We did get confirmation that LA will be rebuild for HoT so here’s hoping they don’t stop there .

What else can we expect in the heart of Maguuma? New rewards, achievements, new types of content to experience, new creatures, new civilizations and maybe even more. We don’t know enough yet to go deeper in those features but that will change soon enough. Jumping puzzles are also making a return for us to enjoy or get frustrated by depending on you jumping skills.

Clearly we have just scratched the surface of what the heart of Maguuma has in store for us. I’m sure more will be revealed as we head towards Pax East in six weeks where we’ll see gameplay footage for the first time. However, this is it for now. See you next time for the next feature!