ArenaNet 如何为20年后的《激战》注入新活力 | 采访

ArenaNet today announced the release date for the first new premium DLC for Guild Wars in almost two decades. This DLC, called Afterlife, launches on January 13, 2027 for PC via Steam, iOS and Android. It introduces the land of Xotecha, with the intention to challenge Guild Wars players who may have gotten complacent in the last twenty years.

Afterlife features the following:

• A new storyline: Players can assist the Order of the Moonless Night to fight Nightmares while a new cult threatens a dungeon called the Unformed
• A new dungeon: The Unformed features jungles, floating ruins and cenotes that change constantly
• New rewards: Players collect rewards for each dungeon run that impact their future runs, along with rewards that apply to their gameplay outside of the DLC

According to ArenaNet, it created Afterlife in partnership with co-dev studio 2weeks (which, GamesBeat is given to understand, is staffed by several ArenaNet alumni), all while supporting Guild Wars 2 and working on Guild Wars 3. It also continues the work that the studio did to revamp the original game through Guild Wars Reforged.

Why ArenaNet is still giving Guild Wars new content

I caught up with Colin Johanson, studio head at ArenaNet, at GamesBeat Next to ask him some questions about the new expansion, and how it came about. According to him, the idea for an expansion to the original game came about while they were working on ways to tie Guild Wars 2 to the third game.

”Quietly, in the background, while we were working on Reforged, we also decided to take a chance and see what would happen if we took a chance on something bigger… It takes place in a different location, with new characters and themes, but there are some story pieces that tie back to the stories of 2005-2007 that our Guild Wars fans are going to be really excited about.”

Johanson also told me the that some of the ideas for Afterlife are from Utopia, an expansion for Guild Wars that was planned and then never made after the team turned its attention to the Eyes of the North expansion. “Utopia sat quietly in the background all these years. Some of the elements and inspirations for Utopia made their way into Guild Wars 2, but many of them didn’t, and have been laying in the company’s hidden folders.”

Afterlife is not a one-to-one translation of Utopia, Johanson said. “Afterlife takes inspiration from and draws from some of the things that we wanted to do way back in the day with Utopia, which is an expansion players have been begging for twenty years to find out more about. They’re going to experience a little taste of that.”

I asked Johanson if there was a common language or philosophy tying Afterlife and Guild Wars 3 together, and he said they are both part of ArenaNet’s franchise strategy. “We want players to know we’re going to continue to support these gams for as long as they want to play them. If you play Guild Wars 3, you’re not just getting a commitment for the short term. You can look at the fact that we’re still shipping updates to Guild Wars, 21 years later. That’s the type of experience you’re going to get from ArenaNet.”

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