Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm Update GW2

Guild Wars 2's Flame and Frost: Prelude has been out for awhile now (if you haven't played or read all about it yet, you can see the official patch notes here). Things have been going pretty well. My little Necromancer has been slowly creeping up in levels thanks to the new daily achievement system that has been introduced and she finally hit level 40. Only 40 more to go, woo! :D Overall, I am a fan of these new dailies... but I do still miss how quickly the old ones could be completed! The new laurel rewards are quite nice, however some of the daily categories can be a bit annoying such as Daily Dodger - I can never seem to time my dodges at exactly the right moment, but I am slowly getting better at it! So far the easiest enemy for me to complete this daily on has been various worms (just dodge when whatever they spit at you is in mid air). The only other two I find mildly annoying are Daily Healer and Daily Crafter. Healer is easy if you don't mind traveling to specific areas like the Thaumanova Reactor in Metrica Province, but if you are just trying to complete it at the same time as the other dailies when you're out leveling it can end up taking awhile. Crafter is easy too if you refine some low level materials, but I'm not much of a crafter so I'd rather do something else! I must say though that the best new daily by far is the one to visit the laurel vendor, which can easily be found in every major city. Why can't that one pop up everyday?? :)

Visiting the Laurel Vendor - best daily ever! 

The new daily interface is also a nice quality of life addition. It's really handy being able to see all that you need to do with a quick glance. I have noticed it be a bit buggy (it often "closes" for no real reason), but it's still much better than having to keep opening the whole Achievement Panel. Another thing I've noticed is that the monthly achievement tracker will also show up after you've completed the dailies. In my opinion it would be nice for these monthly goals to always be listed along with the normal dailies, but that's a small complaint.

In related news, ANet has finally announced which features will be present in the February update, which is scheduled for a February 26th release date and has been given the name Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm. If you hate the new daily system that I mentioned above, perhaps you'll be pleased to learn that we will now be able to choose which daily categories we want to complete and be rewarded for everyday (I'm quite looking forward to this addition). More choice for things like this is always a good thing! There will also be two team rated play added to PvP, as well as an entirely new PvP map called Spirit Watch. Also, guild missions, yay! These really look fun. They will include "everything from bounties to group puzzles to cross-country challenges". The only problem I can see is that players in a small guild might have trouble completing all of these missions. They seem to all be designed for larger groups, so if you're more of a solo player, well, you might be out of luck for this one. :( Although ArenaNet does tend to have a reputation for trying to make things as inclusive as possible, if there are any dungeon-like encounters or huge bosses being added as missions, it could prove potentially difficult for tiny guilds. It might be worth recruiting some more friends to your guild so you can unlock the new upgrades and rewards!

As far as the Living Story storyline is concerned, it looks to be more of the same. I was pretty disappointed that there wasn't much to do during the first installment, and it appears as though there probably won't be a whole lot of new stuff to do with this one either. Basically, our efforts as Volunteers have helped somewhat, but the impending storm is still growing up near the Shiverpeaks... And that's it. :/ I imagine that part three is where something big will start happening, but of course only time will tell! We'll have to wait and see exactly how things end up playing out.

If you were looking for new WvW updates, they are unfortunately being pushed back to the March update (hopefully) in order to receive some more testing and polishing.

How are you enjoying the Flame and Frost update so far? What are you most looking forward to in the next Guild Wars 2 patch? Let me know what you think in the comment section below! :)

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