Guild Wars 2 in 2013

A new year for ArenaNet's successful second Guild Wars MMO begins. What will they have in store for us this year? So far, nothing specific has been said about the January update besides Colin Johanson's post on the Guild Wars 2 official forums:

Hey guys,

Just to help provide some clarity on this, we’ll be releasing within the next couple of weeks a high level summary of our big plans for the first half of 2013 to help provide more transparency into our plans with the game going forward. This will include providing more details about our goals for the game, information about the stories and features that you’ll see in the Jan/Feb/March releases.

To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we've already built, and strengthening the core game we've provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.

More details and specifics to come in the next couple of weeks, but I hope that helps provide some more insight into what to expect at a very high level.

With the aim of being more transparent about future plans, ArenaNet's upcoming information will be gladly accepted by most of the community. That being said there are still several issues that the game is suffering with that urgently need attention.

The amount of visible players on the WvW battlegrounds remains to be a striking problem, causing many issues when there are large groups moving together. PvP has been lackluster lately, with various continuous balancing problems. PvE has also suffered with the addition of the 'Fractals of the mists' dungeon which effectively forces players to grind for the higher tier armor - something that ArenaNet initially seemed to object in their MMO manifesto video.

The benefit of Guild Wars 2 is its lack of subscription fees. Players will be drawn back to see the changes without having to feel any form of commitment. Hopefully ArenaNet will tread carefully this year in order to keep Guild Wars 2 in the players good-book.