Guild Wars 2 Delays End Of Dragons Expansion, And Colin Johanson Returns

Okay, so the two events in the headline aren't directly tied, but they are the biggest news in the latest ArenaNet Studio Update on the Guild Wars 2 site, which also covers the return of the Living World as well as a new feature and some upcoming changes.

First up, the expansion delay. There's not a lot to say here other than that due to the events of the past year or so, the dev team has made changes in how they work and the result is that they're going to need a little more time -- although not a lot more. As of now, the End of Dragons release is being pushed back from the end of 2021 to 2022. That said, if you want to know what to expect when the expansion does launch, you'll want to watch the First Look Livestream on July 27.

Next, Colin Johanson has returned. He's rejoined the studio to help co-lead. He's also added his own message to the Studio Update post. You can read the full thing there, but the highlights are that co-lead JT reached out to him following his time at Crucible and asked him to return. Now that he's back, he's laid out some things in the post that they hope to do improve on game development -- including creating a new role focused on leading development strategy for the live game.

As noted, the rest of the post lightly addressed the live game, additional content like Alliances, and client performance optimization. These are all things that are currently being worked on, and will likely be covered more in the stream on July 27.