Last year, Guild Wars 2 switched to a new annual expansion cycle—swapping out the sporadic expansions of old for more regular, smaller releases. Expansions now launch with two open world maps and a handful of new features, and then gets filled in across the rest of the year through major quarterly updates.
The first of this new style of expansion, last year's Secrets of the Obscure, suffered from being ArenaNet's first attempt at working to this scale—attempting to cram too much story into too little space, with later updates suffering for it. This year's expansion, Janthir Wilds, is a clear attempt to evolve and adapt—to take what the studio learned and to move forward with something that better fits the new structure.
