In 2022, Guild Wars 2 celebrated its 10th anniversary with an expansion that closed the book on its first major story arc. With the decade of dragons over, the rest of the year was spent tidying things up. The first season of its living world story was reintroduced, a swathe of quality-of-life updates were made to older systems and activities, and the game finally launched on Steam. In the wake of all that, we named it our best ongoing game of the year.
The big question at the end of 2022 was, naturally, what's next? And in 2023, ArenaNet gave us a surprising answer. The fourth expansion, Secrets of the Obscure, released in August, alongside a new expansion structure that the studio claimed would allow for more frequent releases—more expansions from a team that, historically, has struggled to make them.
