Hello, hello, hello, duders! A very focused installment, this week. The extended convention season we find ourselves in means ArenaNet haven't been churning out many blogs, but that thankfully doesn't mean a shortage of news, as just this morning devs held a panel at Rezzed discussing the design of the new World vs. World map.

First, though, a small announcement that may or may not tickle your fancy: going forward from the upcoming feature update (i.e. the camera fix + stability change one), world completion will no longer require WvW map completion. That means that while all vistas, skill points, etc. will remain in those maps, they will not count toward completing 100% of the objectives in Tyria. After the patch, your new percentage will be effective upon logging in to your account.

Alright, time for the meat of this post. Desert Borderlands! These are the specifics, straight from the panel.

Basics

• When Heart of Thorns launches, the Desert Borderlands map will replace each of the three existing Borderlands (now named Alpine Borderlands for the purposes of distinction). It is possible that the older maps may rotate back in or return for certain events.
• Several distinct regions comprise the Desert Borderlands, and they're connected by both obvious and subtle routes. Included are a central oasis loaded with dinosaurs (fuck yeah, dinos), a series of narrow canyons with vertical traversal, a large subterranean area veined with lava, and a portion made up of oppressive, haunted ruins.
• A focus of the new map's design is enabling defense in more ways than before. Keeps and towers will now be placed such that fewer vulnerabilities will be exposed, defenders will have more angles of view on their gates, and attackers are less able to circumvent enemy structures entirely.
• Because structures are placed at chokepoints, zergs and roamers will have to make more effort to traverse regions that they don't control. Conversely, dominating an area will give you a greater number of options for quickly reaching a target or outmaneuvering the enemy.
• Each Desert Borderlands will feature three keeps and four towers. Three elemental shrines will surround each keep, similarly to the makeup of Edge of the Mists.

Keeps and Shrines

• Shrines will grant a 10-minute buff upon interaction (e.g. movement speed, flat damage), and provide more significant benefits to those who control both them and their associated keep.
• Controlling the Air Keep and one associated shrine will activate jump pads in the surrounding canyons, allowing for flanking or simply outrunning. A second shrine will activate many bird statues along bridges, stairways, and cliffs that periodically blow gusts of wind to knock enemies off their intended path. This has a more significant impact against zergs, since individual players will likely retain the focus necessary to avoid the blasts. Air's third shrine just flips caution off and disables falling damage while in the canyons. Paratrooper zergs? Why the fuck not?
• Inside of Air, you'll find a tengu keep lord with a heavy focus on area control. He'll creates wind funnels to zone players, toss his greatsword around, teleport, and just generally be a flighty dick. Also in the lord room are several bird statues that are not tied to shrine bonuses, and will knock you to your death if you're caught by them.
• The Fire Keep is positioned entirely underground, and surrounded by lava channels. Shrine #1 spawns an egg that transforms you into an Inferno Hound on interaction. Hounds will play a similar role to golems, with massive amounts of health, toughness, and power to tank enemies with. Shrine #2 will activate stone gargoyles in the caverns that target enemy players with fireball projectiles. Shrine #3 just turns you into Lava Jesus, with all the associated swagger of crowd-controlling opponents to a fiery death while you /dance on top of a pool of boiling rock, and also provides point-to-point lava tunnels. Why the fuck not?
• Finally, the Earth Keep is built around a massive asura structure that forgot gravity. Shrine numero uno creates rock walls that raise when enemies approach, creating one of those "invisible" mazes that you'll be familiar with, having played video games before. Earth shrine #2 spawns turrets among the maze that stack cripple in an AoE, presumably to train new players in the effectiveness of leading siege targets. #3 blankets the area around the keep with a sandstorm, which sounds iffy until you learn that the sandstorm grants permanent stealth to allies within it. Rolling up on some roaming suckers with 50 invisible players itching to unload burst? Why the fuck not?

Towers

• First-off, we have a "Mage College" tower, surrounded by a village and defended by a mage tower lord, who will drop huge AoE, activate Mist Form, and generally live the #ElementalistLife.
• Second is an ogre tower, whose lord evidently does a lot of stealthy thief junk.
• Third, a charr-themed "War Depot", with a tower lord who leaps around and launches you with a big ol' hammer, along with the use of other CC abilities.
• Last is a Lich Tower controlled by a lord who happens to also be a lich. Like a sort of lich... governor, or something. He'll push conditions from himself to you, and hit certain players with an effect that pulses massive damage to those around them.

Oasis

• Seemingly a refinement of the ruins in the Alpine Borderlands, the Oasis in the center of the map is intended to draw out open-field fights for a contested objective. Unlike the ruins, though, the objective - a large, golden weapon - only becomes available every three hours.
• The event itself requires that you kill some badass dinos and carry the energy cores that they drop to a nearby camp. There are three camps in the region, to lessen the likelihood of a single server preventing small, opposing groups from making progress.
• Upon activation, the weapon will fire continuously at every enemy-controlled objective on the map. Barring swift repair and defense, this will destroy the gates at each one of those objectives. This creates a natural comeback opportunity, whereby if you control fewer structures you have much more to gain from triggering the weapon first.

Shield Generator

• The shield generator is a new siege weapon focused around defense and manipulation, with the firing range of an arrow cart.
• Its first skill fires an arcing ball that, when it lands, will knock back enemies. The ball then bounces a couple more times in a random direction.
• The shield gen's second skill fires a shield wall that prevents enemy passage for its duration. This can create very effective chokepoints on narrow paths or by coordinating multiple walls at once.
• Skill 3 on the shield generator - go figure - generates a large shield bubble that blocks projectiles and stacks stability on allies within it. Handily, a shield bubble can block all of an opposing shield generator's arsenal.

What's been shown of the new map looks absolutely incredible, so it's recommended that you watch the panel itself, below. It gets going about 22 minutes into the Twitch video. I'll replace this with a YouTube archive if and when that becomes available.

That's all for this round. Hopefully, some deeper looks at expansion features will start rolling out now that conventions are winding down. Back next Saturday!

There's now an official blog detailing the new map. I think the embedded video contains some different footage from what's above.

How... How did I not hear about this until now?!

...I have the sudden urge to play more GW2!

Also, Jack, if you had time I'd love a new thread with an update on any new HoT info! Not sure if there's been anything major announced since your last update, but I'm curious if I missed anything. Thanks!

@bollard: I'll see if I can figure something out! The major challenge is just that there are more-timely places to reference that news, so I'm not sure how much of a benefit anything not directly related to the guild would be to this forum.

@jack_lafayette: Thanks! Even if you know of any external links where I can get a nice summary of the info to date, that would be a great place for me to get a refresher.

@bollard: This wiki page is about as comprehensive a summary as you'll find in one place. It's also got accompanying links to ArenaNet's official articles, which are a nice way to get details at-length about whatever feature.

@jack_lafayette: Thank you! Is a lot to take in, but now I am very close to pre-purchasing for that extra character slot... Would like to try the Revenant.