Guild Wars 2 Rewards Players for Leaving Mounts Behind
Mounts are supposed to be a reward in MMORPGs. You earn them, you ride them, and you never walk anywhere again. Guild Wars 2 is now testing the opposite idea. For a limited time, it will pay players to stay on foot.
The latest patch from ArenaNet adds a limited-time event called Dismount Rush. It arrives alongside a set of new challenge modes, balance changes and a long list of fixes. The challenge modes will matter most to endgame players. The mount experiment is the more unusual part, and possibly the more telling one.
Dismount Rush: walking pays off
The idea is simple. If you complete events in the Heart of Maguuma or Central Tyria without using a mount, you earn a boost to magic find and experience. Those are two of the game's large world regions. The boost stacks, so the reward grows the longer you keep your feet on the ground. Magic find is the stat that improves your chances of better loot drops, so the bonus should be tempting for anyone farming open-world content.
ArenaNet has been clear about why it's doing this. The studio says mount use in the Heart of Thorns expansion has come up often in player feedback. That feedback has grown as the first Hall of Monuments update gets closer at the end of this year. Dismount Rush is described as "one approach to reducing their use," and ArenaNet is asking players to try it and share their opinions.
There's no firm schedule yet. ArenaNet hasn't given start or end dates beyond saying the event will run "for a limited time." Anyone curious about the stacking bonuses shouldn't wait too long to try it.
Challenge modes for recent content
Players who care more about difficulty than exploring will find the challenge modes more interesting. The patch adds harder versions of three recent pieces of content:
- Nexus of Eternity, the raid
- Solitary Throne, a fractal (Guild Wars 2's instanced, dungeon-style challenges)
- Nexus of Eternity Convergence
Challenge modes give organized groups a reason to go back to encounters they have already cleared. Adding them to recent content fits the way ArenaNet usually extends the life of its group activities.
Fixes and class balance
The rest of the patch is housekeeping, and there's a lot of it. ArenaNet lists a large batch of bug fixes along with several balance updates across the game's professions (Guild Wars 2's name for its classes). The source doesn't break down the individual changes. Players who rely on a particular build should read the full patch notes before their next session.
Our Take
Asking players to give up mounts, even for a bonus, is an admission that something about Heart of Thorns doesn't quite work in its current form. That region was built around vertical, maze-like maps, and it's easy to see how mounts can cut through the design. ArenaNet's wording is careful, though. It calls this "one approach," which suggests the studio is testing several options before the Hall of Monuments update rather than committing to a fix.
The method is worth noticing too. Instead of restricting mounts, ArenaNet is rewarding players for choosing not to use them. That's a much softer way to steer behavior, and it's likely to go over better with a community that is very attached to its mounts. Other long-running MMOs are handling similar legacy problems as they prepare their own fall content, from the WoW Midnight 12.1.5 patch to LOTRO's Wolves of Mordor expansion. Revisiting older zones without upsetting veteran players is a problem the whole genre shares.
Two things are worth watching next. First, whether players actually go along with Dismount Rush once the novelty fades. Second, whether any lessons from it show up in the Hall of Monuments update later this year. If player feedback is positive, a limited-time experiment could shape the permanent design.