I watched yesterday’s End of Dragons First Look stream in a Discord call with half the guild, and by the end of it nobody was typing in the chat. We were just watching. The Siege Turtle reveal. The fishing. The Cantha skyline. Fifteen years since Guild Wars: Factions, and we are finally going back.
Fifteen Years. Here We Are.
Guild Wars: Factions shipped in April 2006. Cantha was its continent: the Ministry of Purity, the Kurzick and Luxon factions, the Jade Sea, the Echovald Forest, the city of Kaineng. It was a setting unlike anything else in MMOs at the time. Players fell hard for it.
In GW2’s lore, Cantha closed its borders more than two hundred years before the game’s timeline. The Jade Wind, Shiro Tagachi’s last act, had calcified much of the continent. The political aftermath led to Cantha isolating itself entirely. For fifteen years, GW2 players have been asking when we go back. Yesterday, ArenaNet answered.
The Siege Turtle Changes Everything About Group Play
The Siege Turtle is GW2’s first co-op mount. One player sits in the driver’s seat, controlling movement. A second player takes the gunner position, operating a mounted weapon emplacement. Two players, one mount, fully coordinated.
The implications are significant. In World vs. World, the Siege Turtle is effectively a mobile siege weapon. In open-world meta events, a mobile gun platform changes how groups approach large-scale encounters. ArenaNet called it out as something that changes how groups move through the world together. It is a mount designed to create new play scenarios, not just fill a traversal gap.
Fishing in Guild Wars 2 Is Real
Guild Wars 2 has never had a dedicated gathering-style activity that was not tied to the core resource economy. Fishing changes that. It is a fully realised separate system.
- Different fish types across different Cantha waterways and ocean zones
- Fishing holes that spawn on Skiffs as you traverse the water
- Cooking integration with the existing cooking crafting system
- Fishing tournaments with community leaderboard implications
- Trading Post economy for rare fish and fish-based materials
This is a casual activity that gives completionists, chefs, competitive players, and economy players each a reason to engage.
Skiffs and the Canthan Waterscape
Skiffs are personal water vehicles for navigating Cantha’s rivers, harbours, and open ocean. Cantha has substantially more water geography than anything GW2 has shipped before.
What is interesting about Skiffs beyond getting around is how they integrate with fishing. Fishing holes appear near Skiffs. Certain fish are only reachable from the water. The mount exists to serve the activity, and the activity gives the mount purpose beyond a new way to move.
Jade Bots: Cantha’s Technology Made Personal
Dragonjade is one of EoD’s central worldbuilding concepts. Cantha developed technology using jade petrified by the Jade Wind, turning a curse into an innovation. The continent’s aesthetic flows from this.
Your Jade Bot is a personal companion that provides utility passively and actively. Upgrades and modules let you configure what your bot prioritises: enhanced looting, utility bonuses, situation-specific buffs, all themed around Cantha’s technology. A lightweight progression system that integrates without creating a hard power gap.
Beta Events: Four Chances to Shape the Specs
Four beta events across August through November 2021, each giving players access to the new elite specializations for all nine professions. ArenaNet has confirmed structured feedback surveys after each event, with spec tuning between events responding to community feedback.
If ArenaNet follows through on that commitment, this will be the most collaborative expansion development cycle GW2 has ever run.
One Note on the Aesthetic Discourse
The stream generated debate about Cantha’s visual direction. Players expecting the classical Canthan aesthetic from Factions expressed surprise at how technologically advanced the continent looks.
A continent that has been isolated for over two hundred years, harnessing magical calcified jade as its primary technology, should look different. Kaineng City in GW2 is not the Kaineng Center of 1072 AE. It has been two centuries of independent development. The ancient elements are still there: the architecture, the cultural markers, the environmental design. They are just living inside a world that did not stand still while we were away.
End of Dragons pre-purchase is live. Beta Event 1 is coming in August. I will see you in Cantha.