Preview: Guild Wars 2 Realm Of Dreams Update Goes Live Today And We Got To Play It Early

Beginning today you can dive into the next chapter of Guild Wars 2 with the Realm of Dreams release. This release brings with it a new story chapter for the MMORPG, an expanded Inner Nayos map, new weapon proficiencies for all nine classes, the Obsidian legendary armor set, the legendary relic, expanded Astral Masteries, two new Convergence bosses, and the Temple of Febe Strike Mission challenge mode. Phew, that's a lot of content.

In typical fashion, the ArenaNet devs were nice enough to give members of the press a sneak preview of what's coming in the new update. No spoilers here, but we did get to play through the new storyline, and I think players will like where the story is headed. There are plenty of fights for you to utilize the new weapons, with dragon riding and an intriguing story to keep you entertained. If you've enjoyed Secrets of the Obscure up to this point, you won't be disappointed.

We usually don't go around promoting the latest cash shop items in games, but I gotta say that the new "Cat Tree Chair" was hilarious to see in-game for the first time. It's exactly what it sounds like; a chair made out of cat trees.

We got to see the new Obsidian Armor legendary set which looks fantastic in the game and I'm a huge fan of it. There is a set for each armor weight of course.

We walked into the new Strike Mission challenge mode coming to Guild Wars 2 in this update, but as you might imagine with a group of random press folks, we didn't see much of the fight before we died. Then we died again.

Besides the new story content, the big addition in this update is the new weapon proficiencies for each of the nine new classes. Rangers are getting maces, Thieves are getting axes, Warriors get staffs, Revenants get scepter, Mesmers get rifle, Elementalists get pistol, Guardians get dual pistols, Necromancer gets swords, and Engineers get short bow.

I didn't have time to play around with all of the weapons, but Elementalist and Guardians with pistols were really cool and felt great. They talked about all of the changes coming to the Engineer short bow after it fell flat in testing. It works off of a chain reaction system and can be used more reactively now as a support weapon.

Overall this looks to be a very solid update to Guild Wars 2, and I'm excited to jump in once it goes live in order to play the story and, maybe more importantly, play with more of the new weapons. I think I may switch my main from Engineer to Guardian this update, so I've got some catching up to do as well.