As an avid player of Guild Wars 2 I was waiting with bated breath for the expansion reveal yesterday, and I was not disappointed with what was announced.

AreaNet showed off the new land the expansion will take place in, the Crystal Desert. Many fans of Guild Wars 1: Nightfall, will remember this area with fond memories and now, 250 years later, we will be returning to combat, not one, not two, but THREE enemies.

The live-stream revealed these three forces will be comprised of: the Branded, corrupted legions of the Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik, the risen armies of the Undead King Palawa Joko who has ruled the desert for 250 years and finally the Forged, living armour built to serve the living God Balthazar, who has returned to destroy Tyria.

The adventure will take place over five HUGE maps, bigger than any others in the game, these maps promise to take the players from vibrant and lush oases, to twisted Branded lands, to sand dunes and ruins. With the maps getting bigger, of course, ArenaNet saw this as an opportunity to finally bring mounts into the game! It feels like we've been asking for this for years but it's finally paid off!

When the expansion ships there will be FOUR available, although it sounded like they were acquired as the player progresses through the game, either via quests or new additions to the Mastery system. Each mount will be drastically different and even have different movement and offensive/engagement ability. The Raptor can dash forward fast and across jumps and was the only mount we saw the engagement ability for, when you jump into combat the Raptor does a "tail-whip" that groups up enemies ready for a big fight. The Springer is the second mount and has a charge based jump ability. The Skimmer which hovers over ground and water. Finally the Jackal which can teleport forward and change direction on a dime.

These mount bring not only incredible ways to get around the maps faster but also allowed AreaNet to design their famous jumping puzzles and Vistas with these mounts in mind, similar to how Heart of Thorns introduced the Glider. I am hyped to see how I'll be able to break the game with these new mounts.

Finally, and arguably most importantly, NINE new Specializations were announced, one for each class. These Specs give each class another new weapon they can use and a whole host of abilities that looked amazing, of course, without getting a hands on it's impossible to tell how they will shake the meta but hopefully in the coming months more information will be released about what we can expect from these new features.

Without going into too much detail, here is a breakdown of what we could gleam from the reveal yesterday.

Guardian Elite - Firebrand - New weapon = Axes - Tomes of power called Mantras are used for a more support based play-style while incinerating those that get too close to your secrets.
Revenant Elite - Renegade - New weapon = Short Bows - Channel a new legend, Kalla Scorchrazor to rain fire on enemies from afar.
Warrior Elite - Spellbreaker - New weapon = Daggers - Use adrenaline to counter and cut the magic off foes in an area to leave them helpless.
Engineer Elite - Holosmith - New weapon = Swords - Use skills to channel light to form new weapons on the fly, with an overheat mechanic that could leave you and your enemies a little more exploded.
Ranger Elite - Soulbeast - New weapon = Daggers - Unite and absorb the spirit of your animal companions to gain unique abilities, while collecting new creatures from the Crystal Desert.
Thief Elite - Deadeye - New weapon = Rifle - Mark targets and take them down from afar for your bounty. Utilising Shadow Magic to take them down before they even knew you were there.
Elementalist Elite - Weaver - New weapon = Swords - Combine the elements in new stances to create powerful combos with explosive results.
Mesmer Elite - Mirage - New weapon = Axes - Masters of deception and illusion create new constructs that fool enemies and become a haze to avoid all incoming attacks.
Necromancer Elite - Scourge - New weapon - Torches - Throw off the shackles of the death shroud and instead protect allies and attack foes by raising Shades from the desert.

Personally I would have liked to have seen a new class altogether, similar to the release of Heart of Thorns, maybe even the return of the Dervish class from the original Guild Wars expansion Nightfall that took place in the same Crystal Desert. Or the addition of my personal favourite NPC race the Kodan (although I see the issue with Polar Bears in a desert).

All-in-all, I am just itching to get my hands on this new expansion when it releases 22nd September 2017, and I'll max out my Warrior into the new Elite Spec. Bring on the Desert (and the adorable Springer mount, I need that in my life!)