Guild Wars 2 gets its first raid next week

Guild Wars 2 has been out for three years now, but it's only now getting its first raid. Dubbed 'Spirit Vale', the ten-player instanced raid will kick off next week for all owners of the Heart of Thorns expansion. The raid will roll out in three parts – or "wings" – with the first starting on November 17.

Andy Chalk went into a bit of detail on how the raid's will work when they were announced earlier this year, but why the wait? The raids will lean heavily on the newly introduced Mastery progression system, to an extent that it would have been silly to release Spirit Vale at the same time as the Heart of Thorns expansion last month.

"Because of the usefulness of Masteries within Raids, we want players to have time to be free to power up their characters," the studio wrote. "We want you guys to be able to enjoy playing the expansion without rushing to max out every Mastery in order to prepare for Raids."

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Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.