Super Adventure Box began with the idea of creating the greatest-ever April Fools’ Day joke within a game. The contrast of an 8-bit looking action/adventure game inside the lush, painterly world of Guild Wars 2 made it hilarious fun. We got a little team together and brainstormed about our favorite old-school gaming memories and what we could pull together into a tiny but epic adventure in order to create a fun April 1 diversion for Guild Wars 2 players. Initially we were going to create four unique worlds to conquer on a quest to defeat the evil Lord Vanquish and rescue princess Miya. We ran out of time, so we simply released World 1, the Forest, comprised of three zones. We hoped that we’d get an opportunity to develop the rest of Super Adventure Box later.

It turned out to be quite popular, so we got to build World 2, the Mountains. This release taught us a lot about what SAB fans really wanted from this kind of content. So now that we have an opportunity to resurrect SAB, we’re very excited to tweak and tune the Mountain World to fit better into what makes SAB special. The first thing we did was add significant shortcuts to the zones—more is not always better! We didn’t actually cut any of the zones down in size; you’re still free to explore the longer routes if you choose. But no shortcuts for Tribulation Mode! The masochists out there don’t need to worry—Trib Mode paths are still exactly as grueling and awful as you remember! But we found that we lost a lot of players in World 2 with a steep difficulty curve, so we smoothed that out quite a bit. Falling in pits no longer instantly kills you. The rapids are more forgiving. And we did a hard-jump pass, making the critical path more accessible.

Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and keeping it strong means making tough decisions about where to spend our time to best serve the most players. We decided we couldn’t justify the sacrifice to Guild Wars 2 to make more new worlds for SAB. But we did have time to dust off the cobwebs (we had to fix a lot of stuff that breaks as the engine evolves and improves) and make sure SAB has a great, regular home in Guild Wars 2. As a yearly festival, SAB will now be a dependable fixture in Tyria, and that makes us very happy. Just check out Rata Sum to see how happy we feel!

But the thing that makes us happiest of all is the biggest feature we were able to add: SAB Guild Hall decorations! That’s right—now you can build your very own super adventures in your guild hall. We can’t wait to see your imagination unleashed! A few new brave (and very fancy) shopkeepers have set up deviously hidden stores—two in each zone—where you can find Furniture Coins to use in decoration recipes.

We’re also bringing back all the old rewards and achievements and adding a few more. Continue down the color spectrum and earn new orange Super weapon skins. There are also new achievements and new item collections. Additionally, we’ve reduced the cost of items from Moto across the board, and we’ve increased the amount of baubles you can earn every day. Weapons skins now drop in choosy boxes instead of one-offs, and any skin that comes out of those boxes will be tradable.

We can’t wait to play with you all in Super Adventure Box!

Super Adventure Festival is now live. You can visit the release page for more details and read the complete release notes on our forums.

As you play this release, consider adding information you find to the official wiki for the benefit of the Guild Wars 2 community! You can find information about how to edit an article or generally contribute to the wiki on this page.