We recently announced our plans for the exciting new megaserver system in Guild Wars 2, which will help maximize your social experience in the open world. Making this transition requires some changes to the way world bosses function, as we will no longer have specific worlds in PvE.

World Bosses (Daily Reward Events)

World bosses come in various shapes and sizes, from raids on the temples in Orr, to large encounters like the Shatterer, to mega-organized encounters like Tequatl. Currently, all of these bosses have unique timers that differ from world to world. When we released the API to track world events, it was almost immediately put to use in creating a way for people on different worlds to track the status of meta-events and world bosses.

In our new megaserver system, this use of the API won’t really make sense and would be hard to use, since maps could be starting (or closing) based on total game population at any time; as maps open and close, timers would be thrown into disarray, making it difficult to track and participate in boss events.

To address this, we’ve developed a new schedule for boss events so each boss event occurs at the same times every day and on every world, allowing you to know when a boss event will happen and where you need to be. We’ve also added an additional system of triggering our most hardcore, mega-organized encounters for our large guilds.

Our technical designer, Anthony Ordon, will walk you through how this works.

Synchronizing World Events

In light of the changes Colin described, a majority of our world boss events will start at approximately the same time on all maps across the entire game. The technology behind this is driven by real time, which may sound familiar if you have enjoyed some recent Living World events or world boss revamps—the “Battle for Lion’s Arch” and Tequatl events already functioned this way, starting every hour and every other hour. Not only does this prevent you from having to wait around and guess when the event will start, it guarantees that any maps dynamically generated to handle larger populations will also be running the event. Everyone gets a chance to participate!

Of course, starting every single world event every hour would probably be a bit overwhelming and spread players quite thin. We have therefore adopted a set of rotations to control world event activations in this new system. These rotations are based on three classifications of world events:

Hard-Core, Mega-Organized Events —(Thanks for naming this, Colin.) This classification currently includes Tequatl, the Great Jungle Wurm, and the Karka Queen. Since these events require the greatest amount of organization between players, they all occur within a three-hour window that begins approximately every eight hours. This is weighted towards regional prime times.

—(Thanks for naming this, Colin.) This classification currently includes Tequatl, the Great Jungle Wurm, and the Karka Queen. Since these events require the greatest amount of organization between players, they all occur within a three-hour window that begins approximately every eight hours. This is weighted towards regional prime times. Standard World Events— This set of six world events is comprised of the original world event content that has been available since the launch of Guild Wars 2. One of these events will begin on the hour and half hour in a repeating rotation.

This set of six world events is comprised of the original world event content that has been available since the launch of Guild Wars 2. One of these events will begin on the hour and half hour in a repeating rotation. Low-Level World Events—Because players at lower levels are more restricted in their choice of content, this classification is made of a small rotation of events that occur in the level 1–15 starting zones. One of these four events begins at fifteen minutes and forty-five minutes past the start of every hour.

Click here to download the full list of boss timers (PDF, 213kb)

This system will also bring about a few changes to most of these events. For example, any of these events that did not previously have a failure mechanic or a timer will be getting one. This serves to keep the schedule accurate and ease the technical burden of these large-scale events. This and other changes will be detailed in the release notes.

Any event that does not appear on this list will continue to operate as before, with timings that are based on the state and conditions of the map they occur in. Notably, the Temples of Orr will not be synchronized at this time since they heavily influence the content ecosystem that they exist in.

Boss Updates

Some of the bosses on the schedule above have had their difficulty scaling, event chains surrounding them, and even some of their abilities updated to help prepare them for their new appearance in the rotation. We encourage you to go out and take them all on to see how each has changed and earn your daily rewards!

Guild World Events

Looking at the schedule, you may already be thinking that these times won’t work out for you and your guild if you want to go after the most difficult hard-core mega bosses, or perhaps you’re wishing for a chance to take on Tequatl more than three times a day. Fortunately for you, we’re introducing a very exciting feature with this change that will allow guilds to activate some of these events at their leisure!

Here are some details on how this will work:

Prerequisites— In order to activate your own mega-boss encounter (the Karka Queen, Tequatl, or the Great Jungle Worm), you’ll need to unlock the newly added Guild World Events upgrade. This becomes available after your guild has researched Guild Challenges. Once you have the upgrade, you may build the Guild World Event consumable. The consumable itself will cost your guild some influence and merits.

In order to activate your own mega-boss encounter (the Karka Queen, Tequatl, or the Great Jungle Worm), you’ll need to unlock the newly added Guild World Events upgrade. This becomes available after your guild has researched Guild Challenges. Once you have the upgrade, you may build the Guild World Event consumable. The consumable itself will cost your guild some influence and merits. Activation— Have a guild officer with “Mission Permission” travel to the starting area of the event you’d like to activate and use the Guild World Event consumable from the Guild panel. It’s that easy! The event will be activated right away and only in the map instance that activating officer is currently in.

Have a guild officer with “Mission Permission” travel to the starting area of the event you’d like to activate and use the Guild World Event consumable from the Guild panel. It’s that easy! The event will be activated right away and only in the map instance that activating officer is currently in. Limitations—The biggest limitation of Guild World Events is that they must not interfere with the public window. What this means is that you will be unable to activate your Guild World Event if the scheduled event is about to begin—this is mostly to keep guilds from using up their Guild World Event when the event would have started shortly anyway. Unlike a standard Guild Mission, a Guild World Event does not award any merits or commendations at this time. It does, however, give your guild a chance to access the content and claim daily event rewards and achievements on your own time.

Regarding Cross-Map World State

A defining point of the dynamic event system in Guild Wars 2 is its capacity to impact the state of the world and unlock access to certain content and resources. Some examples of this are waypoints, dungeons, and the temples of the human gods in Orr.

In the past, we’ve broadcast the state of that content across maps since it is helpful and sometimes necessary to know that information before traveling. A big limitation here is that the display is always reporting on the state of your home world’s map. This has led to certain accuracy issues like departing for a waypoint that is uncontested in your home world and arriving in an overflow map where the state of the waypoint is different.

The megaserver system makes reporting and displaying the state of your destination map accurately quite impossible. With this in mind, we’ve decided to disable reporting of world state across maps entirely.

As a player, this will impact you in the following ways:

Waypoints— All contestable waypoints on any map you’re not currently playing in will always appear contested. When you arrive in the map, you will be able to travel to these waypoints pending their local status.

All contestable waypoints on any map you’re not currently playing in will always appear contested. When you arrive in the map, you will be able to travel to these waypoints pending their local status. Dungeons— You will no longer be able to tell if a dungeon entrance is open until you’re on the same map.

You will no longer be able to tell if a dungeon entrance is open until you’re on the same map. Temples of Orr—The cross-map mechanics of these temples will be disabled. Instead, god statues will be active only when the nearest temple is contested.

That’s about it for world bosses and the megaserver system!