ArenaNet’s desert borderland is quite possibly one of the most beautiful gaming locations I have ever visited. There were times last night when I simply stared out into the distance and felt the need to explore the vast landscape. ArenaNet are undoubtedly skilled craftsmen when it comes to creating landscapes and scenery: you only have to look at the existing world in Guild Wars 2 to realise that. Recent maps for Heart of Thorns and the likes of the Silver Wastes have however cranked up the visual feast to the point where they’re now undoubtedly the best in the genre.

What I love so much about the desert borderland isn’t just that it’s stunning to look at, but that there’s a level of care and attention to detail that’s easily overlooked. Unlike the existing borderlands which are predominantly flat with lots of wide open spaces, ArenaNet have chosen to use depth and verticality in order to add grandeur to the landscape. Not only does it make for a striking skyline but it means the scale of the map is far superior to its predecessors. Gaping ravines, haggard cliffs, lush jungle and harsh desert are all interwoven seamlessly to create a truly original and striking area to fight over. One particular view, shown below, summarizes perfectly just how much detail has been invested into this new borderland. The absurdity of it all, is that every view looks this good.

Looks aside, it’s how the borderland plays that’s the most important thing and I know many Guild Wars 2 players are not only looking for a fresh alternative to the existing borderlands but one that builds on core mechanics and play principles. I would personally consider two of the biggest problems facing World versus World to be the existing map size and “zerging”. For the amount of players that enter a borderland at peak time, the map size is simply too small and as a result, large groups of players can quickly roam between keeps and outpost. The knock-on effect being that to then capture a keep or Outpost quickly, before being detected, is often difficult.

ArenaNet have seemingly attempted to address both of these issues by gating access around the borderland by creating a maze of paths that lead to or around structures. Those who own an outpost or keep are rewarded with quicker routes through the desert whilst those who don’t, have to use alternative paths. It’s an incredibly simple and elegant solution and one that works wonderfully when it comes to elongating the travel time between the starting Waypoint and the furthest keep. Should you die to the far north and be denied the quicker paths, it will take at least five to six minutes to return back to where you were, if not longer. I’m not suggesting that the existing borderlands don’t offer considerable travel time, but this is much, much greater.

By utilising pathing in this way, I suspect the ability for guilds to roam successfully will be significantly reduced. The travel time to herd several dozen players from east to west or north to south is so significant that I’d question whether it’s even viable. It would simply take too long. I know many larger guilds might have issue with this as it will likely force them to split into several groups, but I think that’s a good thing. Clever use of keeps that grant specific routes through the desert will be key to quickly reinforcing your allies should they come under attack and it places real emphasis on the need to protect what you have if you don’t want to spend a significant portion of your time walking the long way around. Although it’s too early to tell with any guaranteed certainty that this will be the case, I feel it’s inevitable that players and guilds will have to adapt quickly if they’re to take and hold structures for any length of time.

Where the Keeps are concerned and if you’ve never read anything about the new borderland, there are three in total. Elementally themed, each has a unique aesthetic and layout. The air keep, located in the east, is undoubtedly my favourite. If you control it, you and your allies receive immunity to falling damage and gain the ability to leap over the cliffs thanks to special platforms. Combined, both provide incredible mobility but also a valuable means of escape and attack. The air keep is particularly narrow and unsurprisingly, has much more verticality than the fire keep. The steep staircases, slim bridges and high cliffs make for nervy fights (certainly the ones I participated in) and I saw several large groups fall to their deaths thanks to the opposition making use of the terrain.

The fire keep is subterranean and the approach to it is a wide expanse of desert. As an aging ruin filled with lava, winding stone stairs and broken platforms, the fire keep requires a totally different approach to air. As you descend down you'll have to travel back upwards to reach the Lord room and during the course of the attack, there’s every likelihood you’ll be bombarded from above and the sides. Finally, the earth keep is a lush green fortress set atop a large cliff. There’s steep inclines to it and its defensive perimeter stretches out over the battlefield, allowing those defending to teleport back and forth to poke at any attackers. Inside the the ground is littered with crude stone barriers that restrict opposition from fanning out. All three keeps are very cleverly designed and although it’s too early to say how they’ll play out when there’s genuine numbers at the gates, I’m excited at the strategies that players will come up with. If anything, I’d still like to see the difficulty of Lords and guards cranked up.

Coming back to my earlier point about map size, I’ve read and heard from several guilds and players that the borderland lacks wide open space. With its bottlenecks and narrow pathing, some felt it too heavily restricted existing play styles. I wanted to address this point more than any other because not only is it untrue, but I think it would be doing the borderland a great disservice to suggest it lacks the opportunities for battle on the open field. At first glance I can appreciate it may seem that there’s less, but it’s more a case that the spaces are scattered and presented differently. In front of each server’s Waypoint there’s a huge amount of fighting space, in the jungle and inside/on the edges of each keep. On top of that, the north-eastern and north-western regions also have plenty of open ground. I’m incredibly grateful for the diverse terrain and to see that the borderland isn’t made up of flat open spaces, wide platforms for an army to sit on and cliffs that can accommodate an entire server. Guild Wars 2’s World versus World combat deserves to be something more than groups colliding.

Before I finish off this first impressions, I wanted to just mention several other things that stood out for me whilst playing last night. The first is shrines and the potency of them. They surround each keep and are protected by themed NPC’s. If you capture a shrine you and those who interact with it will receive a five minute buff to your movement speed (33%) and your damage (10%). The buff is undoubtedly strong and a large group of players interacting with it is going to become even stronger. To play devil's advocate, a smaller group utilising the buff is also going to gain strength when taking on opponents that have a higher (but beatable) number of players, minus the buff. Whichever way you look at it, shrines are going to be sought out and are going to become mandatory before attacking any keep. What I think would be a good solution would be to limit shrines to have a fixed number of charges, so that a small roaming group can benefit from their power and a large zerg would be limited in how inflated their damage potential becomes. In addition to this, I think the difficulty of the enemies protecting each shrine should scale dramatically based on those attacking. For such a strong buff, it has to be a fight that challenges players.

In addition to the shrines, there’s plenty of creatures that roam the borderland and I know this is a contentious issue for some players. Being able to rally from killing a stray gazelle is probably not what ArenaNet had in mind when it comes to World versus World combat and yet there’s a part of me that wants to keep it in, but with some tweaks. The central area of the borderland is filled with fierce new creatures from the Maguuma Jungle that are a serious threat and I love the fact that they roam this area. Fighting over the Lazer Cannon becomes much more dangerous because of them. If I were ArenaNet, I would simply remove the rest of the local wildlife from the surrounding borderland and only keep the creatures in the jungle. That way, everyone knows that to fight in the jungle means the prospect you or your enemy rallying much easier than on the outskirts.

As a final point, in the upper north-west and north-east corners of the map there’s some redundant space. The north-west houses Skritt and the north-east some Wyvern. Both currently have no impact on the borderland and it’d be great to see them bring something of value besides being enemies that you can kill. One suggestion I have would be to allow the Wyvern and Skritt take up residence in the jungle once you’ve subdued them. The prospect of a Wyvern descending onto the jungle during the Lazer Cannon event is a particularly exciting prospect.

Based on the above, I think it’s fair to say that despite some very minor niggles, I came away incredibly happy with my first experience of the new desert borderland map. It’s visually stunning, offers exciting tactical possibilities and it might - just might - have solved the issue of players primarily relying on sheer numbers, rather than tactical play. Having said that, I’ll reserve final judgement on how the map plays when more guilds and more players venture in.

I would like to thank ArenaNet for inviting me to the event, as well as Colin Johanson and Wolfineer for keeping me company during this stress test. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is available for pre-purchase now.