Open World Builds Launch

Fellow Tyrians,

Thank you for joining us in our revelry as we launched our new Open World builds. While some may have thought of this as a one-day jest, it has been the culmination of several months of planning and efforts from our editors, contributors, and members of the wider Guild Wars 2 community. Yes, Open World is here to stay.

We appreciate there was some chaos and confusion yesterday with the April Fools messaging compounded by us turning the build listing topsy turvy. We recognise some of this didn't land exactly as intended and have taken learnings for future announcements.

As the dust settles from our escapades, we are pleased to add some clarification and formally announce the official launch of our Open World section. This is really happening.

This section is no throwaway. It has been meticulously crafted with each build tried and tested by the team to help guide your decisions when choosing gear and approaches for your open world builds. To begin with we have launched the below categories:

• Group: Built for players in larger metas with allies to share boons to.
• Solo: Crafted for those who want to comfortably fight veterans and challenge champions alone.

There is plenty more coming, with a F2P category expected to land in the coming week, and a broader more experimental category coming over the next month. Our categories in this section aren't all-or-nothing and there may be some overlap. These builds are maintained by a separate team, in addition to our core meta team who will continue to produce our high quality PvE builds for raids and strikes.

This is the beginning of a new chapter for the website, and we would like to thank those who shared messages of support and encouragement yesterday. It was exciting to see the appetite the community has for this new content. For the eagle eyed user, you will notice that yesterday's updates brought with it a slightly revised build list design, a new mobile navigation, and some general improvements to the desktop navigation as well.

Since becoming independent of the guild in 2021, our mission has evolved to help all players play at their best and today's announcement marks a significant step towards this. Our intent is to provide a publishing platform that allows players from all walks of the community to share their expertise and gain knowledge. No longer are we "speed run" or "raid specific". Our approach has been honed over the past two years and we are confident in our ability to execute on this strategy, supported by a large group of community contributors who volunteer considerable time and effort to bring you our builds, guides, and features.

I appreciate this is a significant change to some of those who have followed us, been a part of the team, or used our builds for a long time. I ask you to be open minded, to be accepting of a new direction, and to support us as we grow and change. We do not exist inside of a bubble, and we must evolve and adapt with the evolving needs of the Guild Wars 2 player base and community. We will continue as always to deliver our high-quality PvE builds, these are going nowhere.

To finish, I'd like to take a moment to warmly congratulate Quack who was recently promoted to Editor to stand at the helm of our Open World and Beginner sections, ably supported by Zargholl and the rest of the team. If you're interested in volunteering your time to work with him and the team to maintain these sections don't hesitate to reach out on our Discord.

This isn't the end of our evolution, but only the beginning. Thanks to everyone for being a part of the journey.

That's Quality Armour,
Hodge & the snowcrows.com team