Major ExpansionPC

Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds

ArenaNet · RPG, MMO, Adventure

Overview

Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ is the fifth Guild Wars 2 expansion. Begin a risky expedition in search of support in the treacherous Janthir wilds, where hidden secrets and malevolent creatures lie in wait for your arrival.

Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ is the fifth Guild Wars 2 expansion. As the wayfinder and their allies battled the Kryptis, the leaders of Tyria were quietly working to form the Tyrian Alliance. Now it is time to introduce the Wizard’s Court and the Astral Ward to the world and strengthen the different nations. Begin a risky expedition in search of support in the treacherous Janthir wilds, where hidden secrets and malevolent creatures lie in wait for your arrival.

UNEXPLORED WILDS

Bristling with mursaat ruins and harrowing to navigate, the fabled Isles of Janthir have been carefully guarded by the wizards of the Astral Ward—and to most of Tyria's denizens, they are a distant legend. But recent events have inspired the world’s leaders to form the Tyrian Alliance and dispatch you—the Astral Ward’s wayfinder—to befriend new allies. As you seek out the lowland kodan colony in Janthir, you will explore, fight, and learn more about the mysteries of Tyria’s past.

BUILD YOUR HOMESTEAD

Your adventures in Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ will lead you to your own homestead, an account-wide personal instance with a structure and land for you to decorate and cultivate. Homesteads will share unlockable features with your home instance, such as gathering nodes and gardening plots.

A NEW WEAPON FOR ALL PROFESSIONS

For the first time in Guild Wars 2 history, a new weapon type will be introduced for land combat: the two-handed spear. Initially designed exclusively for underwater combat, Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™ will give you the opportunity to freely swap between aquatic and terrestrial weapon slots, each with unique weapon skills. In addition, all professions will gain land spear proficiency, featuring significant combat variety between professions and more dynamic ways to play. To further enhance customization, a fresh collection of relics have been introduced allowing you to incorporate unique effects into your builds.

MASTER YOUR WARCLAW

Experience an updated warclaw mount, featuring its own Mastery line and a new path to obtaining it. Armed with a broad range of abilities, this formidable companion will help you take down some of the most ferocious enemies.

*Please note that existing Guild Wars 2 player accounts cannot be accessed via Steam

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT92 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

Janthir Wilds splits its reviewers almost evenly, and the praise goes to its new features. 22 reviews mention the spear, the new land weapon for every profession, and none of them calls the weapon a bad addition; five negative reviewers say it was the reason they came. Homesteads, Guild Wars 2's first player housing, come up in 19 reviews, and most of those like them. The maps come up in 26 reviews, and 19 praise how they look, four of them reviews that vote the expansion down. More reviewers welcome the warclaw's move from World vs World into the rest of the game than object to it, though the story's warclaw boss fights draw complaints.

The story's pacing draws the most complaints. 19 reviews object to long, slow and often unskippable conversations, 17 of them negative reviews, and six reviews say the opening chapter alone takes half an hour to an hour of talking. Opinion on the story itself is less one-sided, but more reviews find it lukewarm or weak (17) than enjoy it (7), with the ending and the Titan villains singled out. Repeated renown hearts and reused events, maps arriving over the year, and buggy meta events add to the complaints. Reviews written through October 2024 were warm (20 of 23 positive); those from 2025 and 2026 were mostly negative (28 of 67 positive), and almost all of the dialogue complaints come from that later group.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

The spear, a land weapon for every professionHigh

Janthir Wilds gives every profession a spear to use on land, and 22 reviews mention it. Some of that praise is a single all-caps line ("LAND SPEARS!!!!"), while one longer review counts the spear among the expansion's biggest highlights: "It adds a fresh layer of buildcraft and finally gives some classes tools they've needed for a long time." An engineer player wrote, "Friendship ended with rifle. Now spear is my favorite engineer weapon." Another liked the maps so much that they crafted the legendary spear.

Five negative reviews say the spear is why they bought the expansion, and four of them then ran into the story's long dialogue: "IF I DIDNT WANT THE SPEAR I WOULD NEVER BUY THIS EXPANSION." A sixth negative reviewer liked spears but felt they could have been sold on their own for about ten dollars. Three reviews have reservations about the weapon itself. One found "land spears are only really tuned for open world except for one spec," another called the legendary spear's design "meh", and one resented paying for the expansion to use a spear as a second underwater weapon, calling it "hiding weapon unlocks behind pay wall."

Homesteads, the game's first player housingHigh

Of the 19 reviews that talk about homesteads, most like them, and several positive ones are little more than the word ("HOMESTEAD!!!!!!!!!!", "homestead nice"). Longer ones describe a big, player-friendly plot with a house, crafting stations and a mine, where your alts, mounts and skiff wander around. One wrote, "The home decoration is also way more versatile than I expected." A reviewer who called housing "not really my thing" still noted "they give a fair amount for free and stuff once unlocked."

Four reviews raise problems. Two measure it against housing in older MMOs and find it lacking (one names EverQuest 2, the other Rift, EverQuest 2 and ESO), and one finds it harder to get absorbed in than housing elsewhere. Two run into the cap on decorations: "you-ll find the surprise that the decoration limit has been reached." One of them also points out how many resources it takes, while still calling it "a lovely addition".

Pretty maps, strongest at the startHigh

How the maps look earns praise in 19 of the 26 reviews that mention them: "Maps: Beautiful. They remind me of the landscapes of Iceland." Others mention waterfalls, the atmosphere, and busy events with plenty of players around. Four of the 19 are negative reviews, one of which says the expansion "Looks great sadly that is all this has going for it."

After the opening map (in one case, the opening two), six reviews say the maps get weaker. One of them names the first map: "lowland shore is a GREAT map and i loved exploring it." The second map is "pretty bland" to one player, and another called it "an absolute mess of bugs and copy pasted events" a week after launch; the last area, for a third, is "one of the most ugly horrible to traverse areas ive ever suffered through." Two more found the environments plain or just "ok", and an early reviewer wished for more open world events "because JW maps are so beautiful."

Where players are split

The story, the Titans and the endingHigh

Apart from its pacing, the story gets an opinion in 24 reviews: 7 like it and 17 are lukewarm or negative. Those who like it are enthusiastic. "I loved every single minute of the base story," wrote one. Another found "The Kodan are super interesting, the story is pretty good right up to the end," and a launch-week reviewer thought "the setting, story, and characters are better than the previous release."

Five reviews call the ending lackluster, anticlimactic, rushed or disappointing, two of them reviews that recommend the expansion; one felt "it was rushed/unfinished towards the end." Three are unimpressed by the Titans ("The big villains are a joke"), and an early critic said the story leans on drama between characters players have only just met. The Kodan divide people too: some find them interesting or adorable, others mostly complain about how slowly they talk.

Recommending the expansion does not mean liking its story. Five positive reviews call the story boring, bland, lame or slow, among them "good maps and game additions, boring story but who cares" and "The story is pretty bland but all the extra things make up for it."

The warclaw upgrade and its boss fightsHigh

The warclaw, the cat mount that used to belong to World vs World, now gets PvE masteries and a place in the open world. Of the 18 reviews that bring it up, ten like the change: "More features for the Warclaw. What more could I ask for?" Another wrote that "the warclaw being a PvE mount feels nice to use," and one reviewer's favourite reward is the warclaw skin from the story.

Six are negative, and half of them object to how the story uses the mount. Two describe boss fights broken up by warclaw chain sections, one complaining of "bosses that run away from fights multiple times." Another dislikes that "They make you catch a warclaw, then re catch it multiple times." Two find its jump too weak, one after training a mastery: "Learning the feline reflexes mastery made me lose the ability to jump high vertically with warclaw." One sums up the expansion as "another 25€ mount expansion."

Price and valueMedium

Price comes up in 13 reviews. Five think the expansion is worth it, often because of what comes with it: one bought it in the Black Friday sale and called it a "very good expansion for the price they ask", another appreciated "the 80 boost & another shared slot", and a third felt the extras made up for a bland story.

Seven disagree. Their advice ranges from "never buy this full price" and "i just can't unless it is on sale" to "Skip this, save your money for Guild Wars 3 instead." A launch-day reviewer thought the features would justify the price in a few months but could not recommend it yet. Two positive reviews add a warning for newcomers: much of the content needs the older expansions, so "Don't buy it if you don't own HoT+PoF though !"

Compared with earlier expansionsMedium

Secrets of the Obscure, the expansion before it, is the comparison Janthir Wilds mostly wins. Among the 12 reviews that measure it against earlier releases, five rate it above Secrets, two of them negative ones ("Less trash than SOTO but still trash"), and one more says "the perf issues aren't as bad as secrets of the obscure." Two prefer Secrets, and one reviewer prefers Janthir Wilds to Icebrood Saga.

Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, End of Dragons and the older Living World seasons come out ahead. Six reviews call Janthir Wilds weaker than those or the worst expansion yet. One wrote "soto and jw are definitely the weaker ones of the bunch," and another pleaded "Anet do more like End of Dragons, not this crap."

Maps arriving over the yearMedium

Reviewers describe a launch with two maps and two more arriving in later updates, and six of them discuss that release model. Launch-period reviewers were mostly patient. One found "there only being two maps so far is kinda meh" but expected more, another hoped ArenaNet could "fully realize their ambitions for yearly expacs", and a third thought the expansion could be redeemed if the remaining maps were properly finished.

Later reviewers were less forgiving. One who waited months for a disappointing finale wrote "I won't be buying the expansion until everything is released." Another would take the old model's higher price and longer waits over this one ("I sadly have to say I don't think I like their new content cycle"), and a third called it "a yearly 25 dollar distraction".

What frustrates players

Long, unskippable story dialogueHigh

The amount and pace of talking in the story draws objections from 19 reviews, 17 of them negative, and 11 say outright that it cannot be skipped. Players describe NPCs who "talk like they have molasses in their mouths", conversations where "3-5 other NPCs interject", and a story that "loves to waste your time acting like it's a terrible audiobook you cannot skip." One sarcastic review reads, in full, "really good if you like council meetings".

Six reviews put a length on the opening chapter, from half an hour to an hour. "Talking to the bears sitting at the table took literally 40 min of my time," one wrote, and a player who put a podcast on at the start found it at the 47-minute mark when the first fight arrived. One player says you cannot do anything else in the meantime because you have to follow the NPCs as they talk, and another points out that alts have to sit through it all again. Three reviews ask for a way to skip, one of them positive ("You guys seriously need to add the ability to skip dialogue in the over world."), and later reviewers say the problem was already well known: "especially since the community had already been complaining about it for a while." Only 2 of the 19 complaints were written in 2024; the rest came in 2025 and 2026.

Repeated hearts, chores and reused eventsMedium

"It's a chore simulator," wrote one of eight negative reviews that say too much of the expansion repeats itself, adding "I'm a GOD SLAYER! I killed Balthazar, vaporized dragons yet here I am GUTTING FISH FOR BEAR PEOPLE?????" Others point to "excessive reuse of the same content/assets for different things", story progress tied to renown hearts ("Timegating the story behind filling out hearts"), "the same boring mini-boss five times in a row" in the first chapter, and a meta whose bosses are "two crabs you poke at and then run in a circle and repeat". One player describes getting into Bava Nisos by repeating hard-to-solo tasks ten times while going back and forth between them.

Buggy meta events, crashes and loginsMedium

Technical problems come up in six reviews, four of them about the new maps. In the first weeks after launch one reviewer found a map "feels somewhat buggy when doing the massive meta event there," another described the second map as full of bugs, and a later player still hit "some annoying bugs here and there with achievements and enemies." One reviewer says the game worked until they bought the expansion and now disconnects shortly after login ("Now I can't log in."), and another says only that it keeps crashing. On performance, one reviewer finds the new maps run better than those of Secrets of the Obscure.

Steam account linking and bansLow

Five reviews are about the Guild Wars 2 account more than the expansion. Three describe Steam purchases or features that did not reach the game: a pre-purchase that "did not register in my game", expansions missing in game, and the Hall of Monuments link to Guild Wars 1 being "utterly broken for steam accounts". Two report permanent bans they say were unjustified and complain that support would not look again: "Support refused to review the logs and just closed the ticket."

Missing voice actingLow

Three reviews notice missing voice acting. One counts "like 3 VAs" missing. Another calls voice acting "STILL missing for quite a few pivotal characters in the 2nd half of the story" and finds it hard to forgive even if the strike put it out of ArenaNet's hands.

3. The player conversation

The reviews divide almost evenly, 48 positive and 44 negative, and the two sides mostly talk about different things. Positive reviews are often one line about a feature, sometimes just "HOMESTEAD!!!!!!!!!!". Negative reviews run longer, with plenty of capitals and sarcasm, and 17 of the 44 complain about the story's pacing. Still, the camps overlap: positive reviews knock the story too, and negative reviews still praise the maps, the spear and the homestead.

The tone changed after launch. Through October 2024, 20 of 23 reviews were positive, and most of them were about the new features. Of the 67 reviews written in 2025 and 2026, 28 were positive. Almost all of the dialogue complaints belong to this later group, and several later reviewers explain why they were in the story at all: to get the spear, a homestead, or Astral Rewards. Some of the players comparing it with Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire and End of Dragons have played Guild Wars 2 for years; one signs off as an "8 year old vet". One self-described new player loved it, and two positive reviews warn that it is a poor first purchase without the older expansions.

4. What the developers could do

Add a skip or fast-forward for story dialogue. 19 reviews complain about the long story conversations and 11 say outright that they can't be skipped. One asked plainly: "Please let us dialogue skippers do our thing."
Get players to the first fight sooner in chapter one. Six reviews timed the opening at half an hour to an hour of talking, and three of those players had come for the spear.
Replace repeated hearts and reused events with new activities. Eight negative reviews describe reused assets, story chapters gated behind renown hearts and the same fights over and over; one calls the result a "chore simulator".
Rework the warclaw chase fights and the warclaw's jump. Two reviews object to bosses that run away for warclaw chain sections, another to catching the warclaw again and again, and two to a jump one player says can't reach the rings on a racetrack built for it.
Fix the meta-event bugs on the new maps and the crashes after purchase. Four reviews report buggy maps or meta events; one says the game disconnects at login since they bought the expansion, and another that it keeps crashing.
Record the missing voice lines in the story's second half. Three reviews point out missing voice acting, and one places the gaps among important characters in the second half, the same stretch where five reviews say the story ends in a rushed or anticlimactic way.
Make Steam purchases reach the game account and say which expansions are required. Three reviews describe Steam purchases or features that never showed up in the game, and two positive reviews warn that much of the content needs Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire.
Raise the homestead decoration limit. Two reviews ran into the cap on decorations in what is otherwise one of the expansion's best-liked features.