Devil's Daily: The Bazaar of the Four Winds Quick Review

The Bazaar of the Four Winds is the latest chapter in The Living World updates for Guild Wars 2. It adds a lot of new content, plus changes some of the older tried and tested features, making them cleaner and more user friendly. Today we're going to take a quick look at the update and decide just how much value is added in The Bazaar of the Four Winds.

And if you're not excited, you should be, because it's the best Living World update yet!

The Bazaar of the Four Winds Quick Review

The Bazaar happens every year. The biggest black market traders all get together in one place to peddle their wares. You can pick up anything you want, and even somethings you'd rahter not have, all from the one location. This makes it incredibly exciting for those that live on the edge of the law, but also rather dangerous.

And this year, things are going to be even more exciting, because the Zephyr Sanctum will be making an appearance. The Zephyr Sanctum is so rarely seen that many had thought it a complete myth. Now you'll get the chance to see it first hand, and more, you'll get to trade and converse with those that live aboard as well.

A Living Story

This is what the Living Story should be. Not just a new series of events, but a new location to explore, new things to do, a deeper look at the world of Tyria. Whatever your opinion on this sort of update, there's absolutely no denying the value that's on offer here. There's 20+ new achievements to hunt down, three new mini-games to play and new ways to move above and explore.

The mini-games are fun enough and you'll be able to enjoy them for quite a bit more than the previous attempts at adding new gameplay elements to Tyria. It's the changes to the base game that you'll enjoy the most though. To get to the Zephyr Sanctum, you'll need to take advantage of some new methods of moving. This lets you zip through the air twice the normal speed, jump stupid high and zap between lightning rods. It's an interesting take on the jumping puzzles already available, and it's entirely unlike anything previously available in Guild Wars 2.

There's a number of missions and side-missions which will allow you to truly experiment with these new features, and with the other new things added along with this update, meaning that your time enjoying The Bazaar of the Four Winds will be rich and diverse.

Updates

The most obvious update in this pack, asides from the new story content, is the new Achievement UI. It's far neater, like the display for the console's achievement systems. It makes enjoying them, tracking them and hunting for them far more fun, and hopefully they'll make more positive changes like this to the UI in the coming months. For now though, this was more than enough.

You'll also start to get real-game awards for the achievements you've earnt. Gold, experience, laurels, exclusive items and skins and more will be given to you based on your achievement score, so now's the time to start looking through at what you've missed.

There's also some stuff for the WvW modes and a brand new map for PvP players. If you play competitively, you'll have some new stuff to learn.

Final Thought

The Bazaar of the Four Winds really embodies the idea of presenting something for everybody, and I hope it's something that ANet keep managing to do with these bi-weekly updates. It's huge, with probably five or more hours worth of new content to explore. It was also nice to see that the new missions are popular, but not at all laggy, which is something that new updates have suffered with in the past.

If you haven't loaded up Guild Wars 2 in a few weeks, you'll need to download this latest update. Don't worry though, it'll be more than worth your time.

Guild Wars 2 Giveaway Quest 11 Challenge 1

- What is the update after Bazaar of the Four Winds? Answer in comments below.