Designing World Bosses in Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds
Creating large-scale open world events in Guild Wars 2® is no easy task, and when the challenge involves bringing iconic titans back into the game for the first time since the original Guild Wars®, the stakes get even higher. Today, our designers Travis Battig, Peter Larkin, Matthew Burke, and Brian Gilmore share some behind-the-scenes stories about the creation of the new titans and another community-favorite world boss from Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™. From technical breakthroughs to design philosophy, their journey is one of balancing ambition with careful, thoughtful iteration.
When designing open world events, there's always the desire to do more, to make it harder, and to delight players with something bigger and more complex than what they've seen before. However, as it goes with every studio and project, we need to find ways to push ourselves while operating within our constraints. After a great deal of iteration on what the full experience would be, we decided it was best to allow the titans themselves to carry this world boss encounter—after all, this is their first appearance since the original Guild Wars.
We had decided early on to make Decima and Greer a world boss encounter instead of a meta-event. We also wanted to incorporate our reworked warclaw mount's mechanics into the design by having them be the solution to the titans' hardened armor. Early prototypes included porting over existing WvW door functionality onto a creature, armor gadgets we attached to a karka rig, and a dynamic race-gate placement. Ultimately, we arrived at the experience that's in the game: tripping the titan with your warclaw to make it break its own armor under its weight. When either titan is knocked over, their armor is shattered, revealing their inner core. As an homage to titans in Guild Wars, the resulting destruction generates titanspawn for players to defeat.
The early concept art for Decima was inspiring, and the idea that she would use conduits in some way struck a chord. As a titan, she incorporates elements of her environment to form thick, rocky armor made of crystalline structures reminiscent of pyrite.
As the Stormsinger, her conduits allow her to manipulate the weather by generating and storing large amounts of arcane flux, a hybrid of air-attuned and raw arcane magic. Decima's rocky, hefty appearance isn't what you'd expect from a creature capable of generating and manipulating storms, wind, and lightning. This dichotomy was fun to work with and informed much of her design, especially her love of squashing things!
A key aspect of Decima's design is her massive beam attacks that fire from the conduit built into her left arm. However, matching visual effects to rectangular attacks of arbitrary length is tricky. Decima is so large that her beam attacks couldn't shoot directly from her arm, as they'd be too high up and off-center. To solve this, we used an invisible creature to act as an anchor for the beam attack, allowing the system to dynamically scale the beams to almost any length. This will become much more relevant in the upcoming raid!
With Greer, the titan of rot, our goal was to embody the theme of "decay without life" throughout the encounter. Greer's ideal world would be what you would find underneath a kicked over log—rot without regrowth. A key aspect of Greer is his ability to corrupt boons, a mechanic usually not found in open world content, which adds a new layer of complexity for players in the PvE setting. Having a world boss that uses a player's own strengths against them encourages different builds and strategies, such as utilizing abilities that can cleanse conditions.
With the titans, we also introduced mechanics to the open world that were more commonly seen in strikes and raids. For example, to avoid Greer's rot eruption, three players have to stack up in the same spot, or decaying thorns will burst up from the ground and impale them. Earlier versions of this attack would simply target the players who were furthest from Greer, and while that did keep ranged players on their toes, it left no room for counterplay. In the end, Eruption of Rot evolved from an attack that harassed ranged characters into one that needed to—and could be—countered by player action.
We also wanted to make sure Greer and Decima felt different to overcome while sharing some similarities. Both have hardened armor and generate titanspawn when it's broken, but while Decima is more of a dance of death, Greer is more of a stand-up brawl. We can't wait for players to experience how Greer's titan-splitting mechanic evolves in the new raid coming soon!
When we began research for Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds, we stumbled upon bog bodies and used them as a point of inspiration. Bog bodies are basically mummies preserved in peat bogs, and we decided they would be reanimated due to the maggots infesting them.
The event chain started with the idea that you would be running around and squishing the maggots while riding on the warclaw. After several iterations, it evolved to requiring the players to dash through the maggots to stop them, which was more interactive. Once that system was ready, our attention shifted to designing the source of these maggots—enter the Bog Queen.
To bring the Bog Queen to life, we started with the Risen Priestess of Lyssa model, which hadn't been used much. Our Character Art Lead, Adam, did an amazing job updating and altering the design into the creepy visage you see in the game. We also upgraded her animations, which allowed her to hover as she commands her army of maggots and bog bodies.
From there, we wrote some voice lines for her summoning poem, like, "Squirm and infest; rot and decay. Find a new home, all soft and warm. It's time to join my jubilant swarm!" Then our narrative lead, Indigo, fleshed out an incredible backstory for her with the help of some other talented contributors. We won't spoil anything, but be sure to poke around Janthir Syntri if you want the full story.
We also played around with the idea of having the Bog Queen sing her voice lines during the maggot summoning but ended up deciding against that in the end. Patty Mattson, who also voiced Peitha, absolutely crushed it performing as the Bog Queen. We love giving her nine-feet-tall monsters to play!
Overall, the whole team really rallied around the Bog Queen, and we are delighted to see that she's become a favorite of the Guild Wars 2 community. She wouldn't be the success she is without everyone working together to make it happen. Shoutouts to our map artists, design leads, QA, and the music team—the "Queen of Murk" track is unbelievable!
Whether you're facing off against the corruption of Greer, battling Decima's lightning strikes, or dashing through maggots in Janthir Wilds, these encounters are designed to engage players in fresh, exciting ways. Each of these bosses represents the culmination of months of collaboration and creativity, and we were thrilled to watch the community's reaction to them when the expansion launched. We're equally excited for players to experience our upcoming raid and Convergences bosses in our first major update to Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds in November. We'll see you then!
Finding Balance in Open World Event Design: Travis's Vision
When designing open world events, there's always the desire to do more, to make it harder, and to delight players with something bigger and more complex than what they've seen before. However, as it goes with every studio and project, we need to find ways to push ourselves while operating within our constraints. After a great deal of iteration on what the full experience would be, we decided it was best to allow the titans themselves to carry this world boss encounter—after all, this is their first appearance since the original Guild Wars.
We had decided early on to make Decima and Greer a world boss encounter instead of a meta-event. We also wanted to incorporate our reworked warclaw mount's mechanics into the design by having them be the solution to the titans' hardened armor. Early prototypes included porting over existing WvW door functionality onto a creature, armor gadgets we attached to a karka rig, and a dynamic race-gate placement. Ultimately, we arrived at the experience that's in the game: tripping the titan with your warclaw to make it break its own armor under its weight. When either titan is knocked over, their armor is shattered, revealing their inner core. As an homage to titans in Guild Wars, the resulting destruction generates titanspawn for players to defeat.
Breathing Life into Decima: Peter's Design Goals
The early concept art for Decima was inspiring, and the idea that she would use conduits in some way struck a chord. As a titan, she incorporates elements of her environment to form thick, rocky armor made of crystalline structures reminiscent of pyrite.
As the Stormsinger, her conduits allow her to manipulate the weather by generating and storing large amounts of arcane flux, a hybrid of air-attuned and raw arcane magic. Decima's rocky, hefty appearance isn't what you'd expect from a creature capable of generating and manipulating storms, wind, and lightning. This dichotomy was fun to work with and informed much of her design, especially her love of squashing things!
A key aspect of Decima's design is her massive beam attacks that fire from the conduit built into her left arm. However, matching visual effects to rectangular attacks of arbitrary length is tricky. Decima is so large that her beam attacks couldn't shoot directly from her arm, as they'd be too high up and off-center. To solve this, we used an invisible creature to act as an anchor for the beam attack, allowing the system to dynamically scale the beams to almost any length. This will become much more relevant in the upcoming raid!
Making Greer Distinct: Brian's Creative Process
With Greer, the titan of rot, our goal was to embody the theme of "decay without life" throughout the encounter. Greer's ideal world would be what you would find underneath a kicked over log—rot without regrowth. A key aspect of Greer is his ability to corrupt boons, a mechanic usually not found in open world content, which adds a new layer of complexity for players in the PvE setting. Having a world boss that uses a player's own strengths against them encourages different builds and strategies, such as utilizing abilities that can cleanse conditions.
With the titans, we also introduced mechanics to the open world that were more commonly seen in strikes and raids. For example, to avoid Greer's rot eruption, three players have to stack up in the same spot, or decaying thorns will burst up from the ground and impale them. Earlier versions of this attack would simply target the players who were furthest from Greer, and while that did keep ranged players on their toes, it left no room for counterplay. In the end, Eruption of Rot evolved from an attack that harassed ranged characters into one that needed to—and could be—countered by player action.
We also wanted to make sure Greer and Decima felt different to overcome while sharing some similarities. Both have hardened armor and generate titanspawn when it's broken, but while Decima is more of a dance of death, Greer is more of a stand-up brawl. We can't wait for players to experience how Greer's titan-splitting mechanic evolves in the new raid coming soon!
Rise of the Bog Queen: Burke's Design Journey
When we began research for Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds, we stumbled upon bog bodies and used them as a point of inspiration. Bog bodies are basically mummies preserved in peat bogs, and we decided they would be reanimated due to the maggots infesting them.
The event chain started with the idea that you would be running around and squishing the maggots while riding on the warclaw. After several iterations, it evolved to requiring the players to dash through the maggots to stop them, which was more interactive. Once that system was ready, our attention shifted to designing the source of these maggots—enter the Bog Queen.
To bring the Bog Queen to life, we started with the Risen Priestess of Lyssa model, which hadn't been used much. Our Character Art Lead, Adam, did an amazing job updating and altering the design into the creepy visage you see in the game. We also upgraded her animations, which allowed her to hover as she commands her army of maggots and bog bodies.
From there, we wrote some voice lines for her summoning poem, like, "Squirm and infest; rot and decay. Find a new home, all soft and warm. It's time to join my jubilant swarm!" Then our narrative lead, Indigo, fleshed out an incredible backstory for her with the help of some other talented contributors. We won't spoil anything, but be sure to poke around Janthir Syntri if you want the full story.
We also played around with the idea of having the Bog Queen sing her voice lines during the maggot summoning but ended up deciding against that in the end. Patty Mattson, who also voiced Peitha, absolutely crushed it performing as the Bog Queen. We love giving her nine-feet-tall monsters to play!
Overall, the whole team really rallied around the Bog Queen, and we are delighted to see that she's become a favorite of the Guild Wars 2 community. She wouldn't be the success she is without everyone working together to make it happen. Shoutouts to our map artists, design leads, QA, and the music team—the "Queen of Murk" track is unbelievable!
Looking Ahead
Whether you're facing off against the corruption of Greer, battling Decima's lightning strikes, or dashing through maggots in Janthir Wilds, these encounters are designed to engage players in fresh, exciting ways. Each of these bosses represents the culmination of months of collaboration and creativity, and we were thrilled to watch the community's reaction to them when the expansion launched. We're equally excited for players to experience our upcoming raid and Convergences bosses in our first major update to Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds in November. We'll see you then!
