Today, for the first time in the history of the medium, an MMO is asking its players to vote on the future of the game world. Not a cosmetic poll. Not a “which mount skin do you prefer” survey. A binding election between two candidates with radically different campaign platforms, where the winner permanently alters the content of the game. ArenaNet is running this election inside Guild Wars 2, it is called Cutthroat Politics, and the voting is open right now.
Key Highlights
- Ellen Kiel and Evon Gnashblade are competing for an open seat on the Lion’s Arch Captain’s Council
- Voting tokens are earned through gameplay events: the Candidate Trials, Sanctum Sprint, and Southsun Survival
- Kiel promises the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal and reduced waypoint costs. Gnashblade promises the Abaddon Fractal and discounted Black Lion Key deals
- The Zephyrites docked their floating bazaar in Labyrinthine Cliffs, bringing movement Aspect crystals and new traversal mechanics
- Voting closes August 5. The winner is sworn in August 20
The Stakes
The Captain’s Council seat opened after the assassination of Councilor Theo Ashford during Dragon Bash in June. The perpetrator was Mai Trin of the Aetherblade pirates. Her escape through the Mists during the Aetherblade Retreat dungeon left a power vacuum in Lion’s Arch, and ArenaNet is using that gap to run something the genre has never attempted: a player-driven election with permanent content consequences.
The candidates could not be more different. Ellen Kiel is a working-class inspector. She has been on the front lines of every crisis this year: the Molten Alliance, the karka invasion of Southsun Cove, the Aetherblade attack on the Dragon Bash celebration. She is the candidate of action, someone who has actually been in the fight. Her platform reflects that. If Kiel wins, the Fractals of the Mists will add a new Thaumanova Reactor level, exploring what happened when the Inquest’s reactor exploded in Metrica Province. Waypoint costs across Tyria will drop, which means cheaper travel for everyone. Some players are saying they do not care about waypoint costs. Those players probably do not run WvW commander tags.
Evon Gnashblade owns the Black Lion Trading Company. He controls the Gem Store. The community’s relationship with Gnashblade is complicated. He charges real money for inventory slots and name changes, and he operates a monopoly on the game’s cosmetics economy. He is also a charr with a personality that makes Rytlock Brimstone look diplomatic. His platform is the Abaddon Fractal, a trip into the fallen god of the Margonites and a piece of Guild Wars: Nightfall history that veteran players have been asking about since launch. He is also promising cheap Black Lion Keys, which means more chest-opening for less gold.
The election is not about who you like. It is about what you want in the game for the next year.
The Zephyrites and Labyrinthine Cliffs
Before the voting opened, the Bazaar of the Four Winds arrived on July 9. The Zephyrites are traders who travel the Mists in a floating fleet, and their bazaar docked in Labyrinthine Cliffs, a vertical zone above the Sea of Sorrows. The Cliffs are built around a new movement system: three Aspect crystals that grant traversal abilities unlike anything in the core game.
The Wind Aspect gives you a speed boost and a massive jump, turning the city’s wooden platforms into a parkour playground. The Sun Aspect is a short-range teleport, a blink that lets you cross gaps and reach vertical positions that normally require a mesmer portal or an engineer rifle jump. The Lightning Aspect adds a double jump. These abilities stack. You can carry all three crystals at once, and the zone is designed around combining them. It is the most fluid movement Guild Wars 2 has ever had, and it makes you wonder what a full expansion built around these mechanics would feel like.
Sanctum Sprint is the Zephyrite race event attached to the bazaar: eight players on a downhill course, everyone with the same skills, a charge, a knockdown, and a trap you drop behind you. It is Mario Kart inside an MMO, and like the Super Adventure Box before it, the fact that it works at all feels like ArenaNet showing off. Unlike SAB, Sanctum Sprint is competitive. There are positions, finish times, and a leaderboard. It is the first real foot-race the game has shipped, and the chaos of eight players chain-zapping each other down a mountainside is the kind of multiplayer friction that reminds you why you play MMOs instead of single-player platformers.
How to Vote
This is where Cutthroat Politics gets interesting as a design problem. ArenaNet could have put a checkbox in the gem store and called it a vote. They did not. You earn Support Tokens by completing events at the Candidate Trials, two instanced arenas in Lion’s Arch where Kiel and Gnashblade each run an obstacle course and combat gauntlet. Completing a trial gives you a token for that candidate. You can run both trials. You can earn tokens for both sides. The choice is in how you spend them.
You can also buy Support Tokens on the Trading Post. This is the part that has some players concerned. Gnashblade, as a charr merchant with a Gem Store empire, is the candidate of capital. The irony of his supporters funding his campaign by buying tokens off the TP is not lost on anyone. On the official forums, one thread titled “Gnashblade Pay2Win Confirmed” is currently at 47 pages. Kiel’s campaign has surged among players who see this as a test of whether the community will vote for someone they trust or someone they think will give them cheaper loot boxes. Zerg guilds from Tarnished Coast and Blackgate have thrown their weight behind Kiel, citing waypoint cost reductions as essential for commanders who spend two gold a night on porting. The trading guilds, predictably, are backing Gnashblade.
What We Don’t Know Yet
ArenaNet has not confirmed whether the losing candidate’s content will ever appear in the game. If Gnashblade loses, does the Abaddon Fractal go into development anyway, just later? Or does it disappear permanently? The same question applies to the Thaumanova Reactor if Kiel loses. The company’s silence on this point is deliberate. It makes the vote feel final, which makes the vote matter. But for players who want both fractals eventually, the uncertainty is uncomfortable.
The exact mechanics of how Support Tokens translate to votes are also unclear. ArenaNet has said the winner is determined by total tokens spent, not by the number of unique voters. Organized campaigns with deep pockets could theoretically swing the outcome. Guilds have already started pooling resources. The official forums are full of campaign threads with better production values than some fan sites had at launch.
Why This Matters
Cutthroat Politics is not just a content patch with a gimmick. It is ArenaNet testing a theory about what MMOs can be. The living world model has always argued that player actions should change the game world. The refugee crisis in Wayfarer Foothills during the Molten Alliance arc made the world feel dynamic. The Zephyrites docking in Labyrinthine Cliffs made the world feel lived-in. But those were narrative changes: the plot moved forward, and the zones reflected the new state of affairs. This election is different. The community is making a choice, and ArenaNet is committing to whichever fractal wins the vote.
If this works, if the turnout is high and the debate is productive and the winner’s content ships on time and at quality, it opens the door to more community-driven decisions. Which expansion feature gets priority. Which profession gets the next elite specialization. Which world boss gets a Tequatl-style rework. The tools are there. Cutthroat Politics is the proof of concept.
There is also a simpler test happening here. Can an MMO community, notorious for optimizing the fun out of everything, make a choice that is not purely transactional? Gnashblade’s platform is straightforward: cheap keys, Abaddon lore. Kiel’s platform is harder to quantify: reduced waypoint costs affect everyone equally, and the Thaumanova Reactor is an unknown quantity. If the community votes with its wallet, Gnashblade wins. If it votes with the narrative momentum of the living world, with the idea that Kiel has been fighting alongside us since January, Kiel wins.
Your vote is a statement about which kind of game you want.
What to Watch For
The voting closes August 5. The winner takes the Captain’s Council seat on August 20 during a ceremony in Lion’s Arch. Between now and then, expect the campaign to intensify. ArenaNet has confirmed that the candidates will make additional promises as the election progresses, responding to community feedback and forum debates. Gnashblade has already hinted at more Black Lion perks. Kiel has not responded yet, but her campaign team, which appears to consist of a single norn named Magnus the Bloody-Handed and whatever guilds volunteer to run her trial gauntlet, has shown an ability to rally support when it counts.
You have two weeks to decide between a human inspector who has earned her place on the battlefield and a charr merchant who might get you cheaper loot boxes. Earn your tokens. Spend them on the candidate you believe in. And if you see someone in Sanctum Sprint chain-zapping their way to a podium finish, just remember: that person also gets a vote.