A week into Secrets of the Obscure, the most heated community discussion is not about the Kryptis or the Wizard’s Vault. It is about the Skyscale. ArenaNet added a new, faster acquisition path through SotO, and a portion of the playerbase is not happy about it. I want to argue that they are wrong and explain why I think ArenaNet made the right call here.
Key Highlights:
- The original Skyscale collection required completing Living World Season 4 and involved weeks of time-gated steps and map currency grinding
- Secrets of the Obscure adds an alternative acquisition path that is dramatically shorter for SotO owners
- ArenaNet added additional Skyscale mastery tiers exclusive to the new path, providing mechanical advantages for players who invested in both routes
- The Skyscale is essential for navigating SotO map design
- The debate reflects a long-running tension in GW2 between rewarding veteran effort and welcoming new players
What We Don’t Know Yet:
- Whether ArenaNet will add further Skyscale mastery upgrades in future quarterly content
- How the new acquisition path affects LW S4 completion rates for new players
What Actually Changed with the Skyscale
First, the accurate version, because some of the discourse is working from wrong information.
ArenaNet did not make the Skyscale free. It is not automatically granted to every player. The original Living World Season 4 acquisition path still exists and still works. Nothing was removed.
What ArenaNet added is an alternative path through Secrets of the Obscure that allows players to earn the base Skyscale mount through expansion content without completing LW S4 first. This path is faster. Not by a little. By a lot.
The original path involved a multi-week collection chain with time-gated steps, specific map currency requirements, and the prerequisite of having played through multiple Living World episodes. A new player who wanted a Skyscale in 2022 was looking at weeks of work to get there, assuming they had LW S4 unlocked at all.
The new SotO path brings that down substantially. Players who own the expansion can earn their Skyscale through the expansion’s content without navigating the full LW S4 requirement chain.
The Veteran Frustration Is Real
I want to be honest here because the frustrated veterans are not wrong to feel what they feel.
The Skyscale was genuinely hard to get. Spending multiple weeks on a collection chain, managing time gates, gathering specific currencies from maps you might not have wanted to run. That was a real investment. It was the kind of grind that felt like it meant something when you were done. Flying your Skyscale for the first time after all of that had weight to it.
When something you worked hard for becomes significantly easier for the next person, there is a natural human reaction. It feels like the effort was retroactively devalued. The achievement feels smaller because it was harder to earn than it needed to be.
That feeling is valid. I have felt it. Most veterans who have been in this game since 2012 have felt it more than once. Precursor crafting changes. Legendary rework. Ascended stat swapping. Every time ArenaNet streamlines something that used to require serious investment, some portion of the playerbase feels the sting.
Acknowledging that feeling is honest. But it is not a reason to keep the barrier in place.
Why the Change Is Correct
The Skyscale is not a cosmetic mount. It is functionally mandatory for current content.
Secrets of the Obscure was designed from the ground up around aerial traversal. The Skywatch Archipelago maps have vertical layers that assume Skyscale access. Rift hunting spreads across elevation ranges that a ground-based character cannot efficiently navigate. The map design treats the Skyscale as a baseline tool, not a reward for elite players.
Designing an expansion that requires a mount to function properly and then hiding that mount behind weeks of old content for a significant portion of your player base is poor game design. It would be like shipping Path of Fire glider content and requiring new players to grind out the original glider masteries from Heart of Thorns before being allowed to participate.
ArenaNet built a new expansion. They needed players to have the Skyscale to access it properly. They made the Skyscale accessible. That is the correct order of operations.
Additionally: the narrative of the Skyscale as a “rite of passage” has always been slightly overstated. The original grind was long. Long does not always mean meaningful. A time-gated collection chain that had you farming specific map currencies while waiting for daily resets was not a test of skill or commitment. It was a test of patience and schedule flexibility. Those are not the same thing.
What ArenaNet Got Right About the Transition
ArenaNet did not just make the Skyscale easier and move on. They added new Skyscale mastery tiers that are only accessible through the SotO path.
These are not cosmetic masteries. They provide real mechanical upgrades: enhanced hover duration, improved flight stamina, specific mobility bonuses for the new maps. Players who went through the original LW S4 collection path and also complete the SotO path gain both sets of upgrades.
That means veterans who invest in the new content have a tangibly better-performing Skyscale than a player who only ever completed the original collection. The effort invested in the old path was not devalued. It was extended.
This is the right way to handle a transition like this. Give new players a path that works for the current game. Give veterans something additional to chase that acknowledges and builds on their prior investment. The community deserves credit for pushing ArenaNet toward exactly this solution in prior feedback cycles.
The Bigger Tension: Prestige vs. Accessibility
The Skyscale debate is a specific instance of a broader question that every long-running MMO faces.
How do you honor the investment of players who were there for the hard version of something, while also building a game that new players can participate in without climbing a mountain of prerequisite content?
There is no clean answer. Every solution involves someone feeling like they got the worse deal.
What Guild Wars 2 has generally gotten right over eleven years is that the game’s identity does not rest on locking new players out of content as a form of prestige gatekeeping. The no-vertical-progression, no-gear-treadmill philosophy has always been about letting players engage with the current game on their own terms. The Skyscale situation was always slightly out of step with that philosophy. SotO corrected it.
The players who feel their effort was devalued are processing a real feeling. But the players who can now participate in the current expansion’s content without weeks of prerequisite grind are playing the game ArenaNet always said GW2 would be.
Where This Conversation Goes Next
This will not be the last time ArenaNet makes something easier to access. As the quarterly expansion model builds on prior content, they will face this question repeatedly: when a mount or mastery or system becomes mandatory for new content, how do you balance the acquisition path?
The Skyscale resolution is a good template. Keep the old path. Add a new path. Give players who invest in both something that acknowledges the double investment.
Whether ArenaNet holds to that template for the next mount or mastery gating question is worth watching. The quarterly update cadence is going to produce new progression systems regularly. How each one handles the veteran-versus-newcomer accessibility question will shape the community’s relationship with the new model.
We will be watching. And we will call it out when they get it right or wrong.
The Skyscale is now more accessible. That is good for the game. Your old Skyscale grind still happened. It still counts. Now let’s go fly.