Guild Wars 2 rolls out DirectX 11 update today

ArenaNet is rolling out a major update for the MMO Guild Wars 2. While it isn’t another expansion or event, the game is getting a bit of a boost through the way it looks, plays, sounds, and feels to players. The developers are updating the game to DirectX 11 and that means the overall experience is going to get a lot smoother, faster, and better all around.

It’s been a long time coming, but the team has started the update process for the game. It was announced at the beginning of January that Guild Wars 2 would be getting the DirectX 11 overhaul later in the year. It wouldn’t be that much later as the team began adjusting the game’s system requirements on February 6. Though not everyone will see the updates at first as they will be rolled out slowly throughout the next few months. Players can expect to see the enhancements from now through April 18. That leaves the developers eight weeks of updating time to ensure it is running as intended and everyone has access to it.

The DirectX 11 update will improve many different aspects of the game. While players may not notice everything, they can expect to see modern rendering elements, graphical enhancements, and improved performance. It all comes down to making Guild Wars 2 the best it can be. The game has been out since 2012, so it’s due for enhancements to graphics. To put it into perspective, Baldur’s Gate 3 runs on DirectX 11 and it looks and runs rather impressively.

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However, this all comes with a catch. As Guild Wars 2 originally ran off of DirectX 9, everyone will need to update to DirectX 11 to play the game. Those that do not update will be out of luck until they do so. Thankfully upgrading to DirectX 11 is free but you’ll need to see if your hardware supports it. Players can also access the game through a cloud gaming service like NVIDIA GeForce NOW if they don’t have the supported hardware.