Reforged update timeline

Guild Wars Reforged shipped in December 2025, and ArenaNet has kept patching it through 2026. That matters for Afterlife because the DLC lands on top of a live client: the UI changes, the mobile targeting work and the new art pipeline from this year are the state of the game the expansion will release into.

Below is the 2026 update record, from the oldest patch note still listed on the Steam news feed to the most recent, with the parts that affect a returning player.

The 2026 update timeline

Thirteen entries in under four months: a live game, not a museum piece.

The three updates that matter most for Afterlife

The August 26 economy patch. The Purveyor added a merchant to Ascalon City, Lion's Arch, Kaineng Center, Kamadan and the Great Temple of Balthazar, selling four account upgrades: an infinite identification and salvage kit bundle at $9.99, the Purveyor's Bell at $6.99, a starter bundle with two character slots and two storage panes at $14.99, and a costume bundle at $29.99. For Afterlife, that is the account-level economy your permanent rewards will sit alongside.

The September 30 controller and mobile pass. Auto-targeting was reworked to favour closer targets, and the number of times auto-attack cancelled unexpectedly was reduced. ArenaNet explicitly noted that mouse and keyboard were unchanged. Since Afterlife ships on phones and supports controllers, this is the control scheme the DLC inherits.

The October 22 art pipeline note. The Guise of the Wayward costume was described as the first completely new art asset built with a new pipeline, with the old 3DS Max pipeline called non-functional. That tells you new Afterlife assets are being produced on the newer toolchain, which is why 2026 cosmetics look different from 2005 ones.

Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 end on November 18, 2026

ArenaNet's notice covers Reforged and Guild Wars 2 together. After that date, the studio says the games will likely no longer function fully or launch successfully on those operating systems, support will not assist with issues originating there, and future updates will not be tested on them. The recommendation is to move to Windows 10 or 11 before November 18, 2026.

That date falls before Afterlife's launch, which makes it a practical deadline rather than a footnote. If you plan to play the DLC on a Windows 7 machine, the operating system stops being supported seven weeks before the expansion arrives.

Reforged's requirements still list Windows 7 as the minimum. The support notice is the newer statement and the one that governs.

The cadence itself is information. Roughly one update every ten days through the summer and autumn of 2026 means the Afterlife launch lands in a live pipeline rather than at the end of one. For a player deciding whether to buy, that is a reasonable proxy for how the DLC will be supported after January 13, 2027.

Why a 2005 game still gets patches

The update log answers this itself: the game was re-released with modern features, including mobile and controller support, and those features need maintenance. The July patches fixed mobile audio, mobile ads and in-app purchase bugs. The August patches fixed crashes tied to cinematics, pets and salvage kits. The September and October patches tuned targeting for touch and gamepad.

None of that is expansion content. It is the work of keeping a twenty-year-old client running on hardware it was never designed for, which is also the groundwork the DLC depends on.

One pattern: the biggest economy change and the biggest control change arrived six weeks apart, in late August and late September, both followed by hotfixes within days. That is the rhythm of a small live team — ship, watch, patch — and it is the rhythm Afterlife will inherit.

Checked 2026-11-05 against the Reforged Steam news feed (updates dated 2026-06-30 through 2026-10-22) and the Reforged Steam store page (app 29720).