Guild Wars 2 spoilers hint at the MMO's first expansion

First, a warning: If you're following Guild Wars 2's Living World story add-ons and haven't yet played the Season 2 finale released today, turn away now. MAJOR SPOILERS are incoming.

Final warning! Only the people who don't mind being spoiled are still here, right? Good!

Now, enjoy this bad-ass video that allegedly plays upon completion of today's "Point of No Return" content:

Pretty cool, right? Let me try to provide some context.

An anonymous reader who's already blasted through the new Guild Wars 2 Living World finale tipped us off to a major plot twist that developer ArenaNet chose to end the season on. It was revealed that the evil dragon Mordremoth, the major bad guy of the game, is actually the creator of the Sylvari, a race of plant-like people.

The Sylvari are, of course, one of the five playable races in Guild Wars 2. So basically a whole section of the playerbase just discovered that they're actually supposed to be serving the giant, evil dragon they've been fighting against. Whoops!

So what does that mean? What is the video above hinting at?

At the end it, the video has a card saying we can "discover what waits beyond the point of no return" on Jan. 24 at 10:30 a.m. CT. That's the time of a Guild Wars 2 panel at PAX South in San Antonio, Texas. The teaser notes that if you're not able to make it to PAX South in person, they'll also be broadcasting the panel online via Twitch.

While we may not know precisely what's coming on January 24, Reddit's Guild Wars 2 community noticed that the game's publisher, NCSoft, has recently filed trademark for something called Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. The trademark filing suggests that it could be a full-on expansion for the game, rather than another update or another season of the Living World story.

I'll admit that personally I've done a terrible job of keeping up with Guild Wars 2's story since I reviewed the game at launch and updated my review last year. But between that incredible plot twist and the potential for a meaty expansion, I'm very interested in jumping back in.

Polygon will be at PAX South and will bring you any news on Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns as it hits.

Update: We've replaced the lower-quality user-created video with ArenaNet's official video above.