I love that loading screen.
And, yeah, that broken stone thing in the distance was making me think of the aqueduct in Presearing Regent Valley. Not that the rest of it does, entirely, but that was what I first thought of!
I think it's the sense of following the sword and the zoom giving "forward motion". It just gives stronger foreground cues that feel more like progress. That being said, the art is still very cool.
this feels a lot like a gw3 announcement to me, I am beside myself with hype.
As far as location, those arches look very much like Orr. Maybe they're going back to a time before Orr sunk; my absolute dream would be for this game to be focused around Orr and its destruction.
For context, Utopia was a scrapped expansion for Guild Wars 1 that involved stuff pertaining to Time, the Chronomancer that was MEANT for this expansion was put into Guild Wars 2's Heart of Thorns Expansion as the Mesmer's first Elite Specialization
I'm inclined to think it's Guild Wars 3, but I hadn't expected an announcement at this point. I was kinda inclined to agree with MightyTeapot that it was going to be announced in August/September-ish.