Guild Wars 2

One of the things I frequently heard during the last month’s content (Secret of Southsun/Last Stand at Southsun) was that many players didn’t know what was going on, that the story wasn’t clear, or there wasn’t any story at all as far as they could see.

Setting aside comments whether ArenaNet should do more or make the story in-your-face and inescapably clear what is going on or enforcing some sort of linear, structured story setup (whether we like it or not), I’m more curious on what we as a community can do to help guide players and make them aware of the story, from those of us who go in-depth and learn every little piece.

This first week of Dragon Bash has been basically a setup for the upcoming story. You have the event active, all the Captain’s Council present, festivalgoers and protesters present as well, and Kiel herself is guarding the stage for the Effigy Lighting Ceremony becoming active tomorrow (where I believe the story will really be kicking off). The stage is set for the remainder of the event and the next one.

No spoilers from those who have already begun digging into the DAT file (I know you’re out there), but considering the effigy ceremony is an instance (Memories on the Pyre, public blog post link above) and we have another release coming mid-way through the Dragon Bash, it’s obvious there’s story incoming.

Even the most optimistic fan knows that there will be players who don’t know where to go, what to do, or may miss stuff, without it necessarily being their fault. This is where I believe the wiki comes into play, since we try to document everything (items, events, books, instances, NPCs, dialogue, etc). What can we do to help provide information? Can we provide “points of interest” of sorts, pointing out the major story pieces/NPCs that players should talk to in order to get the story? Is there something else that can be documented to help?

What can we do to help average players keep track of the story and not feel like they missed something?

Please, leave personal opinions of the gem store, money grabbing, ArenaNet dropping the ball, etc out of this thread. This is about what the community can do to help itself.

Dragon Bash release page stickied on main page, but here it is also: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_Bash

Okay, 70 views and nothing. Either people don’t actually care, don’t like my wall of text, or don’t even have an idea what could be done.

Let’s try a different tactic.

Take a look at the following two pages:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Secret_of_Southsun#Secret_of_Southsun
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Last_Stand_at_Southsun#Last_Stand_at_Southsun

Towards the end of LSaS we went back and added little subheaders for the various little bits of story-related stuff that happened during both releases, the idea being that you could look at each of these things, read through the dialogue, and keep up with the story.

In my head, this seemed to be a good way to record the story “progression”, as it were, but still required players to go to the different pages and read the different dialogue, putting some of it together in their head.

Another thing, that may happen soon for Southsun stuff, was what we did for Lost Shores.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Lost_Shores#Prelude
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Lost_Shores/Phase_1
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Lost_Shores/Phase_2
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Lost_Shores/Phase_3

Each of these include the various bits of lore that happened, including links to separate pages for the dialogues involved in Phases 1 and 2 (phase 3 is on the same page since it’s short enough). This laid out the story in a more contextual format, creating more of a narrative.

A third way would be this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_and_Frost

The content was on various pages, but this page collected everything into one main overview page that showed the various content that occurred, including the timeline we added on each release page.

Do any of these things seem like something that would be useful for keeping track of the story?

By the time you keep track of the story on Wiki the events almost over with, so unless they re-run the exact same story later on it’s of no use. You need guides & tips which are “real time”, something like dulfy.net. Plus, do the players care about the story or just the goodies?

how can the community help well i do remember that Anet was hiring so take the job and what ever pay they offer and start within x)

Lord Oubliette.8014:

By the time you keep track of the story on Wiki the events almost over with, so unless they re-run the exact same story later on it’s of no use. You need guides & tips which are “real time”, something like dulfy.net. Plus, do the players care about the story or just the goodies?

The wiki is two-fold. It lays out guides and where things are for the existing content, but also documents the game for historical reasons, including dialogue and missions. This goes beyond what guides and tips do with Dulfy and includes grabbing as much information as possible, listing events, maps, documenting NPCs, dialogues, personal story, professions, skills…as much as we can, so players can look the information up both during and after the content.

Not players care about the story (I’ll put you down for “don’t care”), but many want to look back on the lore that happened because they either missed it the first time while playing or they played the pieces so far apart that it’s harder to piece it together. I want to make sure the information is in a readable and understandable format, but what I consider such may not be what others do.

Hence the thread.