I thought I would make a post about my thoughts – both positive and negative, about the recent Living Story, and invite others to share their thoughts and feedback about it too.
To be honest, I haven’t been this excited about a Living Story since Zephyr Sanctum: Bazaar of the Four Winds. Despite us never actually having a choice whether Lions Arch would get saved or not (which I did find rather odd – but that in and of itself is worthy of another thread), I found the reality of the destruction quite surreal upon entering the new LA. There were actually tormented screams amidst the fighting, which made the whole scenario feel real.
Another thing I liked was the new backpieces. When I first saw the image codes on Reddit with the different colored ascended spinal backpieces (I assume will be available in the next patch). Not only did they look freakin’ amazing, but I liked the fact that you had to upgrade them to include more blades, at the same time, upgrading their stats and appearance. I also like the fact that they remained account bound, even after selecting the stats. That’s awesome.
One could argue the fights in Escape from Lions Arch were a let down, considering many choose to go the guardian route and just spam the #1 staff skill while attacking mobs, however for me personally, I find it quite nice because there are rarely Living Story patches that have mobs that give decent loot, so to be able to go around and grab a fair bit of loot has been refreshing to say the least, and I do think that this sort of zerg vs. mob stuff is required once in a while.
So let’s talk about the loot. I think for the most part it’s been pretty well done. I like the fact that you can turn in 100 found belongings and 30 silver for a tome of knowledge. There is nothing more tedious than levelling a low level character (unless you’re rich and can level them up fast with crafting). I have been able to finally level my asuran guardian from level 31 to 65 with this living story, and I hope to have him at level 80 before the next patch so he can wear the dynamic tempered spinal blade backpiece!
However I do feel there could be room for improvement in the rewards department – at least for this particular Living Story. For example, I think there should have been more options to use the found heirlooms. I mean, 20 heirlooms AND 4 silver for only 5 bags of alliance supplies that one could have easily obtained with simply a few kills in Escape from Lions Arch? It seems quite unreasonable. Also, right now, people have an abundance of spinal blades. I myself have managed to craft 1 ascended backpiece and 3 exotic backpieces, and I still have over 3,000 spinal blades taking up room in my bank.
I think to make the blade shards tradable would defeat the purpose though, because I do feel that people should go out and work towards them, however I think it would be nice if there was a permanent node reward where you could mine them daily, long after the Living Story has ended… or perhaps allow us to trade in any extras for similar rewards to the found belongings. Things like obsidian shards and Tomes of knowledge (perhaps requiring 250 blade shards, or even 500).
TL;DR
All in all, I feel that the reality and the destruction of LA was really well done with the tormented screams and NPC’s re-telling their losses. However, I believe there could have been room for improvement. For example, giving us the option to fight for LA rather than telling us it’s going to be destroyed and that you have no say in the matter, sort of thing.
The abundance of blade shards could have been given a use, and the found heirlooms rewards should have had another look into, considering 20 of them along with 4 silver only gave you 5 bags of alliance supplies – something that could be obtained in just a few kills in the Escape from Lions Arch instance. The backpieces are truly amazing though, 10/10 on those, and I look forward to the next Living Story. Great job!