Guild Wars 2

I like LA. I’ll be sad to see it go.

But much like the human female running animation, it’s not up to me.

It’s just, another thing.

B) No, I don’t like it at all

And here are my reasons:
1) LA as a city is the most prominent link to the past and the stories of the original GuildWars. No other major city in GW2 invokes the feeling of going through a place of history to me.
2) LA is Lag Alot (and got worse with each update), but it is still the main centre to gather and meet if you are “semi-afk”. WvW people get dropped off from home base citadels and the Mist PvP portal brings people to LA.
3) It’s a pretty easy to navigate place compared to the other cities (with the exception of DR) and big enough to offer space for several /local chat groups around the place.
4) It is probably the biggest hub for PvE personal stories & meeting with Destiny’s Edge members as well as other story elements. (e.g. the battle for Claw Island would not make sense any more)
5) In addition to that all GW books have a tie to that city, Sea of Sorrows basically deals with LA being built.
6) Our main festivities happened in LA, including Halloween & Wintersday
7) It is also the location of all our in-game services for PvE, including the Mystic Forge

Do I see an alternative to LA in the Vigil Keep (or other cities) from what I know now?

1) Vigil Keep has nothing in terms of depth like LA
2) If ANet wants us to visit other cities more, they will at least split up the “talking community” into several factions, even more if e.g. Black Citadel would be the new WvW exit, DR would get the Mystic Forge etc. Again, Vigil keep would just be lame.
3) Vigil Keep at least “looks like a small place”, so no room for local chat groups like in LA
4) I have no idea how all the instanced PS content could be transfered out of the now existing LA. “Oh look, LA is a wasteland” => meet Tybalt in LA => “Oh, Tybalt nice to see you selling apples in this instance of LA that was not destroyed a few weeks ago” => Oh, back in wasteland LA => Lets go to Gendaran Fields to find Demi & Tybalt like nothing has happened?
5) Great I read this book and GW2 does interest me. Lets see if I can find that spot Cobiah was. Wait? This place was burned down for the Living Story?
6) Relocate the seal that bound the Mad King to the Grove or what?
7) Mystic Forge gets “more toilet seats” in other cities?

Sorry, the more I think about it the less it will work if LA will be permanently wiped from the map. The developers just seem to over react to the demand of the LS really changing the world and the consequences of this will not make the game better, both lore and content wise.
I am willing to accept ANet people blowing my mind with an awesome solution, but I do not see it happen.

Let go of the past, but don’t forget it

Otherwise u will never progress..u will just sit and rot in your past.

I will sit atop the highest point and burst in a tremendous laughter while LA crumbles hopefully disappearing forever into the sea depths :]

A and C, LA in its current state a very crappy place with ugly design and high fps. (whoever design it must love pirates of the caribean’s shipwreck cove ) i try to avoid that place whenever i can. Divinity reach is the best place or Black Citadel, basicly anywhere the bank and trading post are very close to each other.

A)

I want to see the Old LA rise from the sea, and the rest be rebuilt in it’s image.

People who think LA needs to stay because it is important to have one all important HUB city that does everything in a MMORPG are dead wrong. Several games have done without it by introducing features that made other cities just as relevant as a HUB could be. A hub city is just a convenience nothing more and one that can be replicated elsewhere.

We have a chance in GW2 for a truly changing world that can lose even a major city and keep going. That is incredible and a great step forward for MMORPG’s everywhere because most MMO worlds never change because people are so vitriol about it. They want the status quo to never change so they can be on top, they know the layouts, they think their current build is the greatest ever. What reason it often holds games back because of how afraid selfish and vocal they can it. If they truly destroy LA you need to think about how many possibilities that opens up for the game in general. It means anything could happen now including other major city invasions that change their layouts. That is just awesome!

Besides the mystic forge and the order stories everything else can be done in another major city. They’ve already said one of the greatest mistakes they made was tying the personal story so much into Orr that changing it would ruin it for others new to the game. It made it hard to make changes but they said they had a possible solution. Using the fractals they can have players go in there and see that story as if they already did it in the past themselves. While the world at large continues to change at large. The consortium built that portal pretty sure they can make another for us to use somewhere else and it would no different going to it then any other dungeon.

Another change would be linking all the major cities map chats together. So you’d miss nothing of the social aspect. Other MMORPG’s like WoW have done this and it works great and the population gets to support or stay in the city they want rather then always the hub because they worry they might miss something.

WvW portals in the Vigil keep make perfect sense for the aesthetics of having portals of war. Plus you can queue up from anywhere already anyways. So that really isn’t a big loss.

Major holiday features could be made for every major city instead of just LA or the Vigil Keep could bring a new take to it. Such as the way we fight off the Bloody Prince or Mad King and they wouldn’t have to worry about justifying the damage repairs to something like the Lion statue. You wanted holidays to change and evolve well here is your chance to get that. Don’t blow it by asking for things like LA to never change.

Once again you think only LA has history with GW1 but many of the cities today are built on history from GW1. The searing, refugees, the outpost that became an Asura capital, a tree grown with great care by two different races on a mass grave, the great migration of the Norn where the spirits aided them and some of them DIED. This history is waiting to be tapped and moving the focus to these side cities can let that happen.

The books are an evolving story as well and in a series cities get destroyed and people die. The story can’t grow without these things happening. Just because something was used in a book doesn’t mean it gets a get out of jail free card on any changes.

This can be a fun ride even if it is tied to (gag) Scarlet. Let it happen.

KorKor.9452:

People who think LA needs to stay because it is important … are dead wrong.

I admire your faith in ANet, sadly I can’t share it any more.
A lot of things you said make sense, but I don’t see developers do it (e.g. shared chat of major cities on a server, holiday events in all major cities)

They have not utilized the destruction of the watchtower during the Karka invasion. Nothing really new happened in terms of defense after the Aethers attacked and built a hideout. No other city, with the exception of a section of DR has changed (but that is out of use now).
Good living story needs no global events of cataclysmic proportions, it needs steady progression you can discover every other patch, like the rebuilding of the Lion’s Statue after it was destroyed. Or the Norn that finally got accepted to the guild in Fort Mariner.

I don’t have anything against La being razed by Scalet’s forces, but against not allowing us to rebuilt it after each small chapter of LS (if that should happen).
I want a players vote on what do rebuilt and perhaps how, just like the cut-throat politics thing. rebuilt trade (support Evon, e.g.) or rebuild defenses (support Ellen). The winner’s choice will happen in the next patch. That would be living story.

C. I don’t care.

This is being done to show that Scarlet is “Oh so EVIL” and such a danger to us all. It’s about as emotionally engaging as an “adult” film starring Jerry Lewis.

I would love if LA will get a more krytan feeling to it.

Alas it doesn’t really fit into the lore

I’m going to miss it but i think it will be a great addition for GW2 and the Living Story.

A!

I doubt it’ll be rubble for good though. It’d be cool if it was, but not likely. Besides, rebuilding it is a great excuse to redesign part or the entirety of the city. Imo, Lion’s Arch was ugly. Maybe someone at Anet felt the same?

Definitely “A” : i hunger for some changes in this game to keep it intresting.

A, B or C. Whatever. For me the important reason for QQ is somewhere else. I still dislike the whole LS concept becouse I have a feeling it halts the introduction of brand new areas to the game. It is now almost one and a half year since GW2 release. Lets review the list of new zones we got so far.

• Southsun Cove
• Adventure Box 1
• Adventure Box 2
• Adventure Box 3
• Adventure Box 4
• Adventure Box 5
• Adventure Box 6
• Zephyr Sanctum (removed for now)
• Crown Pavilion (removed for now)
• Tower of Nightmares (removed permanently)
• Edge of the Mists
• 15 fractals
• Number of Assorted story/pvp instances

Now go few years back and see what we got during roughly same period of GW1 lifespan (all zones are permanent).

I loved the GW1 content model so much. I loved it with passion. I was expecting something similar from GW2. Instead I got Living Story. So they change LA into something different? A single brand new zone would be so much better, let alone more of such zones. Do I hate the LS? Probably not. But it does not change the fact that I am mighty kittenhurt about where this is going. Arena is promising great things coming from different internal developer teams. I will believe it once I see it. Not much to see so far. Well, there is Scarlet…

A) for me.

I never liked Lion’s Arch very much (well not since Guild Wars 2 anyway). To be totally honest, I feel like if every capital city had a mystic forge, the role that Lion’s Arch plays would be of questionable importance. I avoid it as much as possible as it is, because all it presents for me is a low frame rate, ugly surroundings and a bunch of furries (?) sitting around spamming emotes and generally just attention-kittening. I do not associate very positive feelings with Lion’s Arch, it does nothing for me personally.

If I think about it, I really feel like if Lion’s Arch was no more and a mystic forge was added to each capital city, the game would be much better off. The capital cities are so beautiful and yet always so empty, it’s a shame! And there’s always a capital city that’s closer to you than Lion’s Arch is anyway, so if they all had asura gates leading to the other cities, I think all the bases would pretty much be covered. By splitting up the “chilling” (or afking) players into different cities would also alleviate having to stare at a 60-second loading screen every time you want to head back to home base, if you will.

The capital cities have so much more character, beauty and even just straight-up immersion / role-playing potential than Lion’s Arch does. I would absolutely love for these to be the “hubs” of the game instead of Lion’s Arch, which can be reduced to a small port town for all I care.

Well if everything is going to be relocated to the Vigil keep and it becomes the next Lion’s Arch, I’d rather keep Lion’s Arch or have a living story to rebuild it after the event.

1) annoyed

2) don’t care

Annoyed because it meant I had to take 3-4 alts I hadn’t really started playing through there for the zone complete.

Don’t care because I left LA a long time ago as a hub. I’ve had mapchat in LA turned off since October 2012 because it is usually a cesspool. It is the only place where I have had experience with multiple musical instrument griefers. And I much prefer to use the bank without hyperactive idiots bouncing off walls nonstop or swinging their annoying legendary greatsword graphics all over my screen. (Yes, YOU, get off my lawn! …/grumpy old lady.)

I park my alts in Divinity’s (all 50). Rata Sum and The Grove are my favorite places for crafting (ease of use).

For me, LA is only good for Fractal entrance and PS stories (finishing last Claw Island step this weekend on soon to be Number 22 level 80.)

PS: Obligatory comment about how the execution of the LS has driven the quality of the game into the ground. Continued obligatory statement about how ANet’s vision for their game may be unique but it flies in the face of the gold standard of a real MMO (persistent world). And qualifier about not having a problem with change (I’ve won enough awards for innovation in my lifetime for that to be laughable)….as long as the change ADDS something, is done with quality and does not take away anything existing. In an MMO.

Hmph good riddance.

It’s about time the city for all five races was destroyed! Down with unity!
I want a free for all to blanket Tyria, so I can go on a rampage in the black citadel exterminating the charr as my gw1 ancestor would have desired!

As a person who entered their first MUD in the 1970s and has been playing MMOs for about 14 years:

1. The dungeon master makes the rules. Period. Players can accept the changes or leave.

2. I tend to follow the “the hand once having writ moves on…” school, that is, add to the game but do not ever take anything away.

3. It did not occur to me that after Blizzard got a negative return on its investment in Cataclysm (lost players, negative reaction) that the owners/investors in games would ever give their lead designers freedom to do such destruction in the future.

Oh, and I have no intent of setting foot in Lion’s Arch until the event is over and Lion’s Arch is rebuilt. No gems for this one, ArenaNet

Oh.

PS: If this means we are done with Scarlet, that’s a good thing.

I’ve not been able to recommend GW2 to anyone because Scarlet is such an embarrassment of both poor game mechanics and writing.

A bit of A and B.
As much as I like LA,and will have nostalgia feeling for it due to the orginal gw.
I still welcome the fact that the Living story is going to be effecting the game in a major way. Really shows that the story will have big consequences.
I just wonder how the lion is going to be destroyed this time. :P

A) This is probably Anet’s apology for directing all traffic to LA all the time and never giving hot juicy love to other cities. We all know The Grove > all cities including LA.

Good riddance, let’s shake up the maps a bit more ANet!

Well as the previous administration was utterly corrupt, greedy, caring for nothing other than cash, then the shipwreck city can be swept to the sea. inter city trade can be conducted via portals, surely far cheaper and quicker than shipping or caravans. And Pact, most likely vigil, gets the lionguard if they remain. In a few weeks with a few extra portals about, LA will be but a place to explore for drops, as we sip tea in real cities.

p.s. A

I’m not happy with it since I am positive it will be poorly done as far as actually affecting the world as it should. It will be just more content shoved on top of the existing world content with no consideration of impact.. like they did in Kessex but on a pretty much game-wide scale.

There is so much chat and flavor text alluding to LA and trade throughout the game. The entire premise of the Havens and LionGuard out in the world zones is entirely connected to LA and trade route protection.

Hearts, Flavor text, dialog.. just a ton of in game information and lore connected to LA as it is now. If they leave all of that unchanged.. and given their track record they will, then we will have, again, NPCs and institutions blissfully unaware of LA destruction, living in the past, and what should be a world shaking event becomes simply a disconnected zone makeover like Kessex.

If they are going to present this as half-done, it shouldn’t have been done at all.
I would like to think they did address this.. but I have Zero confidence that they even bothered. They haven’t previously.

I pity the future new players who listen to NPCs, read flavor text, read the hearts, and wonder why so much effort is being made to move trade to a City that no longer exists, and why NPCs keep acting as if nothing happened.

A small example.

KorKor.9452:

People who think LA needs to stay because it is important to have one all important HUB city that does everything in a MMORPG are dead wrong. Several games have done without it by introducing features that made other cities just as relevant as a HUB could be. A hub city is just a convenience nothing more and one that can be replicated elsewhere.

We have a chance in GW2 for a truly changing world that can lose even a major city and keep going. That is incredible and a great step forward for MMORPG’s everywhere because most MMO worlds never change because people are so vitriol about it. They want the status quo to never change so they can be on top, they know the layouts, they think their current build is the greatest ever. What reason it often holds games back because of how afraid selfish and vocal they can it. If they truly destroy LA you need to think about how many possibilities that opens up for the game in general. It means anything could happen now including other major city invasions that change their layouts. That is just awesome!

Besides the mystic forge and the order stories everything else can be done in another major city. They’ve already said one of the greatest mistakes they made was tying the personal story so much into Orr that changing it would ruin it for others new to the game. It made it hard to make changes but they said they had a possible solution. Using the fractals they can have players go in there and see that story as if they already did it in the past themselves. While the world at large continues to change at large. The consortium built that portal pretty sure they can make another for us to use somewhere else and it would no different going to it then any other dungeon.

Another change would be linking all the major cities map chats together. So you’d miss nothing of the social aspect. Other MMORPG’s like WoW have done this and it works great and the population gets to support or stay in the city they want rather then always the hub because they worry they might miss something.

WvW portals in the Vigil keep make perfect sense for the aesthetics of having portals of war. Plus you can queue up from anywhere already anyways. So that really isn’t a big loss.

Major holiday features could be made for every major city instead of just LA or the Vigil Keep could bring a new take to it. Such as the way we fight off the Bloody Prince or Mad King and they wouldn’t have to worry about justifying the damage repairs to something like the Lion statue. You wanted holidays to change and evolve well here is your chance to get that. Don’t blow it by asking for things like LA to never change.

Once again you think only LA has history with GW1 but many of the cities today are built on history from GW1. The searing, refugees, the outpost that became an Asura capital, a tree grown with great care by two different races on a mass grave, the great migration of the Norn where the spirits aided them and some of them DIED. This history is waiting to be tapped and moving the focus to these side cities can let that happen.

The books are an evolving story as well and in a series cities get destroyed and people die. The story can’t grow without these things happening. Just because something was used in a book doesn’t mean it gets a get out of jail free card on any changes.

This can be a fun ride even if it is tied to (gag) Scarlet. Let it happen.

Strong +1 to that, as a roleplayer who’s character is living in LA, I’m very much looking forward to trouble in the city. I already posted my 1 regret and nostalgia, but it won’t stop me from immersing in the game, and face the attack as rp denizen of Lions Arch

A.

Loading screens seem reason enough. Though another is arrogant players with shinies.

Sirendor.1394:

A.

Loading screens seem reason enough. Though another is arrogant players with shinies.

Yes, because destroying LA will cause those two to disappear, instead of moving to the next social hub.

well that depends what happens

Astralporing.1957:

Sirendor.1394:

A.

Loading screens seem reason enough. Though another is arrogant players with shinies.

Yes, because destroying LA will cause those two to disappear, instead of moving to the next social hub.

Well in my ideal scenario, players would be congregating across the five capital cities, which would eliminate those problems. Additionally, each city would maintain its own sort of “flavour” depending on how the community on your server adopts each city as “home.”

Should’ve stuck with the Krytan throne. Thus always to traitors!

A

I feel so at home in L.A. and I will miss it! Divinity Ridge for banking and crafting needs is so inconvenient!

D – Well, how can they remove Lion’s Arch if so much Personal Story is there? Surely the Personal Story can’t be instanced and looked like the old Lion’s Arch? How about when sniff sniff Tybalt dies? The battle of claw island? SO yeah,

Personally I tend to call it Lag Town, but that’s not that important.
About the Living World…
Most useless plot part so far.
Just to have drama and a more or less fitting excuse to get rid of one of the new characters they’ll destroy Lions Arch. It’s like “Oh, we have formed this pact, that was able to kill an ancient dragon named Zhaitan with their airships, tanks, helicopters and what not, the player is even called their commander, and we have those Megalasers that helped us to kill Tequatl (till it respawns), and the old big Karka thing. Could we use it against that big Scarlet Ufo? Or build something better than those, using existing technologies, or stolen Scarlet technologies? Priory could have some great magic, too. Nah, never! A little bit of player infantry, around five to ten npcs, that should do… to help Scarlet destroying Lions Arch.”
The players struggle against those marionette is completly useless, if no one can get rid of the ufo itself. But we are not allowed to do so, nor does the npcs really want it. It can’t be that for example Evon Gnashblade hasn’t enough money to buy some pact airships (they have tons of them, if one considers how many of those are fighting dragons at orrs sky…), if he’s really that worried about the defense of Lions Arch. But hey, people in need will give their last clothes for food and shelter.

I hope they just rebuild Lions Arch, and let those ancient Lions Arch parts underwater untouched, cause every new Guild Wars 2 player that played Guild Wars would never have the chance to feel nostalgic when seeing it. The whole personal storyline would need a makeover, if they completly get rid of Lions Arch. That whole “Go to Lions Arch, meet your order, go to Claw Island and defend it to secure Lions Arch”-part would become useless. New players wouldn’t be able to finish their personal storys for a couple of weeks, and that couldn’t be that helpful or wanted either.

New places to discover would be far more great than to destroy and recreate something already existing. The worldmap of Tyria shows so many great places, no one has ever seen yet. Even if we add the known Tyria, Cantha, Elona and the places from Eye of the North together, it’s nothing compared to the sheer size of whole Tyria!
Some nice underwater levels would be cool to. Unending ocean is a place, which would be great to discover, too.
I’m still waiting to see Guild Halls (even if a small guild will probably never be able to pay for one even if hell freezes or the fog of the mists lifted…) , or player houses. The home instance is nice as it is, but it isn’t really a place I would want to live, if I had the choice.

I want them to destroy LA

~Gorg

B, but only because Scarlet is the one responsible.

If Lion’s Arch’s demise was part of a well-written plot or caused by an Elder Dragon or something, that would be one thing… But having to be reminded of Scarlet and this horrendous plot for months or even years to come is nothing short of humiliating.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

There is so much chat and flavor text alluding to LA and trade throughout the game. The entire premise of the Havens and LionGuard out in the world zones is entirely connected to LA and trade route protection.

Holy crap, I hadn’t even thought of this. Are they seriously going to overhaul all NPC dialogue to compensate for this? Or just pretend it’s not an issue, like how they ignored the fact that the centaurs never noticed the Toxic Alliance were wrecking their land and countless other immersion-breakers…

This point deserves its own thread. I’ll see if any are made, and if not, I’ll make one myself.

EDIT: Done. The thread is here.

A)

Can’t really stand LA.

B)
It’s great having a hub for everyone, especially for servers with lower population. It’s a social aspect of a social game. I’m worried that the playerbase might be spread too thin with the coming update.

On the other hand, it is due time they give us something to care about. So far, most of Scarlet’s shenanigans haven’t felt personal, and we just ended up in the midst of things, fighting endless alliance mobs for funsies. Attacking LA is really giving us a good in-game reason to fight the villain and get involved on a big scale.

D: Nuuuuuu! But that’s epic. Out with the old, in with the new.

A

I really like the city, but let’s face it: Spamadan was always better.