Guild Wars 2

Now that we have concluded with Season One, my two cents are that I loved the structuring of all the action parts of the year; From The Aetherblade Dungeon to the molten Facility, to the Aetherblade Jumping puzzle, to the Marionette fight and everything beyond that and in between. So much fun stuff to do. I even enjoyed the zergfests that were Scarlet’s attacks on different regions immensely. Grand job on all of it. Seriously. Kudos to you guys for all the awesome design choices and fantastic things to do. It was engaging and refreshing to do stuff in MMO’s that wasn’t quest boxes and
busy work.

Lion’s Arch getting destroyed was amazing. The idea to destroy what is in my opinion, the best player city in a video game, was brilliant. Taking things that the player’s hold dear and trashing it and having us fight for it was awesome. I felt a real sense of fighting for what was mine during that stuff.

The story though? It was all pretty middling to be honest. I really don’t feel that Scarlet’s motives were fleshed out enough. She lacked any real depth. I feel like next time, maybe a character should be used that the players know? There may be more later, but I don’t think enough of it was given at a proper pace this season if you catch my meaning. I really feel for future stories that we as players should be given some omniscience as it pertains to the story. I don’t mind having questions linger. The problem is that each season to me, should have finality in its own right and feel satisfying on its own. The action portion of the game was that in spades. The story wasn’t cohesive enough to feel that way. What happened with Mai Trinn? Canach? The three factions of baddies? I really feel like their should have been denouement regarding those characters. Same goes for the Consortium. What is up with their presence on Southsun now?

The other issue I have is that there seems to be a trend with Guild Wars lore in that there are a bunch of stories that have never been finished. I fear that with the iterative design of the studio, we may never get to the end of what is happening now and that would be a real shame. Again, I am not basing my concerns from nothing, but off of the past track record of the studio.

Livia and the scepter?
The Battle for Lion’s Arch had quite a few loose ends.
Evennia?

I could go on but you get the point. I would like the stories to feel more complete in their own right from season to season. When they hang like this season is left hanging, it’s hard to care about it a ton, because next season could just be more of the same where there are more questions than answers and I don’t find that compelling. When a good story ends —if it isn’t the second part of a trilogy-- it is a stand alone as a piece of work. What I mean by that is you can read a good first book in a 3 part series and it could stand by itself as a story. I don’t feel like this season did that in terms of storytelling. I am left asking questions like the ones I was asking above.

I know that this is the first season and no game company has ever tackled anything like this before and it was really ambitious, but I also think it wasn’t fleshed out as fully as it could have been(story wise). Hopefully next season is different as it pertains to story. I hope you guys continue to mix up the action bits as well. Thanks!