Guild Wars 2

I love all the trailers and discussions released previous to an update. They let us to prepare for the update, to research about the new best builds, to plan ahead about how are we going to spend the next in-game week or month.

But…

I do not love to know ahead of time what will happen.

I mean, I already know that, one way or the other, L.A. as we know it will dissapear. Maybe there will be only ruins. Maybe there will be a new dungeon to explore L.A.’s underworld. Maybe there will be an empty map. And maybe someday L.A. will be rebuild. Or not.

I already know that today I should walk across L.A. and take a lot of pictures. And I already know that tomorrow, when I log in, I will appear on a new map (and maybe an automatic instance to show what happened). And I know that, doesn’t matter how hard I fight, L.A. will be lost. Why should I fight then?

What if the dev team keep that info to themselves? If they give us in advance info about the bug-fixes, about the changes in game-mechanics, but keep to themselves the info about story? What if tomorrow, when I log in, I find myself in a L.A. burning down because of a surprise attack, without actually knowing what was going on, without knowing that that was going to happen?

Moreover, what if that attack, that battle, goes for one week of play, and THEN, based of the players fight, on some across-server points, it is decided if L.A. lives or dies? (Of course, devs, you are fully allowed to be a good Dungeon Master, and play with us and decide, no matter how many points we did, that L.A. will fall, but we will still be surprised the moment the surprise attack starts, we will still fight as the heroes we are supposed to be, and we will enjoy a lot more than we will do now).

This is a role playing game, after all. And never, ever, in all the “live-action” role playing games I had played, had the DM come to me, one week earlier, to say “do you know what? I will send you a dragon on saturday’s game-session. And the orcs will make a surprise attack against your base, cackle cackle”… I learn what is happening at the same time my char does. So, why don’t do the same here?

PS: Many of you may say “that’s easy, boy: don’t look into the forums, and you will be surprised”. But that isn’t the idea, and you know it. Besides, there’s other ways of find out about the new updates. And -and this really bugs me- normally the in-game info is so hard to find, that you need to look into the forum, of another sites, to really grasp what’s going on with each update. Yeah, even to learn about the story…

How would people know to find all the ambient dialogue, the extra little bits that haven’t been found, and to have that last chance to appreciate the map before it’s changed if they had no clue it was going to be changed in the first place? More info in game is great, I agree. Less info on the internet is not.

EDIT: Let’s not repeat TA Aetherpath thing, is all I’m saying.

I disagree. I love the “spoilers” and trailers they do. It works for the game they have, and this isn’t your old role playing gm, this is a company. That aside, there are a few NPC’s that have had this ominous message that something was gonna happen to LA. Hell, Evon basically spells it out. We knew this was coming, and now we know when. All the important stuff is coming tomorrow, the “how” if you will, and hopefully (if current trend continues) it will all be in game.