Guild Wars 2

To preface, I’ve been away from GW2 for 6-8 months, so I really don’t have a firm grasp on the whole “living story” concept. So with that in mind…

Are we actually supposed to be uncovering a story here? I’ve done the basic stuff to get the “Southsun Stalwart” achievement, and all I know is that there’s something that’s making people cranky, and that the Consortium has offloaded refugees here (actually, that last came from a bit of Googling last night to find out what was going on). Beyond that, I really don’t know that I have much of a story uncovered.

Mind you, I’m not saying the meta-event is dull. Quite the contrary! I’m enjoying running from dynamic event to dynamic event, killing stuff here, getting karma there, and regularly noticing how different GW2 and WoW the MMO-that-shall-not-be-named are. But I can’t help but ask myself, after having found all 11 samples and still having that “strange things are afoot at the Circle K Southsun Cove” ‘quest’ at the upper right of the screen, if I’ve missed something.

So, tl;dr, is there an actual story we’re uncovering here? Or is this just one big (fun) breadcrumb event?

Do 25 achievements and you get a flower back slot and a tentacled backslot. The only story I have seen is from the tooltips on the back items and the achievements.

According to the tooltips/achievements, we are going to have to escape from a lair of cabbage after killing the cabbage patch king. That’s all I know. Doesn’t seem very exciting.

lol. Well, at least I’m not the only one.

This whole thing started back in January. Here’s what’s going on:

The Dredge and Flame Legion combined forces and made the Molten Alliance. They drove many norn and charr out of their homelands. Whoever remained behind to fight, was captured and turned into a slave. We the players, Braham (young NPC norn guy), and Rox (young NPC charr female) asked the Black Citadel and Hoelbrak for help, but were denied any reinforcements. So together, the 3 of us go inside a dungeon and rescue the prisoners that the Molten Alliance had taken captive, and blew up the facility that was used as the Molten Alliance’s headquarters.

Since the Molten Alliance had destroyed many lands and homes the Charr and Norn once inhabited, they sought refuge in Lion’s Arch. Since Lion’s Arch isn’t exactly suburbia, the Consortium came up with the idea to use the refugees as hired help to make Southsun Cove a suitable place to live. Some of the refugees bought it, became Consortium workers and are now looking to live in Southsun. Some refugees sucked it up and went back north and are trying to rebuild their old villages/homes.

^We’re currently in the second paragraph. We don’t know whether or not we’ll be able to make this a suitable place to live, or if this will flop miserably. Will the refugees end up living here or will this become an exotic resort for only the wealthiest?

But part of your achievements was to talk to various NPCs. Did you skip the conversations?

I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on I think, and it’s all in game NPC conversations, rogue consortium diaries lying around, event texts… I had to get over myself, mind you, and learn to take a minute to actually read stuff.

Like first living story patch with refugees, this one will not show us very much of what’s going on. The more patches are added, the more things will be clear.

So

is there an actual story we’re uncovering here?

Not yet.

@WatchTheShwo, thanks for the summary. It helps to have a broader sense of the story.

@PixelPumpkin, I read the conversations from the 5 NPCs I had to speak to, but we’re talking maybe a grand total of two paragraphs of dialog. I did get the sense of the basic outlines of a story, but when I got to Levvi, it was “get me samples,” and after doing that, the only dialog was the same one that started me getting samples. So I know about the tension on Pearl Islet, that Southsun is a dangerous place, and that Levvi thinks the plants are becoming hostile. That’s it. Not exactly a complete story, right?

@Mathog, thanks. That helps. I’ll just consider this part of the story to have been a “strange things are afoot” breadcrumb, with more to come later.

Pandalishus.8426:

@PixelPumpkin, I read the conversations from the 5 NPCs I had to speak to, but we’re talking maybe a grand total of two paragraphs of dialog. I did get the sense of the basic outlines of a story, but when I got to Levvi, it was “get me samples,” and after doing that, the only dialog was the same one that started me getting samples. So I know about the tension on Pearl Islet, that Southsun is a dangerous place, and that Levvi thinks the plants are becoming hostile. That’s it. Not exactly a complete story, right?

Allow me to clarify

I followed Inspector Kiel around for a few minutes and eavesdropped on her conversations with various NPCs, that was an eye-opener.

So in a nutshell, the consortium generously offered work contracts, shamelessly exploiting the refugees from oop north, and now these poor people can’t legally get out of these contracts.

I know that that isn’t MUCH of a story yet. (Neither were the first 3 chapters of F&F.)

But doesn’t it leave you wondering what the frak the consortium want in Southsun in the first place? What do they need all the settlers/workers really for? Are they really just building a holiday resort, or is there something else they’re after?

What are those samples used for? (Totally confused as of yet.)

F&F didn’t achieve this with its first chapters, but this story arc actually has me intrigued. The crumbs that ANet threw me have left me hungry for more. And I think that is as much as you can expect from a chapter 1 of anything, even a “bridge” story of just one month.

Ahhhhh. OK, that I did not do. I read whatever dialog was there in the pop-up, and then moved on to whatever was happening nearby. I’ll keep an eye on filler dialog in the future. Thanks for the tip.

As for being intrigued, I agree with you there. I guess the point of this post could be boiled down to “did I miss a ‘quest,’ or have done all I can and I know eagerly await next month’s story?”

Edit to add: Looks like it’s the latter.

The whole story is much older. It started in november (if I’m correct here) when the Consortium came into the game. They wanted to (and still want to) make a holiday vacation island. So in the past they researched a lot on their island and they send a sylvari-secondborn named Canach there to do the research thing. But he and his team angried the karka and other beasts on the island and so the karka attacked Lions Arch. (It was a big unique event together with the one where we defeated the ancient karka on the island.) That was the time when the old lighthouse in LA was destroyed, when the big ancient karka jumped upon it.
Before the LA-attack we had to uncover what was going on and questioned some NPCs like Canach and subdirector Noll. Canach was imprisoned by Captain Magnus of the lionguard but escaped in the fight on Southsun Cove against the ancient karka.

And now it seems that Canach is back (yes, he might be "evil" or not too nice and he WAS arrogant... but I have a crush on Canach *g*). When you follow Kiel you can overhear a dialogue in which she finds out that Canach instigated the settlers against the Consortium.

Hope I explained it correct.
For further information you can read the articles in the Guildwars2-Wiki.

EDIT:
Maybe this will help:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Southsun_Cove
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Canach

Great! Thanks Niyo

Here are some of my screenshots from the “Lost Shore”-event.

1. pic: Karka-attack in LA
2. pic: the asura on the left: Subdirector Blingg; the green sylvari on the right: Canach
3. pic: Canach imprisoned by Captain Magnus

Hm. The second picture is missing. Don’t know why… editing doesn’t work. There I see all three pictures.

So maybe… I try to add it in this new post.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/southsun/Possible-Spoilers-NPC-Conversations

This should help you out a little further.