Guild Wars 2

Gosh, I had so many gripes about the personal story. After playing through it once I’m already pretty sick of it. The only new, interesting parts of it come shining through when you first start leveling a character, because that first ‘arc’ was, in my opinion, far more engrossing and investing than the rest of the story.

What I am a little upset about is that, as a heroic character, I was never allowed to falter. I was never allowed to have fears or doubts or really go through any sort of a dark time. When I played through on a sylvari alt and met Waine, I was kind of hoping I’d get a chance to take a look at that nightmare court business. He was so friendly about it, I thought I’d have an interesting friend. Instead, we ended up wiping him off the face of Tyria. I never once wanted to really turn entirely to the ‘dark side’, because I knew arenanet’s vision was to have a heroic character. But I did want to have a chance to explore the option of delving into it, perhaps only later to realize how wrong it is. There was a lot of potential that was left behind in my cliché hero. I would’ve liked an opportunity to have my character grow, after all—right now, they’re all inhumanely fearless, ready to take up any challenge, no matter what happens.

I liked having characters where it felt like they were actually interested in my existence, where I had an impact on the smaller lives of people. I realize that the plot of GW2 is about Zhaitain, and perhaps arenanet was striving for a more ‘realistic’ approach to his defeat in the way the storyline was handled. That is, you were another soldier, and this part of your life wasn’t about you, it was about the dragon. Except that all my would-be friends died before I knew about them, I met extremely interesting characters only to never have contact with them again, and at many times the potential for a really heartwrenching scene was ruined with the speed at which things were handled and the way my character reacted to them. I mean, come on. This poor little asura loses her husband and really hates me, and my character handles it by going ‘well ok just have this thing and bye’. She even acted like it was painful when she later explained the incident to Trahearne. In reality, she barely flinched. I suppose that’s what happens when she wasn’t even attached to the guy in the first place; she just did what she was told and let him blow up.

I was always fighting hordes of Risen that weren’t really doing anything other than being obstacles, yet they were the main focus of many storyline missions. And who could forget the well-loved Priory Scholar, or Vigil Crusader? I have many fond memories of Whispers Agent and Whispers Agent and also Priory Scholar. (sarcasm).The NPCs that followed me around weren’t useless, per se, but I really could have done some of them without them. I felt bad for them, you know—they were just these little side characters that were like, ‘Alright, this person is doing something, so I guess we should help them.’ At least most of the time they rez’d themselves when I beat up their bullies. I would have loved for them to stay with me if they were capable of actually dealing damage. Generally, they were helpful with deterring aggro, and that is the end of their use.

Why am I looking forward to another personal storyline? Because there is so much that can happen after Zhaitan’s defeat. There is so much that can happen that does not require me to be another (albeit much more powerful) soldier on the front lines. I might be able to go back and actually talk to the people I was good friends with back home, or perhaps something entirely new altogether. I don’t know if there will ever be another addition to the personal storyline, and honestly the best improvement to the current storyline would be to scrap it and start over, but I stress my point: my favourite part of games is the story! I don’t like playing games where there is none, or where it falls apart quickly. And I am a bit disappointed going through the personal story, since it was always my main motivation throughout the game.

*Please, please, pleaaaaaase somehow allow the characters to appear OUTSIDE of the PS. Once, I was exploring, and some punk thought it would be funny to tell me that Tybalt’s waiting for me. That was very memorable and I wish there were more details like that. Better yet, having entire stories around characters would be awesome—but I mentioned that in another thread.

*So much of the PS does not feel personal, because I am only a part of a horde of people that want to kill a dragon after a time. The PS remains the same for everyone after the Orders arc, with perhaps a few minor tweaks I suppose. Why was I even called Commander? I might as well have changed my name to Orders Agent and joined the club. Yes, I made vital decisions, but they certainly didn’t feel that way.

Please share your opinions. Thank you for reading this text wall.

I, too, find stories to be my motivation to play games as well (however, being the interactive experience that it is, a game also requires some good gameplay mechanics).
- After having played GW1 I am disappointed in how the story in GW2 turned out to be. I still don’t understand why our low level friends just disappear. They went through so much with us, and suddenly we just left without as much as a goodbye or giving them the opportunity to join up with us.

In GW1 we are not the only “Hero” per se. Mhenlo and his team joins up on several occasions. In Factions he would be leading the word as we would be seeking aid of the Kurzicks. Our hero was not an all awe inspiring figure. At times when it seemed right to step aside and let others lead the word, our character would (like in the example above… or when Prince Rurik tells his people to join him and go to Kryta).
- In Nightfall, giving us the “Heroes” instead of just the Henchmen gave us some friends that we’d connect with. Some characters to get acquainted with.

In GW2 you don’t get that option. It’s not a fully branching personalized storyline, really.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea and the idea is without question an awesome one, however, I’d much rather go for five (one for each race) well thought out, well written and well executed storylines (with, of course, the option of which order we want to join later on) over the current one. Our character does feel rather cliché good and righteous, and many parts are just the fights we could just as easily get out in the Open World. The PS has to offer something different about them, but many parts didn’t really offer that, and they didn’t leave me with the “YEAH, I want the next part!” kind of feeling.

- Anyhoo, I’m ranting off here. The PS definitely needs some re-working (either make it proper or do not make it at all, I say. Maybe make something less complicated but severely better if the time is just working against a huge project, or you should’ve implemented the last parts as permanent aspects that would’ve come along with the Living Story).

I couldn’t agree more. The story begins very nicely for every race, you feel like you’re put in something interesting. Attack on village with humans or catacombs with ascalonian ghosts at charr…. unfortunately the fun ends very fast – already around level 10. Well, for example the quest at charr where you need to find flame legion spies. You go in to bar and yell “flame legion is boohoooo” and spies just leave. Really…? Then you follow them… no “spot meter”, no dialoges “are we being followed”, no nothing… and they meet their handler which is not stealthed or anything and just walks through the city. If it was atleast some character that we can meet in the city and dispose him, making Black Citadel much more safe… but no Such disapointing stories are on regular bases, being crashed down even more by the dialoges themselves. I dont know why but instead of articulating sentences, some pauses while ground tremors or action takes places… it’s just one line after another – sounds ridicolous.

All of this is truly worse around level 50, when you go to battle of Claw Island. A very impressive fort with loads of cannons, trebuchets and soldiers. And you see just couple of soldiers, many of which stand by walls not fighting. Noone is operating cannons or trebuchets or whatever. Risens just keep coming and you practicaly fight them alone. Trehearne is obviously being himself (this is a huge offtopic… let’s leave it with that). And the dragon creature? I guess we could settle for an opinion that we have some kind of army clearing fort and fighting him… but why it’s a static graphic? They don’t fight. Dont do anything… Instead dragon has so low health bar capacity that you can finish him solo very quickly.

Honestly there are so much missions like that. Some should remain instanced, revamped completely ofcourse.. but some could take place in the open world – as group events. It would be waaaaay more fun to battle for claw island with a lot of players, or to fight Zhaitan Eye in Orr and so on, and so on… Not to mention Arah story. Ah men… The whole dungeon is really god, but the ending fight with Zhaitan? I thought he was suposed to be the elder dragon that is responsible for all the mayhem. And he just sits on tower shouting “kill me already, i’m bored”? Most disapointing end of story evah. This really should be finished when you reach him… and then made in some huge group event scenario, like the Claw of Jormag. It’s merely a claw and yet soooo much more fun there then the actual dragon… bahh……

I really hope ArenaNet makes efforts to give us a completely revamped storyline of a proper quality. I would gladly reroll character just to play it. Afterall not all players are simple farmers, that care about nothing else then how much gold thet get from something… there are those amongst us, that love a good story more

I have been playing Gw2 since beta and i still have not completed my mains Personal Story.