Guild Wars 2

Hi there, I just finished my personal story and I wanted to share my thoughts about it.
There will definately be spoilers in my post and I think I’ll start at the end and go backwards.

The Fight With Zhaitan
Like.. what on earth was going on here? I got to the Victory or Death quest and got excited that now I was finally going to face Zhaitan, then I realised I was being asked to do a dungeon. So already I know I now have to make sure I have 2 or more hours free to do this, and I have to share my story with 4 other players.
Don’t get me wrong, I love working with other players it’s actually one of the highlights of the game to work together with friends or strangers to do random stuff or kill things. But this felt really inappropriate for a Personal story.

The next thing was that this mission seemed to finish off the Destiny’s Edge story. Which I haven’t participated in at all yet, because while I am able to play the game for several hours at a time I am not able to give it my 100% focus and attention. Please understand here I am not critisizing dungeons here, I think they should be lengthy, challenging and have good rewards. The story modes for the dungeons should be just that, they should be about the story. They should be fun and straight forward for 5 people who’ve never been in a dungeon to do. The explorable modes should then be what you would expect of a dungeon.

Anyway I didn’t play through the story modes on dungeons so when I got to Arah there seemed to be some kind of epic reunion occuring between Destiny’s Edge and I had no idea what was going on. So as well as feelingannoyed that I have to share ym story with 4 other players, I also have to work with 5 people where the last I saw of them was pointless arguing and now they’re all friends?

Then getting the airship off the ground. For some reason 3 of the pieces are being guarded by random bosses that have nothing better to do with their time. I had no idea the air ship crashed in the first palce for it to have thrown pieces everywhere, or myabe that’s how the Pact store things? I don’t know. Maybe I just missed something.

So the airship is now in the air and there are massive camera issues.
*Firstly, the camera didn’t treat the walls of the ship as walls, it didn’t even know they were there. So as I walked out of a door the camera remained behind the wall and I got full view of a wall for a large part of my time on the airship. The camera also seemed to catch on the guns a lot so it was all over the place as I walked near the guns. And I couldn’t zoom out far enough. I wanted to have a look at the surroundings and see all the work that went into building the map, I wanted to see what Orr looked like from above. But the camera wouldn’t let me.

When we got to the part where the Dragon’s come to attack us I really started to question what on eather we were doing in an airship. Generally throughout history Dragons are always more dangerous in the air than they are on the ground.They would have no trouble damaging and airship enough to knock it out of the sky. I don’t understand at all why they seemed intent on attacking us and not attacking the airship.
It would have made so much more sense for them to do that, it would have reinforced that Dragons are intelligent and to be feared. Instead they seemed stupid and unthreatening. They repeatedly threw minions at us which irked me because by now… really…. the Dragon should have learnt that tactic doesn’t work against us.

By now it appears Zhaitan is annoyed enough to turn up himself, which I think ought to have meritted a cutscene. This is the first time we meet Zhaitan, I wanted to see the enemy who I’ve been indirectly fighting since the beginning. I also would have liked a few moments to admire the work that went into making him. I didn’t get that
I can’t remember clearly what happened next. I think Zhaitan threw more minions at us… which as I previously said, surely he knows that wont work. Also Zhaitan was huge, and even if the previous dragons had issues attacking our ship, Zhaitan certainly wouldn’t have a problem just batting us out the sky.

I think we killed all the minions, and someone else shot Zhaitan’s tail off, we followed him to his lair… where he then sat nice and still for us while we shot him repeatedly to death.
I feel annoyed because literally anyone could have sat at the airship turret and fired at a stationary Dragon. Afterwards when everyone was cheering I felt like I wanted to tell them to stop. It hadn’t been me, it had been me plus 4 other players as well as destiny’s edge. There was also a big thing about Trehearne not being able to come with us, but I really don’t see why he couldn’t.

The whole ending was full off too many loop holes, disjointed things and inaccuracies. It wasn’t believable to me at all. It didn’t feel personal and I didn’t feel threatened by Zhaitan. On top of this the reward was awful, but I know that’s being worked on.

Overall the personal story was enjoyable and had some really fun parts, I liked that there were choices and I like that at the beginning of the game everyone around you is doing something different because their stories had taken them to different places.

The Orders
Choosing an order was probably one of the biggest decisions in my game. I took it quite seriously, or as serious as you can get when you’re role-playing. I know I am not the only one who took found it difficult to make that decision. Yet it seemed that from this point in the game onwards, most choices became superficial.
I’ve spent the last few years reading up on everything that was put on the official Guild Wars 2 page and I built up expectations and assumptions from that. I feel that either I have been misled. I expected each order to have a very different feel to it and to be distrukittenl of the other orders, believing that their approach was the best.

I expected that if you joined the Vigil you’d be confronting threats directly, your missions would centre around someone saying “We expect blah blah is going to be targeted by the Risen, we need you to go and defend it.” Or “We need to make sure blah blah gets taken from point A to point B, you need to make sure that happens.”
I expected the Order of Whispers to be about taking out key figures, or ambushing. I expected you’d spend much of your time in disguise, or sneaking. It would be about spying, infiltrating an enemy base and gathering information.
I expected the Durmond Priory to be about learning, locating ancient information and retrieving it. I thought the play would feel more chilled out, and be centred about puzzles and thinking. There are quests later on that involve viewing things that have happened in the past in order to learn something. These sorts of quests would have fitted in really well for Durmond Priory.
In the Mazdak quest, I picked the go to his tomb option. I had thought the whole point of going to his tomb would be to avoid fighting. I thought the puzzles would be about to avoid all the nasty traps, and possibly you wake up ghosts if you walk too close to their graves. I thought that Mazdak would be asleep or absent, since he would really not expect us to be in his tomb. Maybe there’s a ritual for killing him which we would have to go through but as we go through the ritual we are interrupted as he realises what we are doing, then he comes to kill us. As it turned out the tomb was filled with enemies, and traps, Mazdak had anticipated us coming and so most of the mission was spent fighting.

I digress a little bit.
By the time the player foges the pact it should seem like their time in an order has affected the world and will affect the rest of the story.
Those approaching the Pact from the Vigil should feel heroic since they’ve defended many places, and helped many people.
Those approaching from the Order of Whispers should feel like they have significantly removed many important enemies.
And those approaching from the Priory should feel armed with knowledge about how to fight a Dragon, even if they don’t have the means to do it yet.

Things I would change
I heard one of the developers describe the story as a pyramid, with everyone coming from different places but all of us arriving at the same ending. After I heard this, when I played through I felt like I was being funnelled along. Like all my choices were superficial, and meaningless because my fight with Zhaitan would be exactly the same as everyone else’s. The superficiality is even as blanant at one point where Trehearne offers me the choice of either talking to Grenth or locating a magical map. And he says something like “Both choices take us to the same point.” To which I thought, why should I even bother choosing at all?

Instead of the stories forming a pyramid, I would have them forming an hourglass. Where the point that everyone ends up at is forging the Pact, uniting the 3 orders and agreeing we need to kill Zhaitan.
After this point I feel missions ought to spread out again, so that while everyone’s ending is that Zhaitan dies. Everyone goes about it differently. I suppose I would have liked race and profession to play a bigger part in the story.

This brings me quite nicely back to the ending. I have several fixes that I shall list and you can apply which ever ones you like to the ending. :p

- There was a massive fuss made that it was not Trehearne’s Wyld Hunt to face Zhaitan, but no reason why he couldn’t have joined us on the ship. I feel there should have been some kind of connection between; him being a first born, his ritual to cleanse Orr, the fact it was the place the Gods first set foot on the earth, that resulted in him having to give his give his life to cleanse Orr. Maybe he makes a second ‘Pale Tree’, spreads his roots and vows to guard Orr forever more from corruption.

- The last mission should be single player.

- The airship should be used to locate Zhaitan’s lair, not to fight him in. (I’ve been over this, anyone with any sense knows you don’t fight a strong enemy where he’s strongest)

- The lair should have contained something really important, like the’ Heart of Zhaitan’ (which he would have separated from himself so he could not be killed) or something to do with the human Gods, maybe the Gods are the only things that have the power to kill a dragon forever, so Zhaitan has them all alive but sedated, or maybe just one of them. It might make sense for him to be holding Kormir and using Abbadon’s power for himself.

- There should have been a direct confrontation with Zhaitan. Through the whole game I had one question. And it was “What is Zhaitan’s motive?” I mean even if he enslaves the world, kills everyone and feasts on Risen chickens forever what does he hope to achieve by that? Is he as simple as being a thing that is hungry, where it will not stop until it has consumed everything, or does he have some greater motive?
It was stated that the Dragons don’t care about mortals and cannot be reasoned with. But by the time I’d ruined Zhaitan’s plans enough, I expected him to have the intelligence to look for the source of his plans being ruined, and seek me out.

- The final fight should have been (either airborne or earthbound) where Destiny’s Edge distract the dragon while you run along it’s body and attack it. How entirely awesome would that have been!

- Either your race or class should have greatly affected how the fight with Zhaitan plays out.

Thank you if you’ve read all of this. If you have any opinions, or thoughts please share them, but I want to make it clear the things I’ve typed here are just suggestions. Nothing more

Thanks for reading it all

Yer I think there are meny underlying inconsistencies like this that players really pick up on. Where you play through a part of the game and it doesn’t feel right but you can’t put your finger on what was wrong.

In The Elder Scrolls Skyrim, which is a similar story to Guild Wars 2, you spend a good third of the story on the hunt for the power to bring a dragon out of the sky so you can confront the main boss.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but througout the story you get “Zhaitan is doing this… Zhaitan has detroyed here.. Zhaitan is evil…. blah blah blah” and I keep thinking… "Why? why is doing this? Did anyone think to ask him, or at least have the sense to try and find out, if we knew what his motives were we could find a way to stop him.
It didn’t even seem hinted at that he had any motives, which makes him quite a flat character.

It also bothered me that no one in the story thought… “Dragons are quite big, since we haven’t seen one flying around in the sky a lot, he must have a lair, or a home or a retreat…. why don’t we find out where it is?”
It seemed like we were attacking him from all angles except the weakest point, and then we, as creatures that prefer the ground, put ourselves into the sky where a dragon feels at home.

Another thing that I didn’t add in my first post since it was long already, was that each race has some kind of option that suggests you’ve chosen a personality for your character. The Sylvari’s one is what time of day were you born, where people born at dawn are head on and practical, and people born in the evening are reflective and philisophical. I was majorly disappointed that this didn’t have a deep effect on my story.
I genuinely spent several weeks torn between whether to make my chracter the cycle of dusk or cycle of night. I eventually settled on night, (keeping their own council, quiet, find answers within themselves rather than asking other people) and my character didn’t behave this way at all… neither did anyone treat her so.
I think all races have an option similar to this and I really wanted to see this have more of an effect on the game.

I’m sure ANET is planning something after all this explosive feedback. These forums were opened for a reason, and they made quite the funds releasing Guild Wars 2.

Also, keep in mind Zhaitan is the dragon of the UNDEAD! Couldn’t he have resurrected himself?

The Last mission has to be a single player quest.
I mean .. I can’t finished the sinplge player story line.. (Since 2 weeks)
1. Have to create a good 5 players team. Only getting a team of 5 is hard.
2. Have to hope of no ‘’Instance Bug’’
3. Have enough time to complete the whole quest.

Suggestion :
When entering inside the portal as ’’Quest’’
Adjust the level difficulty following the number of players.

very good suggestion

I have to agree there was too much inconsistencies in the personal storyline. My sylvari was a ranger and I choice these for my biography: I dreamed of a quest that calls me to action. It was a vision of The White Stag — The White Stag is a creature of enchantment, an immortal beast with great power. It is said that the stag will trade a magical boon for its freedom, if I can catch it. I believe that the most important of Ventari’s teachings is Act with wisdom, but act. — It is one thing to know what is right and another to change the world. We all have a calling. I will distinguish myself through my actions and thereby lift Tyria to a higher state of nobility. The Pale Tree awakened me during the Cycle of Day — Sylvari awakened mid-day solve problems by attacking them head-on. We are the warriors, hunters, and travelers who experience life first-hand and enjoy the rush of taking risks in order to feel truly alive. I can say only the first three quests in my personal story was related to two the things I choice in the bio. Even meeting Trahearne at the lion arch with Magister Sieran he behave like that was the first time we met. And it was not only him, the mother tree too did the same and i was like really. What was the point of all the early quest meet with them and calling me Herald.

Half Tooth.1867:

It also bothered me that no one in the story thought… “Dragons are quite big, since we haven’t seen one flying around in the sky a lot, he must have a lair, or a home or a retreat…. why don’t we find out where it is?”
It seemed like we were attacking him from all angles except the weakest point, and then we, as creatures that prefer the ground, put ourselves into the sky where a dragon feels at home.

I love this. It is really strange that we try to take on Zhaitan in the sky. It would have been great to create a strategy that involved throwing him the ground and finishing him off there, because as the great Gobber said himself, " A downed dragon is a dead dragon".

I pretty much agree with everything you said. I really enjoyed the story in the beginning, but soon realized the choices I made weren’t exactly “personal” as it would ultimately lead up to the same events.

I’m a Human and had picked “finding my lost sister.” When I finally found her, I thought she would play a larger part of my story but she had only one scene in the whole story when you rescued her… It was rather disappointing. I don’t think you can even meet your sister again outside of that one scene.

The fight against Zhaitan was also disappointing, however I did like the lesser dragon fight on the ship. But again, the airship is practically a fly to the dragons yet they just float there stationary taking cannon shots in the face. When Zhaitan got shot in half, instead of destroying the airship as a whole, he just destroyed the cannon that shot him. Then afterwards pressing #2 to beat the story.

I would like to believe there will be revamps to the story quests or at make at least future quests more believable. Here’s to hoping.