Guild Wars 2

This will never, ever be fixed – why bother now that most players are done with it? – but having just gone back and started a few new characters and playing the personal story again, it reminds me of what was probably the biggest letdown for me in GW2: the personal story. Partially this is because I was looking forward to it the most: I was so ready for another Dragon Age: Origins, and I feel like we really didn’t get anything like that. I honestly don’t even mind the individual story sections that much – although many are bland and >95% are just some variation on “kill everything here” – but the thing that I am reminded disappointed me the most was the complete lack of continuity between sections of the story. Not only does this result in silly immersion-breakers like having a character say “nice to meet you” after completing multiple missions together (lazy programming), but the core problem is having lots of NPCs get introduced, developed, and then disappear off the face of Tyria. Humans get a best buddy… who they never see again. The charr are the worst: first, you go out of your way to build a warband, and then you meet your father, and then: none of them are ever seen or heard from again. I mean, come on! With the billions of data points that get tracked in this game, you couldn’t just have a couple of extra NPCs show up in the “home” area and say hello? Not even that? (It’s not like you can’t STILL do that: it’s just a few variable checks and some text! You don’t even need new art or VO!) Not being able to customize the home instance has always been another issue and this would help with that, too.

Not to mention that once the story shifts after Act 1 into “Trahearne’s personal story,” which is another issue in and of itself, it would have really dampened the blow of finding out “it’s not actually about you” if you could still have some of your friends or relatives from earlier around to throw a few odd comments around. How cool would it have been to see your buddy or your warband at Fort Trinity? How much more of an impact would it be to have someone there with you from the beginning see it through to the end (and not just everyone from Act 3 only)? They wouldn’t even have to go on missions with you (for whatever reason). Just having them stand around and occasionally comment in text would have been awesome. Just having them not disappear off the face of the planet would have been enough.

The story itself isn’t that bad, and I don’t even hate the voice acting – certainly good enough for a video game (not everyone can be Bioware). But I feel like it could have been a lot better with minimal effort. And so, going back and playing from the beginning again, I still feel disappointed.

There never been great stories in mmos. Ok, stories, sure. But DA:O, BG2, PT, Fallout 1 and 2 like, you are in wrong genre my friend.

I was quite happy with Gw2 story, it wasnt something I havent seen before but it wasnt bad….. ….. until I ran into LAST mission. Not only I didnt see MY character in MY personal story do the talking (since I wasnt party leader), whole encouter was just dull, and when finally big-Z appeared… he started to hump pillar while he paint him yellow. Fighting lizard at Claw Island was more fun than killing Z but whatever.

Reread his complaints. It’s not the story it’s the continuity. It’s that after you complete the acts it doesn’t matter in the slightest as those people essentially disappear.

I hear you. This has by said many time by many people, yet I cannot remember any devs ever commenting on our concerns.

I have a problem with it too. I recall early on in the human storyline that, near the end of a mission, an npkittenerally appears out of no where and tells you about a locket relating to your parents. It had no connection whatsoever to what you were doing 10 seconds ago. I also recall Logan introducing Countess Anise at random. She’s not given a reason for being there or even excused as just walking by as you happen to be talking to Logan. Flowing from one arc to another felt extremely rigid.

Crossplay.2067:

I have a problem with it too. I recall early on in the human storyline that, near the end of a mission, an npkittenerally appears out of no where and tells you about a locket relating to your parents. It had no connection whatsoever to what you were doing 10 seconds ago. I also recall Logan introducing Countess Anise at random. She’s not given a reason for being there or even excused as just walking by as you happen to be talking to Logan. Flowing from one arc to another felt extremely rigid.

I loved that story arc.

I think you got it kinda confused. You get a mail and that’s the first mission on the next story arc, if you chose that you were adopted. Also it is explained why Countess Anise is there, you must of not been paying attention.

Anyway the problem with that, is that some characters died depending on which decision you made. So some characters couldn’t be there or else someone will look at that person and say “Didnt he die?” I’m specifically thinking of Quinn, a character in the streets human personal story step. He could either die or you could save him, and that was a choice in the story.

On the other hand, Lord Faren is a character from the human noble personal story step and he made an appearance again. Also if you chose the college of statics as an asura when getting the candy powered matter meter during halloween you can ask the npc about the device and he will tell you it’s based on the VOED and then you can tell him that your krewe invented that.

Aye, most objective people (who are interested in story) would agree that the PS in gw2 is…lackluster to say the least but tbh it has more problems than continuity (which you yourself brushed on in your post). It’s just bad-and fixing no one thing could possibly redeem it so the next best thing is, if and when it does continue they learn from the mistakes. Tbh I think it was doomed to failure the moment they tried to make it ‘all about the player’-oh look the mighty slayer of Issormir, light bringer of the order of whispers and second in command of the pact….just like the last 500 Norns who came this way.

Also as you mentioned the missions are ‘run here, kill x’-you honestly expect me to believe someone who is apparently interested in a solid story driven experience will be satisfied if they ‘fixed’ some of the instant teleportation/amnesia funny business in the PS? I imagine every person who’ve played a sylvari up to claw island the first time thought this: " Wait..why is twig-boy acting like this is the first time we’ve met?" but really-would fixing that absolve the torture that is the next 30 levels of ‘kill x’?

If you play MMOs for the story, you should shut off your computer and sit in the corner for a while.

Zacchaeed.2834:

If you play MMOs for the story, you should shut off your computer and sit in the corner for a while.

Dude ther is no rule telling that mmo games should/have a bad story in general, ther is few old shool(point & click, no VA, wall of text) mmorpg games that i played that had really good story that constantly made me laugh or keep me on the edge cus of the tension in the plot.

I bet that Anet made a fully operating game and then get some story writer to create the story for it, which is really bad aproach as the game is made around the story and not the oposite or after they run out of “resources” they decided to dich the proper story presentation and cutscens and just went whit something easy and cheap to do.

BTW from what i remember Anet was constantly assuring people in some blogs/interview that gw2 will have engrossing story never seen before in mmorpg, and so far i cant really call a story engrossing when i forget what happened in it after just a few days.

p.s. the concept of the story is good its just the way it was presented that is bad and lacking.

I was actually pleased with the personal story,except with that epic fail of a fight against Zhaitan who couldn’t even move his kitten off his perch until they blasted him off.Hell,the way Gw2 approached it was a nice break from the ‘pick up kill 65 dryads quest,hand it in to stationary npc,rinse and repeat for coins and exp’ rut that almost every other good mmorpg is stuck in.Wish the PS continues in the future though,with a much better plot involving more voice acting,hard battles,cool cutscenes and the epic action which generally accompanies an awesome storyline.