The rest of the world (Cantha etc.) has been cut off since the rise of Zhaitan. Now that he has been defeated we celebrate our victory and remember our hardships though the living story. Well what about Cantha and the rest? How can we rejoice with their fate such a mystery? It’s time to reach out.
What we do is supposed to make a difference in GW2. I don’t feel like it has as much as I think Anet had hopped it would.
The Idea: A few maps should be made available to the players, except not in a “The path has been cleared and settlements made. Go help the struggle!” kind of way. Cantha may be in ruin. Who knows what plagues them. Don’t give the history to us by saying this has been done, go have fun. Instead let the heroes of Tyria clear the path and make the history!
A handful of maps are released and added to the main map where players, the community, work together to push forward through the map and build settlements by competing events that clear out anything currently populating the site and donating stone and wood toward the construction of each settlement or outpost. This would be like a map wide event that takes days to complete. Once the settlements are up, or certain ones, perhaps the map moves into a different phase where the conditions change and the wild life becomes more active and aggressive. There is a story behind each map and the players progress it together and become a part of it. Ultimately map conditions are fulfilled and expansion into the connecting map is available. There would likely be more than one map connected to each starting map so different requirements would need to be fulfilled to be able to expand into all connecting maps. Now the story continues. Players discover more of the story and what has happened as these new maps are explored and fulfilled.
More:
As it stands now, world bosses like the Shatterer and Tequatl land in the same place every time predictably. With a system like this A Legendary type boss could appear in it’s own way on the map at random locations and wreak havoc on settlements it runs into. Now the players can put them down and help rebuild again.
When players make donations they would be rewarded based on how much they donated. If the materials donated are just additional items gathered while mining ore or chopping down trees, then maybe the rewards can be boons. If the materials donated are actual crafting materials then perhaps a more fitting reward should be given, though the latter of the two would be more fitting as this process would be repeated from time to time as the settlements are damaged or even destroyed.
I would like to hear the opinion of the community to this idea and any ideas you might have that could improve this idea or details that may have been overlooked. I know this may boil down to a player fantasy, but maybe it will get some notice.