Guild Wars 2

I love what Anet is creating with GW 2. They’ve laid the foundations, given us the tools and now they’re adding to the playground. Frequent or not so frequent content that they are planning to add with even more regularity.
We see the term “Living World” thrown around a lot. When you think about it, what makes it so great? The fact that it not only expands on what already exists but should to an extent feel dynamic.
I love video game design and I was thinking about ideas and things Anet could do to make it feel even more like a Living World.
It didn’t take me long at all for me to come up with something very simple but could add a whole dynamic to how content is delivered and introduced to players.

You explore Caledon Forest. Someone approaches you asking for help. You don’t exactly know why until you get there and see, try it out for yourself. You discover, learn and at the same time are already experiencing it.

I would love for future content to be introduced in such a way. NO PRIOR warning or announcements outside the game.
Is the Bazaar of the Four Winds coming to Tyria? Let the NPCs “talk”, “spread rumours” about it. Let the players discover, get up close and experience it for themselves.
Let them find out what it is by actually being there.

Has Mount Maelstrom started bursting with even more activity and the ground around it shaking? Let the players find the answers themselves. Who knows what they’ll bump into. A new charr underground experiment. A new type of creature. Something totally different that was there… yet the players have only just found out.

This applies to almost anything in the game. It’s your (Anet) game so I’m pretty sure you can come up with more amazing things.

But what I’m trying to say is that… Announcing content can sometimes break immersion.
Maybe patch the content into the game without warning, steadily and let the events unfold, let the events start and maybe a day or two after the players have seen it, release the patch notes and explain in more details what it is about.
It’s still what happens except there’s that element of surprise and curiosity. Us, the players, wanting to finding out what’s going on.
It will have people talking. How everyone was questing in Ascalon and it got covered in fog and players started experiencing anomalies, amubushes and other weird phenomena without warning.
Truly dynamic content. It doesn’t have to last long. Doesn’t have to be permanent.
Much like current Living World content except more fluid, more dynamic and more engaging.

I’m sure it would keep players playing, if not to experience what else could be happening in the world that they didn’t think could be possible and they wanted to experience it first hand!

I agree and like this idea.

I think it’d be great if there were town criers in each main city that you could go to and speak to about the most recent and/or upcoming events. That way you at least had a consistent source in-game of information

I agree with this as a player, but from a pleasing the majority standpoint, it won’t work. Players are already complaining that it’s too hard to do the living story (because mail with “Show Me”, town cryers, giant stars, and a giant notification aren’t enough).

I’m sorry, but this would be great except that the majority of GW2 players are incompetent.

Esplen.3940:

I agree with this as a player, but from a pleasing the majority standpoint, it won’t work. Players are already complaining that it’s too hard to do the living story (because mail with “Show Me”, town cryers, giant stars, and a giant notification aren’t enough).

I’m sorry, but this would be great except that the majority of GW2 players are incompetent.

haha I have to agree and this is where the idea stems from. From the need to make how the content is delivered even more fluid & dynamic.
The big announcements and patch notes would still be there, except instead of being warned in advance and spoil the content (giving the players time to get used to it, lose interest and not even take part), they would be released one or two days AFTER the actual event was naturally implemented into the game. So those of us who are curious would get to experience it being introduced in a more natural and realistic way, rather than a big announcement, patch, event already up and running!

I see where you are coming from, and I definitely agree to a large extent, but you don’t have to read up on everything they post. The sudden new-ness of a patch could be made exciting that way by simply just logging on without reading.

Although the idea of more subtle pre-event type stuff would be fantastic.

Bloodchild.2680:

I see where you are coming from, and I definitely agree to a large extent, but you don’t have to read up on everything they post. The sudden new-ness of a patch could be made exciting that way by simply just logging on without reading.

Although the idea of more subtle pre-event type stuff would be fantastic.

Yeah I thought about that too, however, guildies and people in game would always be discussing the content for the patches and kind of spoiling it for those of us who are curious.
The patch notes would still be there, don’t get me wrong. Except only released a few days after the actual events STARTED.

I just would love to see the events and new features being introduced slowly and dynamically (after being patched in slowly into the game) rather than just being one big download and then logging in and a Bazaar that would take a few days to setup is already there in game where nothing existed before!
It would make the game feel like it’s alive even more!