Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: I love most areas of GW2 and also accept nothing is perfect. This is just an idea I wanted to talk about and I’m happy to discuss even if you think my ideas are bad.
*My suggestion is in the last paragraph if you want to skip

Coming for GW1, I figured that GW2 would be mainly a non-instanced world with a living story line. With the event system, I pictured an evolving world where we slowly are working to defeat Zhaitan as a massive player base through an evolving story similar to what they are doing with the Living Story updates. This would mean the world is in constant change and a feeling of actual important to the world.

As for the personal story, I pictured it would be like what they are in the early levels…personal. It would be a side story there to evolve your character and maybe release a few new missions each patch that go alongside the big story line of the dragons.

My suggestion/hope is to take the big plot and put it into the Living Story and leave the Personal Story as a more character driven plot. We could even start from where we are now by having Zhaitan rise again (we never got proof he died) with a week-long chain of events or something before an expansion to bring him down for good and cleanse Orr. Otherwise, the risen will still be here 5 expansions from now at the same strength as well as the Eyes and Moths of Zhaitan. With this plan, the world truly feels alive and people will want to buy the game/login and play to see and participate because they are one-time events (doesn’t need to mean 1 time as in an hour on a particular day but more like 1 month or something).

Good? Bad? Ideas to add or ideas you don’t like? As long as you’re polite to each other and me, I’m happy to hear any opinions.

This is absolutely the direction i wish personal stories had taken. MMO plots are commonly far too focused on making sure everyone is “the chosen one”

In GW2, we’re ALL Traherne’s right hand man, we all get railroaded in to defeating Zhaitan and investigating the risen… and none of these things matter much when we’re not in our own (or the dungeon’s) instances.

There’s no shortage of epic personal story potential. In stead of making us the savior of the world let that be handled via living story, working together with other players and important NPCs. In stead, let us be the sole savior of out home instances. It’s a personal story right? Give us personal nemeses to contend with, problems that affect our home town, and add dimension to our woefully under-utilized early level companions.

Is saving the world from Zhaitan something we shouldn’t be involved in? No, we should be involved, but we shouldn’t be the chosen commander and Traherne’s best friend. We should be saving our home town from whatever giant nasty thing threatens it in ways only instanced content could deliver. We don’t have to take down an elder dragon. Single handedly protecting all of our friends from just one champion could be an appropriately epic battle in and of itself due to the scale of our party size of one, adjusted up with extra trash if we bring friends.

Exactly. The Personal Story should be more personal. Maybe the Living Story is their new direction which would be amazing, but I doubt it. They had all this talk about a living, breathing world while all we see is the same things on repeat and no change from our supposed “heroic” actions. Lets make these Elder Dragons epic battles in the open world where we can all unite from our own personal problems to deal with.

+1 Personal story should be personal, should allow me to play a character and explore and interact with the world. At present a lot of lore and world building is being left out in order to shove us towards the big nasty. The living world has a lot of potential, slowly changing the world because of our actions, having real tangible affects.

Yeah the lore is another issue. GW1 set up a ton of amazing stories with an interesting world. GW2 is set in that same world, but it feels like almost none of that matters. Two of the lands are lost to us right now which is fine, but practically nothing from any of the campaigns mattered (besides EotN). This game is still early, but that is why I’m putting out this suggestion. If the story was at GW1 level, I would have trouble making a complaint about the game.