Guild Wars 2

This will probably never happen, because I can’t see ArenaNet devoting resources to finished content, but here’s my two cents.

After seeing Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch, Hoelbrak feels… empty.

There are five massive buildings with not much in them. I’d shrink down the five lodges and their statues by half or so. There’s so much empty space in them that is glaring.

It would be nice if each of the spirit lodges had people teaching parables and lessons from each spirit. Some appropriate animals lounging around in them might be good too. Make some actual bedrooms instead of placing beds in a row along open platforms. The places should be filled with scroll racks and statues.

For the Great Lodge, I’d remove all but the smallest balcony from it and move all the crafting stations and merchants to the boardwalk around the central pentagon. Give Knut Whitebear a proper audience chamber with a big roaring hearth near him and an impressive throne, but one that’s actually his size. His current one is scaled so big he looks like a child next to it. Have some skalds singing epic songs of heroes. Make some walled rooms for a library or armory. People could be brawling or duelling on the balcony outside or competing in some form of Nornly contests.

Hunter’s Hearth isn’t very versatile as a home instance, it’s certainly no equal to Salma District. I guess that’s why we only go in there a couple times in the Personal Story missions. Why even have it when you could put those missions in Knut’s audience chamber, where they’d make more sense.

With the lodges shrunken down, we’ll have even more space in the main snowy field. The central pentagon boardwalk would serve as Hoelbrak’s market area , with the merchants and crafting station stations arranged there. Currently there’s nothing but random NPCs standing about. The repair guy is there, but right now with no anvil or any facilities to fix armor with. You can have NPCs walking about looking at market stalls to give it some life.

Then I’d put some regular home sized lodges with closed doors in the plain around that, all facing towards the center, so that it looks like people actually live in Hoelbrak. Sprinkled among them would be taverns, NPC blacksmith shops and animal barns.

If there’s room, build a barracks for the Wolfborn city guards, with some of them sparring outside. Sigfast or Skarti could be in an office in there too, overseeing things.

Near each entrance to the valley you could have encampments from other races. Two or three Charr tents with a handful of NPCs and wagons nearby to look like a visiting caravan, for example.

All of this could be done with existing models and art assets. So nothing would need to be built from scratch.