Wrap this round up real fast, because frankly, it’s boring and it isn’t being released in meaningful amounts.
While the concept for it is a great idea, what it really should be is a preamble (all be it, a long one) to a major expansion where a second personal story-type arc takes place.
We all know the gripes, so how about some suggestions for Living World Round 2:
Skins gained from meta achievements (preferable all gained since launch) need to able to be reaquired by people who finish the meta, account bound, unlimited use etc.
The overall releases need to be much, much larger/longer (1-2 months), although the meta achievements need to be smaller, or broken down a little more (1-2 weeks, but only one or two very large changes). EX: The tower of nightmares was honestly a large step in the right direction for large-scale design, it lingered for a good bit, there are very clear effects left on the visible world and most important, there was a new meta for the tower itself and some of the post-tower stuff. I can nit-pick about event/mob scaling, loot etc, it needs a lot of work, but I’ll leave it. Actually, the tower as a “living world” event was very well done on the scale of the overall scope, but I think the tower itself should have lingered longer and been more friendly to smaller groups while the post-tower meta should have already gone away.
All this will eventually lead to some end with Scarlet, many hints that could go in loads of directions have been dropped along the way in dealing with her… but at the end of a long arc like this, something really huge needs to happen. This is where I think the living story can make or break itself: The end of this story arc needs to end with a massive content release, if not on the order of a full scale expansion, wherein either more personal story, or more living world in place of personal story, will lead us into this new (massive) content.
However, even though the tower of nightmares overall was done quite well from the standpoint of how a living world event should look from afar, don’t forget to get into the zone itself and nit-pick it to death… put things that might be hard to find or get to without a zerg, but the overall area needs to be navigable by solo players. And where the tower failed on the small size was it’s lack of set group content in my opinion. The chambers and even the Hybrid could all be done solo, where previous releases like the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades included actual dungeons (who have since been rolled into fractals…i prefer having my jade maw back, haven’t seen it since fractured). But having content in the release both for zergs/solo’s (that downscale hardcore for less than 5) and people like me who like farming the dungeon settings more (molten/aether).
Hate to put it in a nutshell, but more like the tower of nightmares on the large scale flow-chart, somewhat smaller/easier metas, broken down into several stages of the same large event series, instead of one huge meta for the whole thing. Rewarding content for all types of play, a pre-event that is short any may not even come with a meta, just a small story instance, the main event (like assaulting the tower) which should be the longest stage (3-5 weeks maybe?) and the post-game wrap-up which should take a week or two depending on the size of the mess… and across the whole chain of living world, each major ending should herald a gigantic content release, so be cookin something real fancy and real big in the background (start of the downfall of the next dragon, new continent, cleanup of zhaitan, rebuilding of orr…appearance of palawa joko the undead king from elona, etc.) And the reward skins from the metas needs to be account bound and unlimited recall, either the same place we grab zenith weapons, or some merchant in the hub cities.