Guild Wars 2

Several years ago now, while GW2 was still in development and the beta testing was still months in the future I offered to write a story for my then guild, MARA. The story was to include characters from any member who wanted theirs included. A number volunteered.

I wrote it as scenes, each was edited a few days after it was written. The result was then posted on the MARA forum. As there was minimal information about what the new GW2 was going to be like most of the story came from GW1. I couldn’t follow a storyline, there was none. I usually had no idea what was going to happen next and if anything went wrong then I was in trouble. I was just as surprised by the ending as anyone.

I tried to write in a Terry Pratchett like humorous style, those that originally read it seemed impressed. A year after the first piece was posted, almost to the day, I put up the last scene. At that point it totalled over 125,000 words. I later set about editing it. That work has recently been completed. The new total is 257 pages – 126,000 words.

It has never had a title as such, I simply referred to it as ‘The MARA Story’. I have uploaded a copy of the finalised work to MARA but I’ve been thinking… would others like to read it too? Hopefully someone will find it interesting.

Copyright: I don’t mind people sharing. By all means give copies to your friends. If you wish convert it to another format or printing it out. Unfortunately .txt seems to be the only document format allowed. Just don’t make a profit and don’t claim it as your work.

The premise is simple, a group of intrepid heroes find out that something is wrong with their world, they aren’t sure what. Then they find out their world isn’t what they thought it was.

I am in the process of writing a second follow on book. That is presently 83,000 words but I’ve no idea when or if it will be finished.

I read the first few pages, but I couldn’t really get into it, it just felt so… disjointed, like It did not know what it was trying to be, so to speak. Is It trying to be a novel about a game? are the ‘characters’ actually people playing the game? are they in the game themselves?

Honestly, I feel that it may have worked better if it has been a complete fantasy world based from the game, still keep your characters and all that, but none of this ‘selected her skills for her skill bar’ or the ‘targeting’ with ‘npc’ and ‘red named’ but written as if everything had been real, none of that ‘selected … skill on the skill bar and activated said skill’ but more like the character used their magic as a spell that they had learned, which is essentially what’s happening in-game anyhow.

That, or perhaps have written it as though the characters has been actual people inside the ‘game’ in which case those elements would have fitted in better (sword art online anybody?)

Either way, it just wasn’t one for me to read, nice work though, It looks like you put a lot of effort into that and I’m sure other people would have enjoyed it~

P.S. You should probably change your title to something like “MARA Guild – Light Novel Story – FanFic” or something, it helps the thread a bit more~

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

I read the first few pages, but I couldn’t really get into it, it just felt so… disjointed, like It did not know what it was trying to be, so to speak. Is It trying to be a novel about a game? are the ‘characters’ actually people playing the game? are they in the game themselves?

The answers to that would be yes, yes and yes.

SPOILER

Although not a big one.

I probably didn’t give enough information but I was trying something specific. The people involved are playing a variant of Guild Wars in the future. They are mentally inside a fully immersive 3d virtual world. Their problem is they can’t remember anything about their previous existence, who they are, why they are here, what they are supposed to be doing. Effectively they have all got selective amnesia. The idea I had when writing it is that the reader finds out things when they do.

Then again I did too. Sometimes the first thing I knew about items was when I typed it in. The first bits are disjointed mainly because I was introducing characters and I had no idea who else would want a part. I wouldn’t suggest trying this sometime if you write yourself, it was an absolute pain trying to keep track of everything.

I was severely limited by the context, it had to be really in game. I had no plan to look at to tell me where I was going, and as soon as I put it up I was stuck with it. The result is I ended up with something that was bound to be completely different from the average novel.

To be honest it’s a miracle all the bits fit together, I was expecting to end up with a complete mess. So much could have gone wrong, and very nearly did.

If anyone feels like giving this some extra publicity on their site, or giving someone from anet a push with a loaded staff towards it, please do so.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Either way, it just wasn’t one for me to read, nice work though, It looks like you put a lot of effort into that and I’m sure other people would have enjoyed it~

A lot of people like reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I found it incredibly dated and a real slog. Eventually I gave up. A writer cannot write in a style that will please everyone, simply because it doesn’t exist. The most that they can hope for is a reader will look at it. I’m pleased that you tried reading it, even if it isn’t for you.

I edited the thread title. Hopefully it’s more informative.

So that was the premises for the story, I had suspicions I guess but I really wasn’t sure.

Have you thought about writing a prologue of perhaps a few chapters perhaps about the characters as they were people and how they became stuck in the game, waking without their memories, placed before the start of the story, then perhaps time-skip it to the current start of your story?

Something like that may provide a bit more of a background to the story and give other readers more of an idea of what to expect and what was going on~