Guild Wars 2

Issues with Living Story:
-Lack of Story
-Lack of access to story after event window
-Neglecting the wider world in favor of the living story

Lack of Story
The current living story is not compelling. There are number of reasons for this. First and foremost story content is being presented on the website and in novels rather than in the game. I play games to experience the story (this is not necessarily true of everyone). I would rather experience half an hour of in game interaction than spend five minutes reading text on a website . I don’t read story content presented on the website. If it isn’t in the game, it doesn’t exist for me. I don’t disagree with making story content available outside the game. I do have issues with story content being available outside the game which is NOT also inside the game.

I would argue that simply having the text in the game isn’t enough either. It has to be interactive in some way. This a game. If my character isn’t interacting with the world, the story is meaningless to me.

Other reasons the story isn’t compelling: it has little or nothing to do with the established lore in the game. There’s a well established threat to the world, yet we ignore it in favor of festivals. If the pact was formed to deal with the threat of a dragon, why can’t it handle a couple of terrorists? There are tons of interesting characters and races in the GW lore that could be drawn upon to make the world more interesting, yet these are being ignored in favor of a flat character and repetitive tactics. Not only is that uninteresting, it makes both the players and the NPCs seem incompetent.

Finally, the player’s character seems to play increasingly less of a role in the story as a whole. A player’s presence is superficial. Whether they are present or not seems to make no difference, both in terms of the overarching story and in terms of things as simple as how NPCs react to them. (Sometimes an NPC will recognize you when you weren’t present at past events or, vice versa, will not recognize you when you were present at past events).

Lack of access to story events after a set event window
This is another reason why the story feels flat or uninteresting. If you miss an event, you miss the ‘story’ related to it. If you miss the story, you have no way to catch up on it except to read sources outside the game. There’s no alternative instance for people who didn’t play this event or who missed that event. There’s no conversation with an NPC to catch you up on what you missed. The story is simply there, simply happening. Eventually, when you’ve missed enough events, it’s easier to just ignore the story. It’s my opinion that’s bad; you can’t build up to a twist or reveal if you’re losing people’s attention along the way.

Reasons for this: all the living story is presented in the form of temporary events. When those story events are yanked out of the game, the reasons for character’s actions and the history of current events is lost with them. New players and returning players have no frame of in-game reference.

The living story feels disjointed because one event’s plot does not necessarily relate to or flow into the next.

The speed of the living story is too rapid. Because you only have two weeks for most content, people pay more attention to the items, which will become unavailable after that two week window, than to the actual event or story taking place. Two weeks isn’t necessarily enough time for every player to complete all the story content they would like to, especially if they have a job or a family. And again, if you fall behind, there’s no way to catch up.

It would be nice to have a slower update pace; once a month is enough, especially if completing half of the current event will then unlock the second half of the event for each player (as with Halloween this year). I also see no reason why events can’t overlap, with a living story event being ‘sealed off’ only after a player has completed the story (as with the living story).

Neglecting the wider world in favor of the living story
One of my personal, primary complaints is that so much development time seems to go into this living story, yet the wider world seems neglected. There are hearts which are bugged, leaving them difficult to complete. There are in-game events that don’t trigger properly or can’t be completed due to bugs.

A friend and I got stuck in the flame temple once because by the time we had figured out how to do the mini dungeon, the levers inside had somehow stopped working. Our only choice to escape was to use a waypoint – that was one of the most disappointing experiences to me because I try to waypoint as little as possible.

Not only that, living story updates tend to be riddled with bugs, some of which are simply ignored for the duration of the time they’re present in the world (perhaps because they’re available for such a short time frame). This isn’t meant as an accusation. I think this is a result of an unreasonably fast update schedule which prevents things from being tended the way both devs and players might want them to be.

I, personally, would like to see a month devoted to game polish and bug fixes without living story content because not only would it make my overall game experience more enjoyable, it would show me how much pride the dev team takes in their game and wanting to present it as the best it can be.

Final thoughts on a living story
I support whole-heartedly the idea of a living, breathing world, but I feel the current incarnation is falling short of the mark. A living world is a world that evolves – the world rarely evolves because the end of a living story event often resets the world back to the way it was. The minor changes seem largely cosmetic, insignificant or ignorable.

A living story is one where a player feels as though their actions have impact. I would argue the personal story comes closer to a ‘living’ story than the living world because it’s impacted by my actions. I choose a path through it and the story isn’t closed off to me until I experience it. I can’t go backwards. I can’t constantly loop my story. I have to choose a path and stick with it. That, in my opinion, is what makes a story live.

The focus of the living world at the moment seems to be to add items into the game which are only available for extremely limited time periods, marks of people being around at a certain time. I get that. I don’t have a problem with that. However, not everyone plays the game for items. The people who play the game for story are left behind at the moment because they want to experience lore content whether or not they get a shiny badge for it. I wouldn’t have any problem with items and titles disappearing behind locks if I could still access the parts of the living story updates that contained story.

Those are my thoughts.

Also, I feel that there isn’t enough about YOU. During the PS, even after Trehrne got all Kormir on you and took the glory, it was still about you. You led the Pact on countless missions to victory, you helped reunite Destiny’s Edge and the NPCs knew and respected you.

In the LS, you were only one soldier in a massive army who stopped Scarlet’s invasions, acted as one of Caithe’s 5 sidekicks to find out more about Scarlet, one of the millions of visitors to attend Queen’s Pav. You’re nobody, you aren’t important, you’re just a pawn in the overarching scheme of things.

Also, slightly offtopic, but reward vs risk needs to be adjusted. There’s no reason to bother running Arah P4 a second time or do DEs because there are far more efficient alternatives to money and karma is almost useless.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Everything.

I agree.

But on a completely unrelated note (maybe), the ghosts of Ascalon— will we ever see any kind of development there? Or, since they play such a pivotal role in both the charr personal story and in countless events/hearts, will they be stuck as angry spirits forever? And will Eir’s buddy (possibly Beigarth?) ever fix Magdaer so that the rightful heir to the throne of Ascalon can return and lay them all to rest? And would that heir be Commander Samuelsson (being of the line of King Doric), or possibly even the famed Logan Thackeray (heir of Kieran and Gwen Thackeray, leaders of Ebonhawke, the last remnant of Ascalon)? I would favor Samuelsson for it, but based on the Ascalonian Catacombs story dungeon dialog, it’s conceivable that Logan could fill the role.

That is, if the ghosts aren’t stuck as they are forever due to their necessity to the personal story and local event chains/hearts.

Fixing The Living Story Direction

Step One: Hire WoodenPotatoes as the lead writer.

The End

Tom Wolf.1340:

If you people dont take all this to heart then I dont know what it will take.
I’ve seen excelent points made so far and sugestions on how to correct them in order to set this thing straight.
Lets hope it wont just stop at “Good feedback! we’ll consider it.” and then continue on as if nothing happened.

+1 to this, this has occurred to me as well. Chris we want to see substantive contributions by the dev team to these threads and obviously consideration being given to the suggestions or reasons why they can’t be implemented.

I agree about Scarlet, horrible annoying villain who felt like a cheap Harley Quinn knockoff. Please be done.

I too think huge WORLD changing events would be nice. MYSELF…. I would love to have a ‘flashback’ living story that might cover the events of Orr. One of the things I hear MOST in this game is ‘I wish I could see what Orr looked like BEFORE….’

Ive heard that SO many times and have thought about it myself. I think it would bring more interest to Orr, for sure, not to mention would invest the players in the area more if we knew what happened to all its inhabitants.

We have the lore, we have the epic stories – why not build off some of those? Allow players to participate. While we obviously cannot change the outcome drastically, perhaps SOMETHING can be altered, or affected.

But – I agree – more true ‘World changing’ events – but ones that can be handled by slower servers as well. Im on HoD, and we STILL have not managed Teakettle… its now a ghost town there. Everyone just gave up, sadly enough.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Copy/Pasted from another thread.

After playing this game for over a year I would like to give an example of what I believe a true living world should be.

First and foremost it NEEDS REAL consequences for failure. If you have centaurs taking over a town when you fail, why must they end there? If given long enough the centaurs can and should take the whole kitten map, enslaving and forcing the npc’s within the areas to be hostile to the PC’s (similar to a flipped keep in WvW). Waypoints, once the map is taken, should all be contested, making the trip to that map impossible save for entering through a nearby map. And why stop there, if the centaurs form an alliance with the dredge they could start controlling even more of the maps. If however they are at odds with the dredge we could form a temporary alliance with one side to defeat the other or at very least see then openly at war with one another.

Large scale invasions like scarlet should be epic in scope (destroying maps/npcs) until rebuilt/defended by the PCs for an extended length of time. Supply runs similar to what we see in Cursed Shore would be a good start, but much more widespread. IF these rebuild actions are not taken by the PCs then they should just lay there rotting (needing more supply runs in the process to repair) until they are done!

I guess my whole point to this post is that without real meaningful consequences we may as well be furniture. Devs please take a page from the way some things in WvW are handled; leaving WvW to the enemies will leave you having to ACTUALLY WORK to regain your ground, and IMO it should be the same in the PvE world. Until it is done in a way that we can and do get hooped for letting things fail, we are no better than bystanders in your game.

Added after concern was posted in regards to day/night cycle and defeat

The day/night cycle would indeed be a pest, however with the extent of data anet gathers it could be handled IMO. For instance they could adjust the events to “fire” only when the server in question has the population to handle the events. The logic behind this could be the enemies have to sleep sometime too. Unlike in WvW where we the players run the show, in PvE it could be made to more suit the population that is in the current area/world.

Also as to the ressing npcs, it could be implemented as you progress into the map. As you free villages/npc’s their militia (a few npc fighters) would come with you to capture the next town and so forth. These npcs should rez the fallen similar to the veterans around the keeps in WvW. As waypoints are uncovered they should become uncontested etc etc.

I’m not saying that there are not many many things to consider with making a living world that would feel alive, but it would be nice if it were to feel less like trying to breath life into a corpse.

Thanks for reading and for opening this topic for your players!

Hire this guy, or at least use his ideas.

how about fixing some of the known issues and bugs with the game before getting all gaga over new content every two weeks….just a suggestion….

Replayability; after lvl 80 you lose a lot of the incentive to do anything other than dungeons, or bosses, which is too bad.
A solution could be, for example, if the events could interact on a full-scale-map-event-interation. Imagine if some medic in the shiverpeaks is taken hostage, and that affected his trade to kryta, or the desolation, or anywhere, and that made the villagers in another map sick, or die, resulting in more events. Or some farm, at some random map location, is affected stopping the trade of meat or milk, small scale examples, that could easily become big scale examples spanning from various maps.
Could be super cool, especially if the consequences were really cruel. Obviously you want new players to have a nice experience playing, but still. I want to do events, and feel like I mattered in that event, that it made a difference that I was there, and that it wasn’t just a zerg, cause the monsters don’t drop any fun skins, so the incentive to do events after 80 is difficult.
Another solution, make living story replayable, personally I’ve been crazy busy with a lot of cool stuff that has been going on in my life recently, and whenever I do have time to play, the living story is at its end, or I barely have time to do any of it. Put it in cashshop if that’s it, but one of the great things of gw was that you could replay the missions, you could experience the story of the fall and rising and fall of shiro, like reading your favourite book again.

Content seems rushed and lacking depth. the first few events you held ( in 4 acts, eg. Halloween & xmas) were amazing and I think you should go back to this method. We explored more of the story, and we saw real progression ( with the act system). we had an introduction and a climax, and I thought this was very exciting. We also got to meet characters and feel more of a connection to them. Bi-weekly updates where each event is tenuously linked to the next gives the impression of being put on a treadmill. Each update glosses over the story and lacks the impression of impacting the “living story”. Just my thoughts, you can agree or disagree.

It feels like a series of events that don’t relate to each other at all. A lot of the events have been a lot of fun but I’ve stopped thinking of them as “Living Story.” The flame and frost event in the beginning was pretty cool, but after that it’s been completely random. As a casual player, there really isn’t that much motivation (at least for me) to login and complete a huge set of achievements that will maybe give me a miniature I’ll never use.

All the events should follow a story that builds on the personal story of each character, that changes based on how players react, and doesn’t feel like a fully scripted path. That’s what I was imagining when living story first came out.

My personal opinion of the LS stuff is pretty simple.

It started off kinda fun, then quickly became too much filler and fluff too quickly with little substance.

Every 2-4 weeks is a new set of achievements that require little more than just playing the game rather mindlessly to check off the tick marks for each achieve. I would rather repeat interesting meaningful content for a short bit than have mindless content that makes you not really feel like caring. I.e. The LS dungeons were awesome so far, I’d rather they just have stayed in and been given a justification for staying after the event. The normal dungeons have no reason why we continually beat the same bosses, so why are the LS dungeons different? Placing them in fractals is kind of lame too, I’d rather them have just stayed, even if they had reduced rewards or certain event only rewards removed entirely. This would work well with LFG as well.

Honestly I’ve all but stopped playing the game BECAUSE of LS. My play time is limited and feeling like I’ve fallen behind or can’t have the time to complete an event drains all willingness to bother playing at all to ultimately not really accomplish anything. Idk, I look forward to things changing in the future, but every update leaves me feeling pretty much the same.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The living story just feels not epic. I as a player feel like a merc instead of a hero.
I feel replaceable, in a world that is endangered by dragons, I run around and do useless stuff. Why ain’t we going to confront them now, they will only get stronger.

Scarlet is a weak villain, she just feels random. Her character does not fit to the mastermind she is sold as. And she is no dragon. That is a weakness too.

For a year, Zhaitan is dead, for a year the Pact is rotting in fort trinity. Why did the living story ignore everything that was built up by the personal story. It does not feel like a new arc, but like a different game. I do not miss Trahearne, but I miss to be in a cutscene, being part of the story, not just part of the events.

The personal story was sold as one of the pillars, but it is gone, nothing personal at all with the living story.

I was just talking with my friends about this the other day. All the living world stuff seems to have just completely diverged from this whole 80 levels of personal story that was put into place. Are all the other dragons just sitting around doing nothing while Scarlet is running around? We all laughed at how ridiculous her background seemed. It was like one of my gamers in my tabletop group trying to min/max his background as much as possible.

Also, I’m really tired of all the temporary content. If someone that left right after launch came back now, what is there to show for over a year of updates? A few weapon skins that are hard as hell to get and some back items? This living world doesn’t really feel living to me, it feels like we’re in this bubble where Scarlet and all these things are happening while there are much more pressing issues out there, but we can’t do anything about them.

I’ve just started the game, not too long ago. I’m not level 80 yet, nor even close. There’s so much to do in the game, and too many characters that feel like I want to explore so much. The LW is great, because you can just wonder around and just happen to come across events. What bothers me, is the first 40-50 levels feel like it’s all about pirates, centaur and bandits.. This is like, old school RPG style mobs, I don’t feel like I’m fighting anything threatening. Yes, I too feel like content doesn’t exist long enough, which really lives up to the LW, but at the same time, they’re like seasonal event status to me, and not quite “Living World”. I’d like to see more story evolving older zones which players spend a lot of time in. I’d like to see random spawning mobs during these events to attack places for a reason. Maybe the Scarlet lady wants to have a good strong outpost, which would make her want to spawn tons of mobs in a location for say a few hours trying to take over it. Have missions during the spawnings to say close portals, help people who got injured during the fight, take back towns taken over by her, or something. There’s so much that could be done, spawning little doors that just spawn adds for one fight doesn’t seem entertaining enough, it’s more ‘luck’.

I’d like to see content come out fast like it has been, but make it last longer, but don’t make the content that comes out seem like “This is all you get for two weeks.”. Make it into something that just sneaks by players through quests and make it RANDOMLY HAPPEN. Make the world feel like it really is a Living World, make little events that you create last longer than what they do, and allow players to feel like they have to catch up. Don’t make players feel like they get one or two bosses and have to ‘suck it up’ until something new comes out. I know I sound really critical, but that’s just what I think. I love this game regardless 100%

I have read most of the posts above, and see a common thread in many of them, which I also feel strongly about:

1. With the move to 2 week releases, even as a regular daily player I feel rushed almost continually. There is little time left to go back and explore the achievements we didn’t do before, or to level a new character and actually enjoy the story, etc. Also, there are a bunch of things to do daily to the point where just doing that can take an hour or more.

2. Permanent changes to the landscape. I realize that with the character progression and personal story, it seems impossible to change places like Orr, but in fact, it was done in GW1 too. I specifically remember that Kryta changed during the War In Kryta and was different depending on the current progression of the character you were playing. Something like this could happen in Orr too, for example, probably by having two separate maps and if your character has completed the personal story you get the new one, where the effects of the cleansing of the Source and the defeat of Zhaitan are shown, and if you haven’t, you get the existing one.

This gets you out of the dilemma. It also provides a time line mechanism whereby you can even progress beyond that stage in the same area and add a third or fourth map. This gives incentive to the player base to revisit these areas, because they become new again. There may be a need to allow transition back to a previous stage, so that we can play with friends and help with character progression (or to fight a boss that may not exist in that timeline, like Tequatl – who realistically has to go eventually too, if he is a lieutenant of Zhaitan).

3. For the most part I don’t object to any of the characters at this point, even though Scarlet has come out of nowhere. Sometimes things happen that way. Still, a way to revisit old content is important, and once the content is tied together better it may make more sense.

4. As said elsewhere, GW1 provided a wealth of lore that we can build on, even if you don’t wish to revisit Cantha or Elona anytime soon. Exploration is important to the player base, and having things like we had in GW1 that encouraged exploration makes a difference. If it is not time-gated, people will be less inclined to look it up on a guide somewhere and to just try it cold. (The Black Moa Chick cross-map scavenger hunt took me about a month solo – but was great fun and I visited a lot of out of the way places while also doing additional content I might not have gotten to anyway – or maybe not without a push – like Sorrow’s Furnace and that whole section).

id like to see each part expanded upon. i felt like we really didnt discover the molten alliance just had a run in with them. the first chapter we had on them was a bit slow but it didnt bother me. then the second we ran into them a bit more and discovered one of their bases and did some fighting and then they werent heard from again til scarlet invasions. they ended up being mysterious we should have had more chapter reflecting on them to get to know them their leaders whereas we could have started getting clues about scarlet. i really think you could have wasted up to ten chapter telling the molten alliance part of the ls. to me they are still mysterious. i think you needed more lead up to parts of your story. maybe while investigating one group you start giving us teasers into the next group. much like what you did with the krait in the next chapter

if we could have found little bits about scarlet along the way she might have been a real interesting villian. otherwise i had to listen to an interview to stuff on her when you could have been spreading that info in different chapter before you revealed. there really needs to be more cohesion between chapters and less jumping around. make a part of the ls become several chapters. im still wondering what is the consortium whats the motivation behind the molten alliance. scarlet really dont feel like i know hardly anything about her but she done so much

you can still tie achievements to the two week period just legthen the time between sections of the ls make them more complete(one two week period doesnt mean we are done with a certain group) and give us more info(why are they doing what they are doing whose their leaders and especially group that dont mix explain why they are working together its got to make sense to use) on the group.

i think the living story has tons of potential and what you gave us could have ben so spectacular it just needs ironing out not be so bunched up. let us investigate a bit more. a few cutscenes in there to give us info we absolutely need to see. if what i heard on the interview about scarlet had been a simple cutscene with some asuran guy explaining it to me would have suited me way better then an interview of a dev on a website. background info should be given to us way inn advance to get us to understand chars better. i hope this helps its all i can think of right now

Here’s my thoughts on the Guild Wars 2 Living World.

Personally, I don’t see this as a “living” world. It just changes. Living implies there is some type of growth involved. When something happens for two to four weeks and there is no growth, it is just a temporarily added feature.

To make it actually living, create consequences. Say, if people do not defeat the Mad Prince x amount of times his reign will have some type of impact throughout the next year when people can try again. But if he is defeated enough, he is gone until he can escape again. This might not be the best example, I just came up with it right now.

In summary; make world consequences (or zone, depending on the depth of the event) or rewards. Rebuilding events after something major happens would be cool. Don’t just magically fix everything and make it back to usual after the two weeks.

I love walking around a area and stumbling across the Dynamic Events however it gets a little boring when it is the same 5-10 events every day at predictable times. Perhaps having a collection of events that are randomized so you never know what event you are going to get. For example any area would have 50 events.
Over week 1 of a month 15 of these events are randomly implemented into live status and timed triggers would be also randomized
next week a random selection of 15 more (this could include a couple of the 15 from the previous week to aid int he randomness of it all. ) are selected and implemented.
Then the 3 and 4th weeks of the month would have different events as well. This way if I stroll through and aid a caravan today, and next week I am playing with a guild mate maybe we are attacking an enemy caravan in the same area?
Random events strings could contain 1 common string with a set time for example the centaurs maintain control of a village and are constantly pushing into the world via a collection of random quest sharing this theme and then on Sunday night the events triggers to re take the village. Out come village taken next week- random quests themed around a human managed village. Out come village held by centered – a collection of random quest different from previous weeks centered around centaurs having a strong hold in the area.
It would create a more vibrate living breathing world because for a week to week any area could be different and by having a collection of events to pull from ensures that each time through truly is a new adventure with a feeling of a ever changing world.

• Items that we can get from the LS-Achievements. We only get one item per account, so there’s no way alts get the item too, and if one doesn’t like the item from begin, it’s just a waste of inventory space, but throwing it away is also not really an option because who knows, maybe in a year it’s the most fashionable thing one can imagine. My suggestion to make this better: Instead of giving us a chest with one item (or skin), let us unlock a slot in the achievement-panel so that we can get the skin as often as we want and when we want, just like the Zenith-skins.

• Living Story itself: To be honest, I thought for a long time that there’s a connection between everything the living story showed us so far, but it feels more and more ‘random’ to be honest. I don’t want to blame anyone, but for me, it feels a bit like a very bad story which is told even worse: ‘now this happens, and here that happens, and well this happens too…’. It doesn’t feel like GW2 should feel for me somehow, it’s not authentic. Of course, you can’t let us kill an elder dragon every two weeks, and that’s ok, but there are other threats too, like the sons of svanir, inquest or nightmare court. They don’t need new villains like Scarlet with her aetherblades to be dangerous, they already are, just let them smash something and make the players fix it. I think it would be a lot easier to make the story more authentic. But who knows, maybe you already go in this direction with the next release, at least that’s what I was thinking when I saw the changes in Kessex Hills.

• Less timegated content/achievements, more replayability. This was already mentioned quite often, just want to support it because to be honest, it feels like grind for me, and that’s exactly what GW2 should be not, in no way.

PS: Sorry for my bad English, I tried my best but it’s not my mother tongue.

So in response to the living world i will give a brief summary of the issues it has shown me as a player and a lover of guild wars. I started playing guild wars 1 when i got it on my birthday over 9 years ago. i played and played, the updates always made the game better, although guild wars 1 was expansion based it was amazing. So all this build up, starts for guild wars 2 and the biggest promising thing of all comes up, the Living World aspect of the game. A part of the game where it would always be expanding and spreading the content of the game. Well sadly this is the very aspect that caused me to stop playing this april. 9 years of guild wars and i stopped because the living world is a grind, it i not permanent, i cannot play it at my leisure. I am now a college student and have multiple jobs in real life. I should be able to enjoy the new and exciting content of my favorite game without having to spend hours at a time doing menial tasks. The content added should be permanent or at least have a longer time span. Also the stories are getting really dry. Little testimonials and hints at a bigger picture and a bigger story of dragons or dredge invading or whatever are just getting annoying because they are only giving us hints at what we all want. We want dragons, new dungeons, more maps, more events. We want what we all loved about guild wars 1 back, we don’t want the billion currencies or tokens, the tiny achievement grinds, what we players want is the shear girth of content and dungeons and missions that we once had. What happened to the fun ideas of the game rather than the massive rewards and chests that i log in and get on a daily basis for no reason. Bring the guild wars i love back, expand the game, give me the content that had me waiting for years for, give me a dragon or a demigod to fight, more dungeons to explore with a guild, but don’t give me a mini dungeon that lasts a week or so and then is gone for eternity.
Sincerely,
An ex-guild leader and lover

What mostly hurts living story is that most of it is going to a new temporary zone and farm with a zerg.
There sure is a bit of story behind it, but that is hardly noticeable since there’s no connection, nor is there something to make it interesting.

Right now, Scarlet is our villain, but she’s not important. There’s no sense of progression, so you can just expect her to appear and do something bad, then you have to fix it in 10 mins and farm for 2 weeks.

My suggestion here is making LS more impacting. “Scarlet is attacking that map”, if you don’t defend it, the landscape changes, more monsters appear (the clock monsters maybe), and everything gets stronger for a certain time. After that timer ends, a event happens so you can go there and try to free the land of evil.

First of all, it is great that you have opened threads like these. You have always been good at player response, and this fits in nicely.

The idea of the Living World is amazing and works well, to some extent. There is always something new to do, and if you don’t like it, you can wait for the next update. There are some problems with it, however.

1. As many people have stated, I think updating every two weeks is too often. Some people just cannot keep up. The downside is also that all these stories have very little permanent effect on the world, and do not seem to matter at all. All kinds of stories start (Marjory, Scarlet, etc.), while other stories can be used perfectly for the Living World, like White Mantle, Mursaat, the Elder Dragons, Palawa Joko, the Gods of Tyria having left, etc. These stories have the advantage of a background and have already captured the hearts of many GW1 players. As a player, it would seem easier to use those subjects as Living Stories instead of creating entirely new ones (with, sadly, less debt). I also believe that your bug-fixing team (which does a great job, by the way) cannot keep up with content being added every two weeks.

2. The second problem is the lack of end-game. The hardcore players do all dungeons/fractals daily and rack up as many achievement points as they can. If they don’t like the Living Story, they will just grind out the achievements and go on with getting gold. I am afraid that you will lose the hardcore players if this Living Story continues the way it does now: be easy for everyone. And while some people may not like ‘elitist’ or ‘pro’ players, they are just as important as more casual players. I think the lack of challenging endgame will cost you a lot of players.

So thank you for listening to your players, you are doing a great job at maintaining an awesome game, but I think it would be good to try to use stories with more background (which would seem easier to use, from a player perspective) and it would be wise to implement hard end-game content. Fractals of the Mists was a great example of that.

Hope this helps.

I’ve read some of the comments(great thoughts guys, keep it goin’) here are mine:

- 2 Weeks: Whyyy?? You’re makingyou own work harder and some of us can’t put that much time into playing the game, so he has to rush through the content ignoring it’s story and even then he’d lucky if he finished.

-Scarlet: When can we kill her?(Drop her, seriously, you can do better)

-Stories: The beginning was good, I enjoyed the Flame and Frost and even the Southsun stories too they were great. But we haven’t heard from the Molten Alliance fora while then they just pop out of nowhere alongside Scarlet. You’ve built up a great world with the first game, use it. There are White Mantle(loved ‘em), Mursaat(Lazarus The Dire) or even after Zhaitan’s defeat the first ship from Cantha could reach Kryta or something like that, you’ve got the lore and DROP THIS SCARLET THING!!! More annoying than fun.

Rewards: Enough of the minis or back skins. I love the gauntlets from F&F, you could do that in 2 weeks, why are you bombarding us with backs and minis? Give me cape or no more backpacks!!!( Yeah, I know, clipping…etcetc, but get creative)

As for Tequatl: Thank you, didn’t kill him since he’s got stronger. Others are okay. No one even bothers on the server(think about less populated servers like WSR or Vabbi next time, thank you)

World: Half the world can’t be explored…you could introduce new maps, there’s a lot of space there.

This is for now…we’ll see if you really listen to us.

One release per month should be maximum. I felt and still feel very overwhelmed by the amount of content and rate of implementation.

I’m coming to this late so apologies for those following the discussion, I will almost certainly repeat people I haven’t read – I figured I’d throw my opinions in anyway because collaboration ftw

I agree that Scarlet is a weak villain, and most of my friends agree. I don’t object to the steampunk direction itself (although it’s not my preference for GW2) but Scarlet came out of nowhere, doesn’t mesh well with what was already there, and is a bit too mindlessly maniacal. The lore/roleplay minded are a little different, but my friends and I were quickly asking, what do the Firstborn or the Pale Tree think of Scarlet? Has she always been this crazy? What was her Dream like? What do the asura who taught her think? Does anyone feel responsible for her behaviour? Answering some of these could possibly make her feel more part of the world and less a random bonus event, but honestly I don’t like her enough to want to see it badly. I would MUCH rather see some of the complex factional dynamics, tensions, traditions etc which we already have in Tyria flare up every now and then, or for that matter to see some mysteries addressed. I know I’m not alone on that front.

Some people complain that living story isn’t epic enough, but to be honest I’m a little tired of every event being a world-threatening attack – especially when it’s always an attack from a previously unknown source. One purpose of the living story might be to provide a rotation of distractions and sideshows to occupy players, and that’s fine, but I thought it was also meant to make Tyria feel like a world and not just a game. Recent updates feel all game. The less ‘epic’ events do more to flesh out the existing world and make it feel less static. You should be able to do that without disrupting the status quo in certain areas – for instance, have a plot revolving around an upset or sabotage of the truce negotiations at Ebonhawke. You don’t have to push that plot forward, just restore equilibrium at the end of it, but it would use what’s already (supposedly) happening in the world.

I do think (and this is a less popular opinion) that players in general would do well to view the living story content less as something they ‘have to’ get through for the sake of completion or loot, and more as essentially current events in the world. They happen whether you’re there or not, but if you miss it never mind, another thing will be happening. I think the fact that the rewards have tended toward souvenirs rather than powerful or valuable items is a good thing in this regard.

In short – I don’t speak for everyone here, but I would like to see the living world provide:

• a variety of temporary/seasonal content from across the game so that most people will find at least, say, one in three updates interesting and relevant to them [check!]
• development of the existing game/story world that makes it feel like a world in its own right, and not just a platform for gamers to increase scores in [not so check]

Also, living story arcs. Perhaps ones that move dragonward over a few months (you’ve said before that living story > expansions for that right?), but not necessarily. Something coherent that reflects broader movements in Tyria and means that if you miss a month, you are still part of the overall arc.

After a long 2 month hiatus caused by GW2 burnout and its living story, I’ll just give my 2 cents as to what burned me about it:

· Living Story doesn’t feel alive at all. I know the devs intentions are good, but what’s the point of changing something in a map when it will be gone in 2 weeks?
· Irelevant stories that have very little weight or importance in a world under dragon siege. I can’t for the life of me understand how it’s been 1 year since GW2 came out and we still don’t know squat about any other dragon beside Zhaitan.
· Too many celebrations. Seriously, drop some serious content every once in a while. Everything feels like a gag or a sitcom. I know it’s fun to find a reference here and there, but please, just do some serious content every now and then.
· Cheap-ish content. What’s fun in slaying 100 [insert name here] or collect 100 [insert item here]? Where’s our grindless GW2 promissed in the manifesto?
· Having to keep up with 2 week content. This might be my biggest buzz killer. I love getting achievements, but I also love enjoying the game at my own pace. Having to play at Arenanet’s pace of delivering irrelevant 2 week content so it just vanishes into thin air really puts me off.

Please Arenanet, could we get an expansion? Please? :‘[ Loved Cantha and Elona so much due to the change of world, setting, plot and all that it’d just be amazing…just change your Living Story for a proper, big expansion.

rizzo.1079:

Honestly, Scarlet is a very weak villain, her story was dropped on us out of nowhere and it has dragged on for far too long.

I disagree with Rizzo, becuase I like Scarlet

BUT

I do think we need MORE villains and MORE TYPES than jovial, comical, over the top villains, the Mad King, Scarlet, Bloody Prince (although he leans more on whining).

I would love to see characters having more depth then what we have now.
I was disappointed with Marjory. I was expect a Sherlock Holmes type of hero… instead she was just another NPC gabbing about “How special the Tassi box is”.

I mean with the WEALTH of epic fictional characters out there to emulate, we only have a handful of GW2 NPC personalities. Most people don’t like Scarlet (although I do), it would be nice to see another high caliber villain, and people compare which villain is worse/fun to fight.

Gives us some cerebral villains, untouchable masterminds, or bogeymen.

I CHALLENGE A-NET TO GIVE US SOMETHING NEW TO TRULY FEAR.

No long dungeons, for that we already have Arah and others. I like the length of the Halloween. Been able to complete it yourself is a great thing (as sometimes it’s not easy to find people willing to do a living story if there’s no big reward for it).

I miss that cinematic that we had in Dragon Bash involving Marjory Delaqua, could we have more of that?

I’m crowded with skins for PvE, can you guys give us a skin holder like the PvP one?

Make the players really feel like they are making a difference. Atm we are being put in the background on all major events that we helped out (read npc’s could not have done w/o us). In Gw1 Kormir stole our glory, in story Trahearne stole our glory and now other random npc’s do this (Rox, Braham…….). We saved the queens life and she still treats us like random scum for example.
Maybe let npc’s respond different if player completed x event, even if it is only in the story dungeons. They have a reason to be happy to see you, specially if you have been helping them out for a long time now.

Maybe a title track that keeps by how much you have helped them?

Hello there.
I will always be glad to contribute in some way to the grow of a game i like.
I have not finished the main story line yet, but im close to do it with my first char, i love the narrative, it feels great be an important part of the story and i would like to feel that in the living world content, or you could create a new story line, maybe a new enemy, a new world, maybe a visit to the spirit world (like in 1 quest of the norn story line).
you can even launch a playable race with the content.

Thank you to give us a chance to tell how we feel about the game and what could be interesting to see.

With regards to living story I do like the general direction. Some tweaks would be great.

Reduce to 3-weekly or Monthly releases. This will give more time to focus on quality both of the content and of the software. Right now fortnightly release cycle puts too much pressure on players to play so they can “keep up”. As a player I don’t want to be pressured into playing.

I would like to see more use of the fractals to replay old living story content as I have found the dungeons to be more fun. Plus I don’t currently play fractlas as there is only a small number of fractals – if the number increased I’d play more often.

I like the way you combine living story content with general game patching/balancing.

I don’t mind that a lot of the content is temporary with the exception that the dungeon content is so good I’d like to play it again.

I think the awards are commensurate with the effort.

Basically I’m happy with living story as it is but we should decrease the frequency of new updates and continue making use of fractals and daily activities to replay old living story without reintroducing limited time rewards.

I personally enjoy the two week content but it might do wonders if you deploy every two weeks but persist it for four where applicable (i’m sure you cant persist a story on top of itself). This might make the players comments of trying to keep up with it a little less relevant for each nugget that comes out and frankly in my own experience I very rarely have any of the content not done half way through the first week with the exception of a notable few that have stuck around anyways (queens gauntlet for one).

heres my opinion:

• living world goes too fast with little story, i remember in gw1 interacting on everything gave you 1 or 2 paragraphs of lore on everything, we dont have that anymore,.
• gw1 finished with primordius waking up over 250 years ago, but we decided to go straight for zhaitan instead, if i was to write storyline id say that an experimental asura portal that was built (like the ones being build for a year in LA) was turned on, but where it was to the ruins on the central transfer chamber, and there would be this attack on lions arch where the players could vote to fight thier way in and establish a base or we could destroy the gate but see more occurrences of destroyers resurfacing.
  tl:dr more dragons!
• rewards from LS need to be more rewarding, ive got 8 bank tabs and i have 1 just filled with LS stuff that im not sure if i need or i dont want to lose incase i want for another character, id be happy with more luck essences like 1k luck for 10 achievements, plus skins reward boxes whatever.
• more maps, i loved the cliffs we had for the zephyrs but i was dissapointed that the whole map was gone when the ship left, it could have been developed into an explorable with a world event such as a krait overlord attacking the town and we have 20 minutes to thin the ranks with 3 or 4 legendary foes, to destroy and this overlord causes a tidal wave (similar to tequatl) upon failure. i dont know. but overall we got the janthir isles, underground, ring of fire chain, the desert and the north still open to be explored, its a great excuse to have more tie-ins to guild wars 1 lore.
• no more tokens or at least have a place to store, like i said before i have 8 banks tabs, in order this is what its full of : wvwvw stuff , living story stuff, wintersday stuff left over from last year, and about 8 stacks of bloodstone dust, 2 tabs full of black lion harvesting stuff and boosters (so many boosters), more back skins and SAB stuff, and the last two are filled with materials and legendary crafting materials and gifts. thats alot of random stuff but most of it is skins, but before the wallet i had zero space in my bank. i cant afford any more methods of stuff i have to collect. (also bring back azurite, it came in for a month then dissapeared as a gathering material)
• pre-cursors, ive collected everything for my bifrost except the legend, because unlike everyone else ive ever known, ive never recieved a pre-cursor of any form, and its killing me slowly that i must rely on rng to get it. ill leave it at that.

i get excited every two weeks to read the patch notes and to see the next upcoming update ill admit, but i see every time these days the release preview goes out there is less and less to be released, i fear that pushing yourself to release something every two weeks has an impact on the quality of the release, id be happy to have a release every month like before, but every week post a blog or update on the website of what your working on currently to see if the player base can give constructive feedback on how to make things more epic, hold a poll more often, it may have more of a devastating impact (in a good way ) on the game itself.

The living story really needs to be connected. I think it should be viewed as a season and every 2 weeks a new episode should come out. This will keep people entertained and caring about what is going on. A lot of times it feels like what is happening is random and people don’t understand it.

Balance to living story mobs is also something that needs to be reworked. I can’t even begin to explain how frustrating it was to fight the aetherblades. Every single place I went I would get stunned or hit with a crazy amount of immobilize or confusion. It’s also not fun to get one hit when you are running a tankish build either. I know these things were done to slow zerging but there has to be another around the problem.

As far as rewards go we need to cool it on the minis. Yes people love minis every now and again but not as much as they are being rewarded. After the story is over you just throw it in your bank and never leave it again. It would be cool if you could make some sort of token system that is universal to the living story, ((Like with the black lion tickets)) and have it so you can trade in your living story tokens for an item that you actually want/need. As with the other system you could keep old items available but for increased currency and with that would avoid having to create anymore currency.

Class updates are always welcome from the living story too. There has been a lot of talk about gaining these new skills and I think it would be amazing to explain it in the story somehow. Maybe my necro undergoes some training to fight these new krait guys and suddenly picks up a sword! Surprise me anet!

The last thing that I really want to see is some old GW lore! Alot of time has passed since the first game and I really want to know what happened. Remember that amazing bonus mission pack for gw1? I think one of those could be in order! Alot of my favorite heroes have been lost and I still and tearing my hair out wondering what happened to the gods.. WHERE DID THE GODS GO ANET!!! PLEASE TELL US =)

I think part of the challenge is to make players feel like a heroic part of the story while also accounting for the fact that this is an MMO and thousands of people will do any event. I don’t want the game to pretend that I personally stop the bad guys and save the good guys, because when every individual player is treated like the big hero, it feels pretty cheap. That’s why characters like Trahearne, Kormir, even Devona and her band exist – all players can identify as one of the really important people supporting them, but not the famous one.

Living story stuff needs to account for there being thousands of us and that restricts its storytelling a little. ArenaNet try and put out events where it’s feasible for a lot of us to be called in or to be around to participate. Sure, I personally won’t be the central hero, but if I wanted that I’d be playing a single player RPG.

Delloro.9873:

One release per month should be maximum. I felt and still feel very overwhelmed by the amount of content and rate of implementation.

I’m fine with the 2 week release actually, but extending the time the events last for would suit me fine, but I would prefer a different approach.

As a alternative to having major events just hit us out of nowhere, adding in a more gradual pace to the 2 week schedule would suffice. This would work well IMO, similar to the way we the players discovered the anomalies in Kessex Hills. Throwing in (adding) a handful of npc’s that are “in a panic” (heart quests) for lumber would ease us into the event better and make us the players feel needed/wanted. These new npc’s could serve the dual purpose of not only having the players feel a part of what is going on, but would be more memorable to us and progress the story along better than just inundating yet another release upon us without any background at all.

Edit: and no, I am not a fan of spending 2 weeks fixing sign posts either as our major patch. What I am proposing is adding mystery to the world through exportation of areas again whilst easing us into the new story vein. These quest NPC’s would still need lumber etc even after the release thus they could be a permanent addition (at least till trees grow again).

I personally feel that the GW universe has so much story depth potential that even trying to dig into it in 2 week spans will take way too much time at this point (adding scarlet and krait villains while we need to stop the greater evil – dragons and palawa in Elona…and probably other critters in the universe). Also I know there is a large concern with keeping zones populated for events and community but that is dragging down expansion potential.

I would really love to see the LS lead us to Cantha to prevent horrors of the forest/deep from intruding on the empire – or overthrowing a tyrannical leader. Then take us to Elona to push back undead and save centaurs and humanity…or ally with undead vs dragons. And then we can be on to exploring the remaining islands of the world and their cultures. For me it is the exploration that makes MMOs so interesting. Huge immersive worlds to check out lore and artwork with my friends. I personally wouldn’t mind an empty zone scaled properly like GW1 or we could consider consolidating “worlds” into a single server with districts like GW1 to keep maps as full as possible. Special zoned like WvWvW could have alliance choices where you chose some order you are representing or pair USA vs EU vs Asia etc.

To me the living story first has the role of expounding upon and tying up the billion intriguing loose ends of GW1 and GW2 at release. Using it to add new content like Scarlet with no -apparent- purpose makes me concerned I may never see an answer to my questions until GW3!

We would also like to know the living story is going – more lore on the direction events are heading so that we can start feeling like a Hero rather than a firefighter. I’m sure you have a wonderful relevant story plan for Scarlet and etc. but its been half a year and I haven’t more than a few guesses as to what we are doing. I’d prefer to be a heroic detective and infiltrator undermining some grand scheme in pieces.

So here is another rant from me. In summary: love GW2; add CANTHA!

Short and simple: continue with the lore that was established before LS, make it a part of it. Not just the dragons, but for instance the Khan Uhr, Destiny’s Edge, Caudecus/Shining Blade etc etc. There is SO much excellent lore in game that is not utilized or expanded upon. A kitten shame in my eyes. LS has added some nice characters, though the implementation of some was lackluster in the story department, quality of life fixes etc, all nice and good, but I think its time to focus on the actual lore that exists.

Regardless if that approach is taken: make the story more conjoined. It feels (might not be the case) like theres a lot of different stories slapped together. Get one solid, fleshed out story and present that to us in chapters, with every team working on a differemt chapter, but ensure that the story is clear and conjoined.

Good luck!

Like others mentioned before, I’d like to see more use of the GW1 lore. This whole game was built on a solid foundation of history and lore that I feel is being almost completely ignored in favor of new story arcs like Scarlet Briar. Unless Scarlet starts riding dragons Targaryen style soon, I really don’t see the point of a new character with plans completely divergent of the storyline we were all sold on and progressed through. Yall could very easily focus LW content around loose ends left over from GW1, adding depth to the already existing world and clearing up unsolved mysteries left over from the first game.

Also, I don’t feel like the changes are at all permanent. Why not keep the Molten Dungeon around and treat it like a mini dungeon?

Okay, let me try and sum up everything that has been said so far (multiple times) that I agree with.

1) The Living Story updates happen too fast. This would not be a problem if the content was permanent.

2) The Living Story updates are not meaningful to the story at large. This would not be a problem if they connected to previous GW lore. Additionally, they don’t affect the world at large.

3) The Living Story updates do not present meaningful achievements or challenges.

4) The Living Story updates are not well-written.

In case you are worried about incorporating GW1 Lore into GW2 for the sake of players who didn’t play the original game: I did not play GW1 and I do not care. Give me a chance to learn some of the lore from GW1! Connect it in a backwards fashion to what I’ve already experienced. That will keep me happy.

Firstly, ArenaNet need to realise that more than just those living in America play this game, so mega events (such as the Karka event) need to be available across all timezones.

The ability to see the number of players on each map would also be helpful. Nothing more boring than running around empty maps. Having said that most people now congregate only to Frostgorge Sound or Queensdale for Champ farming.

Not having the environment scale to the number of players in an area is also a pain. Yes I know this is supposed to be an MMO, but if you dont know where anyone is its a bit difficult.

As a casual player doing things like dungeons is difficult, in fact, I’ve done 1 in 12 months. The LFG tool was moderately useful, but most aren’t interested in taking noobs along for the ride. It would be great if dungeons could scale up and down in difficulty so that I could do them myself if I wanted.

I dont do any of the LS content by choice. I just dont play enough to get it done in 2 weeks and you just end up with useless crap (a bit like the endless piles of bloodstone dust you pick up). I dont do ascended gear, again, as a casual player, its not worth the grind, nor do I have time to grind.

In the 12 months since I got this game, the guild I started with has gone from 30 active members to 5. We all got to lvl 80 within a couple of weeks, and then there was nothing. More lvl 80 areas would be nice, but again better if they scale.

I’ve seen some excellent points made in the forum so far.

I would definitely agree that the living story so far has been disjointed and really not continuous.

The amount of achievements packed into the 2 week period are unreal for relatively casual players. I also find myself choosing not to participate in living story because the rewards aren’t worth the amount of work entailed in achieving them. Someone mentioned the dragons in an earlier post. I too would like to see more about the dragons.

I would also like more cohesive living story chapters. It’s suitable to take events like Christmas and Halloween outside of the cohesive living story but the constant popping up of new villains and new maps/dungeons that are short term only is annoying.

I’m mainly a PvE player. I don’t PvP at all although I do like WvW and would do more of it if it didn’t lag me drastically. I would love to see some of the PvP armors made available through LS. (On a side note: I think about 50 to 75% of the armor in GW2 is fugly compared to the armors that were available in GW1.)

I do love the holiday events, but there again the really casual player has no chance at completing them.

I also liked the suggestion that the maps become contested. I think it would encourage play across all maps rather than all the map population being concentrated on champ runs in Queensdale, Meta farmers and t6 mat farmers in Orr and FGS.

The things I’d most like to see happen with LS are continuity and better rewards for busting our butts to complete 15 to 30 or even more achievements.

I feels like Living World has no connection to GW2 lore at all

I think one problem here is everyone’s play styles. While a lot of people are saying the content is too much many others including me doesn’t have enough to do. In fact I finish all of the living story content within the first week and I am a causal gamer also. I would rather there be more to do and have it more in depth and last three or four weeks instead of two. I also noticed the lack of awesome items for completing the meta achievements. We used to et pretty cool items for it because it was an awesome accomplishment. Now it’s kind of like here, have this mini pet which is cool but I wouldn’t chose that as meta completion prize. It almost feels like you guys are trying to give us so much content your in a hurry and end up being in a situation like " well what should we give them for the meta? Just throw in a mini pet that will be fine" I loved how every year in guild wars 1 you got all kinds of cool stuff for content such as Halloween.

There are some things I don’t agree with. While having repercussions for failure would be nice it would be too difficult for many people. If the centaurs for instance were to take over an entire map, instead of seeing people work together to take that map back people would simple just stop going there. Just like Teq, it’s too hard so people are just not doing it anymore. Also there are many things that this game can go into so it can definitely have a far longer life span than 7 years. There are all of the dragons, plus Cantha, legion homelands, the fire islands , Elona and these places are huge !

Hello everyone, I’m Desild from Guild Wars 2 Guru fame (so that my admirers can spot me out), and I would like to drop a few pointers about what the Living Story means to me.

Living story had a rough start. The very first four months of it were dedicated to flesh out the world around the the Norn and Charr homelands, with a few events popping up that ushered us heroes to the aid of refugees. I understand fully why Flame and Frost felt dragged. Getting the patch cycles and the developement teams in synch must have been a nightmare in the early days, and I’m glad they nailed it. But then a precedent was set.

After four months of setting up the narrative of the Living Story with Flame and Frost, the climax, and nearly every aspect of that particular content, was gone two weeks after they introduced the last instance of the story, the Molten Factory. Just like that. At first I thought ArenaNet would reintroduce it back (more due to my computer going busted during the last two weeks), but to my chagrin, that didn’t happen. This reoccurred again, and again, with more urgency for completionism added to every Living Story chapter. It came to a point I felt that I had no chance of actually living the “Living Story” duo to the copious amounts of achivements available to collect, and which would come back to taunt me in case I didn’t complete them in the required amount of time. The Historical tab is a testimonial to my frustrations of potencial content that once was available and now no longer. It is a bittersweet deal for me, being both an achievement hunter and a chronic procrastinator, feeling this imcompletion brewing with no means to address it.

I possibly can’t articulate what could possibly be done to address my percieved issues with the Living Story other than it being a complete imcompatibility between me and its purpose. Going to Guild Wars 1, a good example of a Living Story done right is the War In Kryta patch cycle. I missed all of it when it was first released, but now it is one of my favourite pieces of lore and content the game has to offer. The areas around Kryta felt alive whole I was going through the individual steps of the story, and the last showdown in Lion’s Arch was magical and hard as nails. And rewarding too.

All I ask, is to look back at that point in history, a and try to replicate it, or be inspired by it. That is all.

Nice to see most people actually bring up some valid points and decently written opinions.

For me the living story is decently done for the most part, though I have to say it’s the holiday ones (Halloween, Wintersday, Dragon Bash etc.) that I enjoy the most and it seems to be the ones you guys do best simply because the other ones (related to the “story” part of the content) just seems a little off.

I’ve seen a few posts mention that with the story aspect is a little weak and I can’t agree more. You guys came up with all these ideas for villains and stuff where it wasn’t really needed. I mean some were good, other’s weren’t.

The Molten Alliance – Good prospect since by the end of the personal story/dungeons we’ve been pounding these guys into the dirt and while the content was stretched out quite far when it was originally released (albeit you didn’t have the whole 2-week release dates yet) I rather enjoyed the finale being the dungeon and I can’t wait to have it back.

Southsun/Karka – the opening of Southsun was great but unfortunately there was no point in coming back this place until you gave us the Karka Queen, which is something to keep in mind for future map releases (as there’s still a lot that we’d like to see).

Aetherblades/Scarlet – This is where the confusion and “why?” keeps coming from. What was the point of these two? Sure, ideas for new content but you’ve stretched them out over five months with the map invasions, new dungeon path, returning mini dungeon, which were all pretty good but at the same time why Scarlet? She has nothing over the more formidable forces in the game (eg. the Dragons and their minions) and frankly she’s just not that intimidating.

Point is, you guys came into this game with more previous ideas than you could ask for. You have all the GW1 related lore that could make for much more interesting content than Scarlet. Lots of us are still waiting for the return of the Mursaat!

Even disregarding GW1 lore if you’re going to continue a “living story” why not continue it where we left off at release? The only real one was the Molten Alliance but they just kind of dropped off the face of Tyria after a single foundry was downed.

Why not continue with Orr? You don’t have to delete the original Cursed Shores, Straights or Malchors, just make revised secondary maps that show the revitalization of Orr or continue the eradication of the undead. Personally for Orr, I’m still hoping we find Zhatain again in the depths of Arah with a more challenging dungeon path experience because, let’s face it, Zhatain was just disappointing.

So in closing, I’d much rather see the “living story” continue with the original plan of the dragons, or at least expand into them. It doesn’t have to suddenly be “Hey Jormag dungeon” but could be as simple as a new underground map with new destroyers and fingers crossed a Kilroy Stonekin mini game!

I’m really interested in the lore of all these new (and old) factions that have sprung up this past year. It doesn’t have to be the main focus of an update, but maybe like you’ve done in Ebonhawke, there could be accounts on the origins of e.g. the molten alliance or the zephyrites scattered someplace. A story about their beginnings would be really exciting, or so I think.

Concerning Scarlet, I don’t think she’s all too bland a villain. The story featured on the website was very intriguing and I hope we’ll get to see more of that backstory and with that, some better insight into Scarlet’s motives. Because of that story, I’m kind of expecting the Pale Tree won’t remain on the sidelines of Scarlet’s story, so this could still become very interesting.

I like the way upcoming content is hinted at before the actual update announcement, like you’ve done in Kessex Hills. Just changing the environment or adding new npc’s with some teasing dialogue. You could even use previously introduced npc’s for that. That’d be even better, actually. Well, just keep on teasing us with (seemingly) little changes to the persistent world!

A cool idea that just came to me is that maybe you could slowly introduce new regions by first making smaller instanced parts of a map. All these instances could have a story that would eventually lead the player to the next instanced area until you’re ready to fuse them all into a persistent living map like the ones we now have. The story revolving around the elder dragons could advance this way as well. Trahearne and the Pact could be involved again in a push against some dragon’s minions towards it’s lair not unlike in Orr. Or it could go a different way, that’s up to you guys of course. All those different areas would have some meaning to the players who joined in on that particular story. I think that could be neat, if we’re looking, for example, a year after said story with newer players running around, not knowing what exactly happened there. kitten , I’m liking this idea. :p Yes I very much like kittens, thank you.

But the point that I initially wanted to make, is this: please just don’t leave things hanging. And don’t wait too long until everyone’s forgotten about it. I’m talking about Mai Trin and Canach mainly. Especially Canach is such an interesting villain or a possible situational ally even. A prison instance where we could talk to previous antagonists could be a nice addition. Fleshed out characters make the best stories! But that’s just my opinion.

Many thanks for reading through this and all the other posts.

I have Zero feeling that I “live” in a living world.
Lots of little junks with lots of folk who are interesting/semi interesting heroes…
Just I as a player dont feel like a hero…
it started with the abysmal written and also very badly voiced Trehaerne (cant even spell his name right and he does not deserve to be googled)
and all the events (except for the Roxx and Emoguy Norn dungeon) where not really that interesting.
The zephyre market was interesting because different…

Ireally hoped for more character / race driven storydevelopment
(I love Norn… why didnt you write something interesting connected to their lore?
Why are the animal spirits still missing… give us wolverine back or ox… (owl is dead I guess))
divide the living story teams into racial story teams and further the interesting story behind each of the races…
enough of all the little things and rather grindy reward things…. I really dont need a shiny gadget if the story is well written…
just sell that stuff on the bltc and be done with it…