Guild Wars 2

Hi Chris,

First of, let me start by saying I appreciate the chance to speak directly with you guys and share our thoughts and ideas.

While I agree completely that continuing to grow and expand the world of GW2, I honestly feel that the Living Story (or at least its current method of implementation) is not the best way to go about doing it. My dissatisfaction with the current Living Story can best be summed up in three factors:

1. Temporary content. I’m a completionist by nature. I like being able to do everything in a game, given enough time. However, since the Living Story mostly operates off a two week schedule, that only gives me (and many other players, judging by discussions on this forum) a limited window of opportunity to experience the content. Many of us have full-time jobs, families and other responsibilities that mean we can’t devote hours every day playing GW2 (as much as we’d like to!), so we’d greatly appreciate having that pressure of a ticking clock taken off our shoulders.

I know that you guys have made major strides in dealing with this, as shown with the new setup for Tequatl Rising and Twilight Assault. It is a big step in the right direction, and I commend you all for it.

However, there still remain many great and exciting events in GW2’s history that are now permanently out of reach. The raid on the Molten Alliance facility. Defeating Mai Trin and her Aetherblades. And even the smaller lead-up events like helping Braham retake Cragstead, or kicking Scarlet out of the Pavilion.

Could it not be possible to include these events as permanent content, accessed via instances or a “flashback NPC”? For example, we were able to replay the said assault on Cragstead just by revisiting the instance and talking to a NPC, so you guys already have the architecture to do this. It should be a fairly simple matter to allow players to redo the Living Story, same as how the Personal Story co-exists alongside the open world. New players can thus always have the opportunity to experience what older players did, broadening the content and adventures that GW2 has to offer, as well as being able to obtain rewards that they can only now look at in envy.

The GW2 world might move on, but the GW2 content needn’t have to disappear at the same time.

2. “Rushed” Pace. When the two-week release schedule was announced, I and many other players worried about what this could mean for the Living Story. In particular, we were concerned that this would lead to burnout, both among players who “can’t keep up” and for you guys, having to churn out content at such a blistering pace. (I work in software development too, so I know what work is involved in getting stuff created, tested and out the door.) In time, quality often begins to suffer, resulting in smaller, less polished releases.

Sadly, I have to say that this seems to be coming true. While the Living Story releases aren’t bad by any stretch, they feel… unsatisfying. Halloween 2013 in particular seemed to bring this point home. While learning more about Prince Edrick and Mad King Thorn’s history (great work on the dialogue and voiceovers, by the way!) was interesting, it felt like it was over far too soon. In contrast, Halloween 2012 had us going on a scavenger hunt to learn more about Mad King Thorn, followed by the introduction of his Labyrinth, the minigames, and taking the fight to Thorn himself in Ascent to Madness. Then everything wrapped up in Lion’s Arch with classic games of Mad King Says, a fitting conclusion to the end of Halloween.

I honestly feel that moving back to a monthly or bimonthly release schedule would give you guys more time to put together more substantial releases, on the scale of the first Halloween release. It also gives players more time to build up anticipation; part of the appeal of festive events like Halloween and Wintersday is BECAUSE they’re big and rare. Having “new releases” thrown at us every 2 weeks soon starts to get dull, because we haven’t had time to build up that sense of excitement. It’s a bit like riding a rollercoaster, or watching a horror movie. You can’t keep your audience on the edge of their seats all the time; you need to give them periods where they can calm down and relax, to return to a sense of normalcy.

3. Removal of previous permanent content. This one is more recent, and it stems from the Twilight Assault release and, to a lesser extent, the Tequatl Rising release (by the inability to complete the old Tequatl Boss achievement). Put simply, a lot of us were quite upset that Twilight Assault removed the “Forward/Up” path. I, along with many others, had not had the opportunity to try out that path yet, and now we never will.

I honestly do not see why the new Aetherblade path could not have been added as a new “elite dungeon path” that is accessible by talking to the NPC outside the dungeon. This preserves the ability of newer players to experience the old content, but also the new content. One excellent design decision of the Explorable dungeons was how each was largely self-contained to within the dungeon itself; what happened in the dungeon had no real impact on the outside world. However, this isn’t going to be the case with the Aetherblade path; one day we will defeat Scarlet, and then you’ll have newer players trying out the path who go “Who’s Scarlet? What are the Aetherblades? Why are they in this plant dungeon? This doesn’t make any sense!” Separating the Aetherblade path out from the normal dungeon and into its own elite path instance would solve these issues by making it clear that it takes place in its own point in time, separate from the old Twilight Arbor (and of course, bringing back F/U!)

4. Rewards. This may be outside the scope of the Living Story designers, but in keeping with keeping content “permanent”, I would also like the rewards from the Living Story to remain permanently available to players. I understand the desire to give players “prestige items” they can work for, but I feel that this role is already filled by Legendaries and, to a lesser extent, Ascended items.

As GW2 continues to grow and more and more items get introduced, it becomes easier for players to obtain a unique look simply by choosing whatever items they feel suits their aesthetic, rather than just going for whatever is the most expensive. (Let’s be honest. Look back at GW1. How many Monks do you remember seeing wearing Obsidian armor and Chaos Gloves? We all know that those players didn’t do it because they liked the look; they did it because they wanted to show off their wealth, or “keep up appearances”.)

Legendaries and Ascended items exist for the players who want to show off their wealth. Let the fashionistas have their cake too by letting them customise their look exactly how they want, via permanent content rewards that they can do at any time.

I sincerely hope that you guys will take this feedback on board. I feel that my suggestions would allow the Living Story to continue and grow the world of GW2, but not at the expense of slower or newer players. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for us.

I must admit, I’m still in the dark as to who scarletts actual enemy is. Is it every city? all races? all of Tyria? and why? just cause? Can’t be our chars – she’d just send small assassin teams to wipe us out. So she’s against someone/thing but what/who? It’s reached the stage of “Too late, no longer care to learn her motivations/reasons”
I just want the events to actually matter.
For that – we need some fleshing out of the story/world.
If there’s an enemy – what are they fighting us for?
Story and Lore breathe life into the world, the world as it is has moments of epic beauty but once you’ve mapped it all the story and lore are what bring you back. the LS has degraded to a rather shambled mess that seems to have no purpose anymore and no ties to the actual world of Tyria.

I like the LW updates, and I look forward to playing them when they come out. Although I do have some things that I dislike. The living world stories as a whole didn’t really seem to link in with each other; it seemed we were jumping from one thing to another randomly. I think it could be cool to help link them together with dynamic events. For example, instead of the crown pavilion just appearing, have a temporary dynamic event involving you helping out the construction of it, or dynamic events involving mysterious happenings in kessex hills for the upcoming release. With stuff like this, I think they could be linked together very nicely and provide more insight and hype for the next release and give it more a ‘living’ feel. I also think they should have world consequences to make it even more ‘living’. Like when I first heard about the scarlet update, the stream before we’re saying it all boils down to this, it’s going to be epic, and while the large scale events were really cool, I feel the actually story didn’t live up to my expectations. For example, when I tried to predict what the big thing was going to be, with Queen Jennah’s speech, I thought she was going to get assassinated (which she almost did). I think with big story plots like this, it would make it much more engaging. I know this could not have happened for story reasons, like with human story missions and CM dungeon, but something like this would be great IMO.

My biggest issue currently with the living world is the available achievements. I will say this is mostly just a personal issue, but I’ll say anyway. In any game with achievements or something similar, I absolutely despise it when achievements are released only for a set period, only to be removed, which makes them unobtainable forever (unless they allow the content again in the future). This really irritates me because I’d hate looking at a category in my achievements tab with empty spaces I know I’ll never be able to fill. Because of my possible OCD, I feel the need to grind out the achievements as fast as possible to make sure I can get all of them. Because of this, I find myself rushing through the content, not stopping to admire the work put into the content, and ultimately don’t find it fun. I think it would be awesome to be given the chance to revisit and get the ability to gain achievements that players didn’t manage the first time round, not just in places like crown pavilion (which has been confirmed to return with more bosses) I mean EVERYTHING. I know this is largely just a personal issue, but I thought I’d write it anyway.

My last thought is on the rewards. I think the rewards are cool, but I’d like to see some more variation rather than back pieces. They do look awesome but I don’t particularly find them interesting to work towards as we have had so many. I also don’t find minis to be an attractive reward as they just get deposited in my collections and forgot about. So it would be cool to see more reward variation.

All in all, I do really enjoy the updates and appreciate the work that goes into making them. These are just things I’d like to see personally.

P.S – sorry if there are any spelling or grammatical errors in here, wrote this off my iphone, which persists in trying correct gw2 words.

Thank you to the devs for giving us a chance to discuss this with you. There have been a number of things about this game that have been troubling me for a while. And thanks to the other posters in this thread for your civility so far.

I agree with much of what has been said so far, but I’ll reiterate/rephrase and try to give suggestions.

Slow down. I deeply appreciate that you’re producing so much content for us at no additional charge, but I’m afraid that your effort might be going to waste. I’m a completionist, and for games that I particularly like, I want to experience all the content they have to offer. When you put out something new every two weeks, I have to devote an inordinate amount of time to getting through everything before the next update appears. Even if you daisy-chain the removal of the content, so that it lasts for a month with a two-week overlap, or even if it’s permanent, everyone has moved on to the next thing and I’m stuck playing catch-up. An example is Twilight Aetherpath; it’s much too long and difficult for anyone to have an incentive to retry once they’ve gotten all the achievements, but I’m still missing several.

Worse is when you introduce extremely difficult content that is gone before we have a chance to really learn it. Liadri is one of the hardest fights in the game up to this point, and I had a month to get to know it – only a few hours effectively, because I had a major project that month – before it disappeared. Aetherblade Retreat was even worse, since it was only available for two weeks. Don’t get me started on SAB Tribulation Mode; I finished it at the eleventh hour (again, major project), and I was a jittery wreck by the end. I don’t want to discourage you from making tough encounters (I’ll take issue with your apparent penchant for one-shot kill mechanics in another thread), but leave them available for us to try and fail. It took me years to finally finish the Domain of Anguish, and I still haven’t tried Urgoz’s Warren or The Deep – but I still can if I want to.

And I think Guild Wars 1 is a fine model for introducing additional content, particularly Guild Wars Beyond. It was much easier to do this with Guild Wars’s heavy reliance on instances, but all the work you put into War in Kryta and Winds of Change is still there for me to play years later. And it will never go away. I can experience these quests at my own pace, but with the Living Story, you’ve shackled us to a train that’s getting faster and faster. Invite us to come along with you and enjoy what you’ve made. We’ll join you. Promise.

So please reduce the update schedule to once per month, and make every addition permanent (or at least fully revisitable, achievements and all, in some fashion). I know you got complaints for Flame and Frost being too slow, but that wasn’t because it was once per month – it was four very small installments spread over four months. Surely there is a middle ground.

I know you like to have exclusive one-time events, so that people can say “I was there for Day of the Tengu.” That’s fine, but keep it limited to seasonal festivals like Halloween and Wintersday. There’s no reason to carry that over to everything else.

Continued…

Bring it together. Right now the Living World does not form a cohesive narrative. It feels like a lot of disparate elements are being thrown at me, and they whiz by too quickly for me to connect with any of the characters or events. I have an excellent memory and can recall all manner of arcane minutiae from nerd lore (Turian biology is based on dextro-amino acids, for example), but I can barely remember what Canach was trying to do in Southsun Cove, and I certainly can’t remember why. A lot of the Personal Story characters weren’t very memorable either, but it’s much worse in the Living World.

Scarlet seems to be something of a bête noire for a lot of players, and I have mixed feelings about her. Her personality doesn’t bother me, but her apparent lack of motivation (besides causing trouble) does. She seems to be an attempt to unite the myriad enemies that have been introduced thus far, but there’s no reason why they’ve united or why she’s the one in control. They have nothing in common other than that they’ve been introduced as part of the Living World, so the only way to make sense of the proceedings is to break immersion. I’m interested to explore the ties she seems to have to the alternate steam creature universe that the Infinity Ball story touched on, but for the most part her powers are too vast and inexplicable to be more than mere writer’s fiat.

Build on what works. Guild Wars 1 introduced a large body of intriguing lore. The six gods, the Mursaat, Glint, and so forth. By all means, don’t play all your cards – if you’ve got cool plans for something, save it – but my favorite update so far, Bazaar of the Four Winds, showed that the Zephyrites had ties to Glint. It was just a hint (mostly, regrettably, not in-game but on your website), but it was there; a touch of the old tethering the new and vibrant to the world.

Other updates don’t feel like they fit in Tyria. Aetherblades in particular appear to have sprung into existence ex nihilo. It’s as though you’re throwing things in that seem cool, and I begin to doubt that you ever had much regard for how they fit into the established continuity in the long term. Of course, not everything is known yet, but shrouding everything in mystery for too long will cloud the narrative and alienate the audience.

Tequatl. Great stuff, really. Challenging content that requires a hundred people coordinating to succeed. The trouble is in the execution. Server infrastructure is not conducive to organizing large groups of people. I’ve only ever had success with a dedicated boss-killing guild, but they have to rely on clumsily ferrying guild members into overflows and competing with non-guildies for space. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked the words “Join in Sparkfly Fen”… Couldn’t we select our own overflows?

Fighting Tequatl successfully is an all-day affair. I have to enter the zone hours ahead of time to get a shot at a decent overflow, then spend that time waiting for the spawn window to open. I have to hope that I don’t go AFK for too long, or the server kicks me. Once he finally spawns, usually either at the very end of his window or too soon to prepare, we hopefully win, and I get a chest full of greens that almost (but not really) makes up for all the world bosses I could have fought in that time. This is the epitome of waiting to have fun.

By all means, make another fight like Tequatl. But if it requires a hundred people working together, give us the capability to get those hundred people in one place.

So again, thank you for your patience. I’m looking forward to similar threads in the future.

Here is a simple yet impactful change that I think would tremendously help this game out in its RPG element.

- Nothing is as powerful within a game as a good soundtrack, especially if the tunes aren’t just generic but iconic and something people can associate with certain areas and characters within the game.
- Don’t misinterpret that as though I am not aware that ambient soundtracks have their place to enhance the mood and feeling of different types of areas as well.
I find listening to the soundtrack a very enjoyable pastime, but to my regret I cannot associate many of them with certain places or characters.
- One example that I must draw attention to is “Legion Of Flames” which, according to the name, I should associate with the Flame Legion, but I associate it with Zhaitan.
- The soundtrack in and on itself is amazing, there are many different tunes for different purposes, but again (as is my standpoint with the LS as well) how it is executed/used within the game is the determining factor how we as players perceive it.

MY SOLUTION:

Make customized folders/playlists function that is LOCATION based. For example, make a folder that is (MY DOCUMENTS → Guild wars 2 → Music → Queensdale). And whatever music file we drop into that folder, will be played when we enter queensdale! This will not only save devs money from having to create new audio content, but also it is extremely easy to do! I feel this will definitely help with the “living and breathing world” that ANET advertised. This will make each area an UNIQUE experience to explore and not have to listen to repeated use of the same music for completely different environments. We ALREADY have a system in place that is the custom playlist. All ANET has to do is make it more customizable!

I think the two-week pace, the lack of well-developed story, and alllllllllllllllllllllll that other stuff are very important; but I won’t waste time by echoing others’ thoughts. Let’s just say, “I agree: 2 weeks isn’t enough dev time and it shows.”

One problem I have with the LS, and this game in general, is that it isn’t very challenging/rewarding. I don’t mean “It’s too EZ wtf!” I mean that the content, bosses, and etc. aren’t designed well enough to be interesting. Killing anything in this game has been very much a zerg-fest so far, and LS suffers a lot from that. Invasions are the most boring thing in this game to me.

In other MMO’s I’ve played, the best part about them was the incredibly interesting mob combat mechanics. Make it feel GOOD to kill Scarlet not only as part of a 200-man zerg spamming 1 on your Longbow… make it feel GOOD to kill Scarlet as a Thief or as a Warrior. Fix the mechanics of the bosses, and suddenly you have a platform for all kinds of ridiculously interesting stuff!

Keep up the good work Anet.

The number one issue in my view is the pace of the LS.

Every two weeks we get new content. Every two weeks, most of what was made available gets taken out.

For players who can’t complete the content for one reason or another, this I really depressing. Even worse, it is a cycle of dissuasion from playing. “Well, I missed the story that led to this one…might as well skip this since I’ve not clue what’s happening…..and this next one is even more confusing, now….”

This is also really disheartening when, say, you see Moto in Rata Sum. You look up Super Adventure box and IT’S SO COOL. Great weapon skins, fun idea, but…you can’t play it. That doesn’t make you want to play the game. At all.

Worst of all, though, it makes participating in these events stressful. If you don’t finish in two weeks, or get what you wanted, you’re screwed. This is your one chance. That’s ok for holiday events. That’s kind of their point. But to have this all year long, is just annoying and stressful and Skinner-esque.
This really needs to be fixed. I don’t care that I can catch up with the wiki. I want to play the game, not read it.

The mistake made was not bringing in Living Story as content, but as unrelated, competing content to the core game you spent years developing.

Living story is shallow, the connections are thin, and some of it is ludicrous. It is temporary. It changes the world in no meaningful way.. at all.

Yet, you barrage us with it. Mail, reminders, achievements temp loots, temp weapons, etc etc. You keep pushing us as if to say “what are you doing over there, playing GW2. You aren’t doing it right” You reward this temporary “cranked out” mess more than you do the rest of YOUR game.

As fast as the content comes, for some players, new players, you practically telling them to abandon the huge game you crafted to rush off and kill some cobbled up bad guy in a cobbled up story or OMG you will miss it forever.

You did not do this with the stories you added in GW. They did not compete with the game.. in fact, you had to complete campaigns to even participate. The stories were there for every player that completed proph and Factions, and in their own time, and in a manner consistent with the main campaign stories.

Living story, as it is now, divides the game, trivializes ALL of it. It is mediocre content at best.. and you shove it down our collective throats and largely ignore the rest of the world.

Apologies but as this is a chance to give proper feedback i’ll post a second time ^^

1) Permanent content – Theres a brilliant post here – forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/livingworld/lwd/To-Merge-the-Personal-and-Living-Stories/first#post3104133 with an amazing idea for making the past content playable. The ideas he’s posted also were amazing.

2) Timeline – GW1 has so far had a lifespan of what 7 years? And i would play it again in a heartbeat because the world was rich and alive. Story and lore made me love that world, with chars that each had their own motivations and backstory that made you love/hate them. Rurik was annoying but you could see he was genuinely worried and trying his best to save his people even at the risk of alienating himself from his family. logan comes off as a guy that badly needs a girlfriend.
3) Halloween last year was amazing – because of the scavenger hunt and the amazing titles, this years halloween just feels…empty. lifeless even.
4) The zephyr sanctum was amazing. i actually invited my dad over for dinner JUST to show him that first cinematic when you reached the top and you had the view of the amazing airship. (Could you please fix the model to show that cutscene using ingame graphics? a quality video of that would be perfect)
5) New land – theres a lot of us who have mapped the world on multiple chars – why? because we love the look and feel of your world. please add some more areas for us to map/explore on multiple chars.
6) Advance the story – As tech gets better and more and more games get released theres far more reasons to drop a game thats just not advancing/changing. The story needs to step up and advance like in the article posted that i linked. Scarlett is just filler, we want to see the world actually change. Not just random attacks that do nothing (the golds nice though, thanks).
7) I have played gw1 for so long that xmas simply doesn’t feel like xmas without your wintersday festivities. I love watching the towns change for the season and i get all excited about it. please keep it as entertaining as it was last year, if it’s like this halloween i’ll be a tad distraught.

I thank you for creating such a beautiful amazing world and I hope that you’re able to save it from what appears to be a great dumbing down/simplifying. The grind is getting out of hand compared to the games launch and many changes have detracted rather than added to this world. I personally won’t set foot in fractals as doing fractals to get gear to do more fractals just seems silly when i can be out exploring the awesome world and tripping over DE event chains that i’ve never experienced (some of those are amazing like the dwarven artifacts and the icy waterfall prison).
I’ve reached a point where I’ve mapped multiple times, done every jp and explorer and hero achieve, have my legendary and a pile of cool skins but I still keep logging in hoping that the next arc of the story will begin to breathe life back into this world.
Thank you for your time.

We need a story who is truly Dark, à la Warhammer, but not too Dark since we need to love something and protect it.

Thanks Arenanet for this oppertunity. I can only hope some of the more vocal over on the Lore Forums move across here as well to reiterate points.

I could add what I personally thought was good or bad about releases ect, but instead I’d like to attempt to foster some discussion between the community here.

Throughout this post, poster have been using Living World and Living Story as synonyms. I’d argue that they’re almost opposites, especially from a lore standpoint.

Living Story
As far as I understand the concept, the Living Story is essentially a replacement for the Personal Story; each arc contains a story which is contained within that arc, with it all tying together through an overarching narrative (in the personal story, that would be the dragons, in the Living one it’s Scarlet). Much like the personal story, the arc themselves are not spurred by the previous arcs, but are joined together.

The strategy in this circumstance would be one multi-year story explained in parts, which creates a narrative for players to follow beyond the personal story. This strategy allows for players to gain a sense of the world evolving, and with the aid of systems in place or new systems (the web for the former and the suggestions in this post for latter) allows Anet to tell grand stories they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

Living World
As far as I understand this, the idea would be to create a framework where GW2 could operate much like our own world; there’s always something going on, no matter how big or small, and story arc is simply one major event that’s being focussed on; for example, we’re focussing on the Bloody Prince’s awakening at this moment and celebrating Halloween, whilst the Krait are also building their tower (which Marjory and her group is investigating).

In this idea, there would be multiple stories running simultaneously, with one major story taking the spotlight for a period; there is no overarching plot of the living world, but arcs are free to deal with any story that takes the writer’s fancy, without having to tie them in. There is less overall progression here though.

The Decision
So the question for me is simple; what would players rather? Living Story, or Living World?

I do need to point out that there is no having your cake and eating it to. Following a Living Story requires much more top-down coordination and will require that each arc in some way ties into the main story. Likewise, the Living World requires more bottom-up coordination, and means that there doesn’t have to be a narrative at all. In both cases, the way the content is developed is strikingly different, and they both benefit from different changes to the way content is currently developed (based on what little we’ve been told).

The former benefits hugely from the two week fixed schedule, as it keeps the story in players minds. The latter would almost be better off with no fixed schedule, but would mean that an individual release may need to have elements from several story arcs so those arcs make sense.

Either way, I’m excited to hear people’s thoughts, even if it’s just telling me that I’m wrong and we can have both. Thanks for reading.

Mularc

I like the concept behind the living story, and I like the plot you have so far with the living story, but it doesn’t really seem compatible with casual play. I wound up missing the last bit with Scarlet because the dungeon was geared to a 5-man group, and it was a pain in the rump just trying to get a group together.

I really think that the dungeons and private instances for living stories should be akin to personal stories. If you’re alone, you can take it on, and it might be a little difficult, and if you’re with a group, it will be scaled up to handle the group. This way, someone who doesn’t have access to a group can still solo it, but someone who wants to experience it with friends can.

The other thing is, while some of the personal story dungeons have been interesting, some of them have been frustratingly hard too. It’s a little discouraging when to see the end of a living story arc you need to get your hands on some really skilled players, or that there’s a ‘trick’ to getting it done. (Case in point, the entire mine / bomb thing from Southsun Cove, the Asura Aetherpirate lair with the rotating lasers around a central column). Don’t get me wrong – they’re interesting concepts, but for the more casual player these are lessons in frustration, and means missed opportunities to take part in the living story.

I just feel that the living story should be inclusive, not exclusive. For some of the more nifty prizes for taking part, I can accept ‘go out and take part’ as being a prerequisite, but having there be a skill based barrier to being involved, I think, is a bit much. The previous dungeon with Scarlet (involved with the Queen’s celebration), I think was almost perfect – it allowed you to get involved, and while the final fight with Scarlet was a bit difficult for some players, it wasn’t really a barrier to getting to see the end of that arc.

Thank you for your time.

One thing I’m interested in seeing is the development of the dragons and areas effected by the dragons. In regards to the personal story, you could do something similar to the living story in GW1. Allow players the option to revert back to the pre-living story content. This would allow you to progress the maps in Orr and allow players to see improvements to the desolate area. Another area I would like to see improvement on is the story progression as a whole. I know it’s been mentioned before but how long is it gonna take for ebonhawke and the charr to sign that stupid treaty??? When are we gonna beat back the Centaurs for good? As a game with a living story, some events must go. Some areas need to be opened up. A great way to end these events and still make them accessible is to turn them into dungeons. Get rid of the ulgoth event and replace it with a dungeon where we chase him down and finish him off for good with human and charr technology. That world boss event no longer exists except in the dungeon form and humans and charr now roam the area possibly battling minor centaur factions after the centaur “kingdom” has fallen. Similarly with the ogres in the fields of ruin, although that doesn’t even need to be a dungeon but rather destroying the camp for good or turning it into a charr settlement.

The biggest gripe I have is that I want to fight the dragons. Scarlett has been around far too long and is really burning me out on the game. If she is still around and causing problems after the turn of the year, I may end up just quitting the game because it feels like we’re just spinning our wheels.

Incentive is the key i believe in the MMO industry, when new content is introduced players will play it for the rare drops but once it becomes too difficult to farm or new content is introduced they will forget it. I think if old events were to have a bonus loot for time uncompleted buff, then people would roam to find events that haven’t been touched, this would add a kind of compete and get out of LA to get special items kinda mood whilst also providing great incentive to play PVE.

The whole big world events thing was good for awhile but there need to be a lot more of them that dont take years to complete (for the casuals) and also new zones with new fun and challenging jump puzzles and trivial matters would give more content for end game too.

Armour sets and weapon skins are a key target for a lot of players in guildwars 2 and provide something to do or spend money on. The sweeter they look the more people that want them, so perhaps if a new feature involving reputations with new sets of gear dependent on the tier of rep you have with them were introduced? players could gain the reputation for completing world events and spending all the ascended materials they don’t want sitting in their bags or banks on ascended gear for reputations? You could probably introduce dungeons or use existing ones for this reputation gain as well. Thank you for reading they were just a few of my ideas.

I want to mention something about Roleplaying

I know it may not be important to everyone, but it was be nice to receive more emotes.
Reward emotes for doing tasks would be nice too, and could add for bonus rewards.

More Titles would be great

Housing. Player Housing, I know the RP community have been begging for this for a long time.

There are some ideas to consider for rewards in the future.

Thats my second reply to that topic, i wanted to add that as part of end game more lvl 80 dungeons are good idea as well…

I have a few things I wish to say about this topic.

The first and most important thing is making us care about what is happening. When a player first starts, usually their introduction to the story and lore of Tyria is through the personal story. We spend 20 levels being introduced to our race and then 60 levels fighting dragons, starting with joining an order.

I’ve finished my personal story, and was left with someone saying something along the lines of “now we know elder dragons can be killed, let’s prepare for the next one.” Six months later, with no dragon activity, I’m at the Queen’s Jubilee and Scarlet shows up. Why should I care about her? The problem comes in the introduction. With Zhaitan, we spend 20 or 30 levels being introduced to his minions, and then LA get’s invaded and we have to fight back, losing someone we care about in the process. Right now, there are so many things in the game we care about, and the LS is trying to make us care about something new every few weeks. If you want to keep mystery in the game, answer a question we already have and make a few more related questions in the process.

Another issue is the pace of the LS. I like the two week releases, but the length of any given storyline is too short to provide good story structure. The following should be present in every LS installment:

• Start in a state of relative peace/safety
• Introduce a small problem that we care about
• Have us the player somehow discover a bigger problem
• Have the situation escalate over a few weeks
• Climatic encounter that somehow changes the world permanently
• Back to a state of relative peace/safety

Note that these in order to develop these well, the story should be over the course of multiple months. Use the two week installments to introduce one small step of the story, not half of the thing. Also, each update only add a couple achievements if any and have them all available for the entirety of the story. If the story lasts multiple months then people with less time can still do them.

One way to implement this would be to have one or two big stories that span between festivals. Or maybe one year a new lieutenant of Primordius attacks and it is still attacking during Dragon Bash. Essentially, having longer stories would fix the problem of it jumping around so much and allow people who don’t play as much to still participate.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

Thorzilla.9124:

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.

I agree with that in every aspect and one additional comment is that from the suggestions in this thread so far i see that people wouldn`t bother to have content in more than every 2 weeks if that content was better…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Moshari-8570
The OP had a lot of great ideas and i would love to see them implemented, but they require all living story to take place in new zones put behind PS blocks. That being said my idea is an expansion of his and would allow for new and existing LS content to have lasting affect on existing open world zones. For example after the Scarlet plot line wraps up, in zones that had portal invasions take place, leave 15 to 20 group of enemies from the invasions (eg Twisted, Molten, Aethers) and then have them slowly trickle out of the zone (at the rate of say three or four groups a week), maybe have some dynamic events to go along with it.(that would give them about a month in zone before the spawns would go back to normal) Finely have a abandoned Aetherblade base and/or some broken Twisted lying around the zone to remind players of what happened there.

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!

Agreed with you.

But then, do you notice that in Southsun Cove, the Karkas have taken over the map until the players (in large numbers) have to work to take back those camps?

Well, that’s the only map in the game that do that, sadly not for low level areas.
Why?

Because if low level areas have not many players to defend towns against any mobs (say like Centaurs), then the newbies who just join in to Queensdale would be taken by surprise that such low level area/maps are so hard for them to level up and get skill points.

I think that some of the previous living world stories/quests/events should be allowed to be repeated by players who missed them.

Just like how we can reply missions maps in GW1 to re-tell the stories.

I find that GW2 has no replayability in personal stories after you have completed them once per character.
Should this replayability is brought in for personal stories, then the reward should be scale down a bit (e.g. 1st time doing it would reward a black lion key, but subsequent repeating it should reward a bag that stand a chance to get the black lion key).

I’ve kind of lost my groove in the game. I’m a casual solo player. I have a life away from my computer that requires more attention and effort than trying to keep up with a game.

I loved Guild Wars, all 3 campaigns. I liked the way the story was fluid and you could progress through it at your own pace. I really like that about Guild Wars 2 as well. Except, its just one story. I am not in anyway trying to diminish the epicness of the story as a whole. But after doing it at your own pace, it suddenly ends and you get thrown into this enforced race to keep up. But you’re not keeping up with a single cohesive story arc, you’re chasing a series of short stories with no real cohesive back story that feels rushed and ad-hoc.

3 Guild Wars campaigns, an expansion, the books, the wikis, the community, all built this massive backstory of lore that could have some kind of impact on the current history of the game, and you throw us the Aetherblades and Scarlet?

I’m not a hard core player. I work 6 days a week. But I like good stories. I will play good stories. The game doesn’t even have to be a great game if the story is good. I play solo because I can’t devote honest time to a guild. I played through Guild Wars because the stories in the game were fluid and made sense within the lore. There was also a personal sense of being able to achieve something on my own, even if it took me longer than people that were progressing through the story far faster than I ever could.

The time limit on the Living Story, and the sense of missing out on bits of the story, frustrates the bejeebuz out of me. I don’t much care for the trophies or even the achievements. But I’d like to be able to follow the Living Story at my own pace, feel like its actually building or fits within the lore of the game, and get a sense of achievement for playing through a complete story.

(Secondly… Completely off topic… Can we please get rid of the RNG for things like Black Lion Chests or Mini packs. I don’t mind buying the outfits, picks/axes/scythes, other goodies and more. But I like to know what I’m getting before I buy it. Not get a half dozen of the same item that everyone else already has multiples of. If you’re going to have RNG items like that, make it worth the cost of entry and stop putting anything less than Rares (or something) in them.)

I love the game in most other respects. I love the Hearts, map completion, daily and monthly achievements, the scale of the game for different sized groups, the leveling system, world events/champions/dragons/bosses… Hell, I even love the gem store a little too much.

But I have hardly played in the past couple of months because I just simply cannot devote the time it now requires, just to keep up. Let people fly through the stories and get the achievements and the titles and the items associated with those stories, but unless you make it possible for someone like me to keep up, you’re on track to becoming that game I play on my day off when its raining and I have nothing else to do.

One of the biggest driving concepts of the ‘living world’ was to viscerally feel and see the changes in the world. I feel that this concept has really fell far from the intended goal. Each update feels very ephemeral and very little changes actually make any impact whatsoever.

This, coupled with the ’Filler’* type bosses/enemies we have seen makes these updates just feel like pointless fluff with an associated checklist of random achievements. I do not feel like the story has gone anywhere since Zhaitan was killed. This is after an entire year has passed in real time. We’ve seen no changes in Orr, no changes to the world from his demise, nothing. Zombies continue to spawn, Orr is still a wasteland, nothing. The ‘living’ world hasn’t changed at all. The ‘living’ story hasn’t made any impact on the world.

We’ve had zero progress in ‘explorable’ areas since the original Karkaland debut. That was quite a while ago and even that was pointless filler.

**Read: Filler, no real impact on the main driving story. Dragons.

I see a reoccurring topic that people want story intervals that are introduced less often, but more thoroughly. And that the 2 week intervals are too fast for story content, but that people do like new stuff coming. I guess the problem there comes with introducing something new at the cost of overwriting the main event.

Also, something of my own. The marketing on this is a little overboard in my opinion. I haven’t seen anyone post about this, but I would much rather have a big part go largely unannounced and players stumble upon this giant Krait thing and everyone freak out, than the current over-hyping content.

I’m sure that’s just a little thing though. Maybe just me.

Whenever i talk to someone, guildie or random player, i hear them share my own feelings about the living story: basically a 15 days grinding fest that brings nowhere and gives terrible rewards (a gift node for corn or crystals is a fairly poor prize to spend my time on).
I’m sure occasional players like that kind of content but real players, those who spend 4 to even 12 hours on the game, feel kinda scammed by such little patches and desire something more consistent.
yes you did add ascended weapons (which most of the people are not happy about) but they are for the small elite of players who can afford dumping 200g into upping their crafting and another 50 to 60 g per weapon – even a rich player who wants to gear up alts would have issues affording different weapon sets/stats/combos according to the situation (think of a guardian or warrior in pvp, wvw, pve with a guild, pve with a pug etc).
at least ascended rings and backpacks were easy to get in fractals, earrings and necky not quite so tho, especially in a wvw guild which doesn’t have time for guild missions. from there you just went downhill adding the super expensive weapons. i personally ended up making multiple legendaries for my main rather than ascended stuff. why since it’s more expensive? because i can change stats on the fly and your trend has been to update them to the highest (ascended) standard, so chances are you’ll do it again next time you add more powerful stuff.
sadly i’ll have to spend my gold in ascended gear crafting once you release it, but i think new players will be highly disheartened when they see the amount of resources they need to be at the top of the game (also having the best gear doesn’t really matter since dungeons are still the same and the improvement on weapons stats/dmg is negligible in most of the game aspects – except maybe sPvP). in addition to that your living content doesn’t help at all about having more gold to afford all those upgrades and keeps me busy with achievements for maybe 1 day and a half, after which i got nothing to do once again. the concept of ‘’grind it till they nerf it’’ applies to some of your living content provided there’s something to grind and you don’t get sent into an overflow. it helps a bit with money making for a couple weeks, but still you yourselves stated this game would have been different than others grinding-wise, and i’m not seeing that at all (ever been to frostgorge or queensdale to a champ farming zerg? after a while you just want to uninstall the game cause it’s so boring, yet it’s your best option to get gold/karma). in a game that isn’t meant to revolve on farming there shouldn’t be farming zergs (the zerg also followed the living content during the last months, moving to southsun first, then pavilion and finally scarlet invasions, probably getting ready for whichever dungeon you’re adding tomorrow. your TA path 4 has been farmed for the first few days, now no one cares anymore. boredom is spreading out and the 15 days patches (along with revamping old world bosses aka giving them a couple more skills and a ton of HP) look like something you throw in here and there to keep people from realizing you got no real patch in your pockets.
new content should’t be about revamping, or pumping up existing stuff. why? because this is a game and it’s supposed to be entertaining, not frustrating. old players nowadays log in, do the daily (or wvw for a few hours), do a couple explorable paths ignoring the annoying ones, go to frostgorge and start farming for hours on end (with the occasional 5 hours spent on completing all the living achievements at once the very first day they come out). doesn’t it look like a redundant job to you? worse than going to the office every day. wvw is a bit more fun (if you are on a decent server) but could you really spend all your day in wvw every day of the year pressing 1 in a big group cause skill lag will get you killed if you try to use any other skill? we really really really need lasting consistent content.

Also, this:

Theres a brilliant post here – link with an amazing idea for making the past content playable. The ideas he’s posted also were amazing.

I don’t mind Scarlet, but it’s not enough. That’s a side story. We can’t just have side stories to tread water. The world needs to PROGRESS. We took down one dragon. We need to take down another five eventually. I don’t expect to have them all dead by next year, but I expect to have at least one dead every year or two, and we’re already running late on #2.

We need to get moving on a second dragon within the year. Maybe Jormag, maybe Kralkatorik, maybe Primordus, whatever. Don’t care which, but we need to move forward. We need a new dragon as a target, and we need a steady addition of new zones for explorers to explore. We need at least one new Caledon Forest style zone per year, and at least 2-3 other permanently available mini-zones like Southsun Cove. Minor tweaks alone won’t cut it.

Beware, much verbosity below. So much that I had to split it into multiple posts.

My Story

When I start a new character, s/he narrates “this is my story”, but it isn’t. My role in GW2, be it personal (past level 30ish), dungeon or living story is more akin to that of Uatu the Watcher or Robin than any sort of protagonist. Instead of a lurid tale that I become invested in, I am eating popcorn watching NPC theater. This is one of the most biting contrasts between GW2 and its predecessor, which threw you into the fire and grabbed your heartstrings from the very beginning and never let go.

In the context of the living story, this situation is painfully apparent. At least there are token attempts to feature your character in personal or dungeon story. In the living story my character has no place. To make things worse, sometimes the NPCs don’t have a place either.

Fun

There has been a trend in the living story material away from fun to time consuming. Part of this is the achievement grind. At first this was lessened by the inclusion of optional daily achievements, but now those dailies have become required, which can make completion of living story impossible for a casual player that only logs in on the weekend.

Another part is the difficulty. I finally took a shot at the new Twilight Arbor path. I was the only one that hadn’t done it before, but even with 4 experienced people it took us over four hours and we only completed it because I could tank the Clockheart almost indefinitely / while others rallied (only time I’ve seen revive orbs put to good use). There’s difficult and then there is “there is no way that this is possibly a way I want to invest my time” or, more succinctly, “this is dumb”. I could have done multiple runs in other dungeons during that time and had more fun. I stuck with it because I figured there would be some sort of story pay off to wrap things up with Scarlet or half way decent reward at the end, but there wasn’t any. I expect there to be some challenge; it gets boring without one. It needs to be balanced though, which the current story dungeons seem to have down pretty well.

Tequatl is a similar example, only it is timed so it doesn’t feel like a slog fest. I love that it is harder and more involved than “stand here and let auto-attack fly”, but it would be nice if it didn’t take the level of numbers and coordination that it currently does as it creates a huge barrier of entry for meaningful participation in the event.

Consequences

To me “living story” is something that is alive. You can trace its life path and see how it logically evolved and what its done. As a story moves through life you can see the footprint it has had upon the world and those within it. Generally speaking this doesn’t happen. Folks have already put forward a number of good suggestions. I figure I’ll toss in one more: Make the Living Story the WvW of PvE. That tag line doesn’t quite describe it right, so here goes.

We saw the start of this approach with the Zephyr Sanctum arc where Kiel and Gnashblade faced off, but the contest was left to the players to determine who won. Expand on that. Leave instances with choices players have to make that gets tallied for some impact down the road.

Alternatively (and this is where the WvW-esque part comes in), cull the metrics for who completes the Living Story steps. Take those total achievement points and map them out by Species, Profession and Personality. Then have these impact the game world. In essence the influence of the players will spread or morph based upon who completed living story steps. Lion’s Arch is an easy place to center this around

Example: More Asura are completing Living Story than any other species, so suddenly the Asura start slowly taking over Lion’s Arch. You see more asura walking around and people talk more favorably about asura. Maybe Asura PCs get a 1% discount in Lion’s Arch. In the extreme, after several months of the Asura on top, Lion’s Arch decides that its in its best interest to sign a permanent treaty with Rata Sum.

Example: More Necromancers completed last month’s Living Story arc, now this month all necro powers get a 5% cooldown bonus, including the NPCs, plus there’s now a few more necro NPCs amongst the mobs. May it actually unlocks or change some dynamic event changes.

Example: More folks with a high ferocity completed living story last month so now the more warlike NPCs get bonuses. So the Centaurs and Sons of Svanir get +5% Health, but if this goes on too long then its +10% Health for the second month in a row, 15% for the third and so on. In addition to getting a bonus those same baddies initiate events more often. Note that the PCs don’t get anything, but the NPCs are inspired by their ferocious behavior.

In essence people are fighting over the world and Lion’s Arch in particular. You can also set this up so that each server evolves on its own.

End Part 1

Continuation of Part 1

Timing

I liked how there was a release at the start of the month and then an update two weeks later, but you could still go back and do the elements of the first two weeks. However, even though you effectively had a month to do one part of the living story you only had two weeks to do the second part. Overlapping story elements is a good thing as it gives users more flexibility in attending to stuff. However, it can make it harder to do a continuous story.

It may work well to take a page from Babylon 5. Have one continuous story going on. This updates/moves to the next segment every four to eight weeks, and it lasts a year. Then have a parallel series of episodes that is composed of unrelated content. They can be standalone, two parters, etc. Each episode is the same length, but its rollover is staggered two to four weeks from the continuous story arc. The episodic stories can also be used to introduce elements that are later used in the continuous story. Time blocks can be extended or shrunk as needed/desired.

Competing Time

This dovetails with Timing and Fun, above. I decided to finally try starting up a new character, but then playing that new character conflicted with completing Living Story content. When I have only limited amount of time, I’m going to jump on the Living story stuff since it’s a limited time only deal, and it might have something really cool like the noir scene during dragon bash. However, so much of the Living Story is just a grind and I try to close 50 doors or kill 100+ Aetherblades. This means that I then don’t have time to play the new character that I wanted to start up. That the Living Story material is all or mostly level 80 based dashes any thoughts I have of using the new character for it. I find this situation disappointing.

Currencies

A different currency each time lets people customize their rewards. This is awesome, but the multiple currencies is also burdensome. I have appreciated that there is a way to dump off old currencies (e.g. fortune cookie wrappers, jade tickets etc.), and this helped address this issue; though, there is not yet one for the lion’s arch commendations from when folks donated supplied to help repair Lion’s Arch.

Follow “Wouldn’t if be cool if?” with “Does this make sense?”

It seems that a great deal of GW2 is driven by the question “wouldn’t it be cool if?” As a result we have umpteen sentient species, pirates, steampunk, skull shaped helicopters without stabilizers, mad scientists, more pirates, underwater ninjas, etc. GW1 was more limited, but it still had a dazzling variety and crazy imaginative landscapes, plots and foes. Unlike GW2, GW1 nearly always managed to reasonably explain how everything fit together as a whole. As a result, it felt like a more real, a more living world, unlike GW2.

The living story elements of GW2 have, unfortunately, continued this trend. Taking the Aetherblades as an example, they came out of left field with bleeding edge technology, vast armies and elaborate bases hidden in already established and well traveled areas. Even within GW2’s hectic pel mel they didn’t make any sense. Where’s their supply lines? How did they get technology no one else has? How did they build everything in secret? Where did they get the recruits? These are a few of the questions that should have been answered, but were instead handwaved or at best given very shallow answers. Frankly, it was insulting.

Honorable mention goes to the Queen’s Jubilee. The extravagance of the arena by the Queen tells us that Kryta has slipped further into decadence and that she is seeking to distract her people with entertainment rather than actually fix the problems of bandits and centaurs, which I love, or I would if I could trust that this is what was actually going on rather than it being another “wouldn’t it be cool if?”.

Opposite all of those, Southsun Cove and the Molten Alliance were given back stories that worked reasonably well within the setting, and they felt solid.

In reading some of the posts, I get the feeling that maybe some of this was addressed in web posts of some form. If so, that is lazy; though, it may be that developers have felt that approach forced upon them due to a short development cycle, in which case, please see Timing above.

Leverage Existing Assets

Even though I thought the Molten Alliance was silly, I liked how it leveraged two existing factions, rather than creating something new. This immediately grounded the story in the paradigm of the GW2 Setting. There are plenty of existing assets within the setting that can be leveraged similar to what was done with the Molten Alliance. For example, there’s an antagonist summit in Brisbain Wildlands. Let’s see something come of that!

This is already crazy long, so I’m going to wrap up here.

Stop deleting/replacing content. Add it instead. TA F/U, previous holiday events, etc. Part of the reason WoW is a mainstay is because it has a huge wealth of content already available, and part of the reason Cataclysm was not very well received was because they spent so much time revamping content. If you keep deleting stuff you’ll be in the exact same place you were at release. Hell, where are we now? The big chunks of content that I can think of that are popular, and still available, are FotM and Scarlet invasions.

Is the Living Story a means to an end, or an end in and of itself? Because there are already plenty of great systems to simulate a living world. More and bigger meta-events, etc. DEs and MEs are the meat and bones of the game, but how many have actually been permanently added outside of Southsun?

It really all comes down to one thing: Is the game building a bigger snowball of content for people to dive into? At the moment, it seems to occasionally do that, but not enough.

Alright, I’ll toss my hand into this frying pot as well and state my view of the Living Story in the most complete form possible. To do this I’ll divide it by subject, as there are IMO a lot of failing points and even more places for improvements.

And to note, I only discussed the Living Story in how it is and how what there is can/needs to be improved, rather than what I feel could be added in new motions.

(Side note: ANet, please increase the character limit)

Pacing of Story
I’ll start off with what I feel is the primary problematic crux in the “Living World” – the pacing of the story. In short, it’s too slow. Now don’t misunderstand me! I’m not saying “produce the udpates faster!” I’m no fool, I know such isn’t possible. In fact, I’d say the opposite.

Please bring the updates back to once-a-month. In my opinion, every two weeks for an update is too fast, especially with so much temporary content that can disappear either in two weeks or four weeks and you just don’t ever really know. Even if you improve communication for how long content lasts, how long the temporary stuff lasts still is too short in too many cases for its amount. And it’s even weirder that the Living World achievements can never be achieved after they go into Historical, despite old promises of otherwise. Giving an extra two weeks for development and testing would, I hope, also improve the quality of the content – as things stand, it feels like ArenaNet’s stance is “quantity, not quality” and that stance has to go out the window and into the sewers. It just isn’t healthy. While more things to do is never bad, sacrificing quality for that is no good – you destroy any memorable feelings the story or content can have.

Back to the point though – pacing of the story. It isn’t that the updates come too slowly, but rather that we get too little per update. Take, for example, the month of September and October – the combined content of SAB:Back to School, Tequatl Rising, and Twilight Assault. What did we get for story? Moto was pretty juicy story, but with Tequatl Rising we just got three points (“Tequatl got stronger for unknown reasons” “Rytlock told Rox to hunt Tequatl down” and “Bobby Stein promises there’s more to the story”) we didn’t even get a short story to it, and then with Twilight Assault? What did we learn? Caithe knew of Ceara when she was in the Grove, Scarlet made a deal with the Nightmare Court (which you’d only learn via the short story), and Ceara knows a secret of Caithe – oh, and somehow she can capture the sylvari best known for her guile and stealth…

We got next to nothing in-game about Scarlet in Twilight Assault, just like with Clockwork Chaos (what we got in-game then was "Scarlet’s behind the Molten Alliance and Aetherblades, and is norn-, charr-, hylek-, and asura-trained). If you want people to be invested in the story, you have to give them more than these miniscule breadcrumbs, and they must be in the game itself somehow.

TL;DR In short, what I’m saying here is that you need to produce more plot points in the game itself each update. It doesn’t matter how, just that it’s done. Make it come out of a grumbling skritt in the sewers of Lion’s Arch if you must, just get it in the game.

Mechanical Content Updates
I feel that too much of the content that’s being pushed out is catering to the higher-tiered groups of players. Tequatl, champ loot, Ascended gear… these are all high-end stuff or stuff that – intentionally or not – promote farming. To paraphrase a question I saw in Queensdale the otherday: “Remember when Guild Wars 2 was more than a ’where’s the zerg’ game?”

If you think about it, too much of the content favors big groups, and is rather harmful to solo play. Tequatl’s obvious here, but look at the champion loot bags – while they don’t outright promote farming, champions aren’t meant to be solo’d so it’s pretty much moot to those who like playing outside of the large groups. Mad King’s Labyrinthe – the place is full to the brim with crowd controlling enemies. Go to fight one enemy, and you’ll soon be fighting ten more because you’re getting pushed, pulled, or immobilized at the wrong times in the wrong places. Best way to survive? Zerg! The Crown Pavilion – place was full of Veterans with Legendary bosses. Good luck solo’ing in there. Best way to survive? Zerg!

On the flip side, it feels like there’s a power creep that’s happening too fast. A lot of the game is rather a joke with Exotic gear, and now Ascended gear is being added in faster and faster. Soon enough, content’s going to be either a peace of cake, kittenly because you’re intentionally not getting top gear, or will have to be made harder to compensate for the power creep. Slap in the new limited-time skill we’re getting and the fact we’re likely to be getting even more of such skills and… well, power creep happens. And when you make these things time-gated or worse, limited-time only? New players will be left in the dust.

Suffice it to say: not a fan.

Please give some stuff for the non-zerg, non-hardcore players – like you did when you added Vexa’s Lab.

The Unpopular/Old Have A “No Touching!” Sign
This isn’t entirely Living Story related, but it is perhaps my biggest gripe of all, really. So I feel it needs being said. There seems to be an unspoken (publicly at least) saying that “if players don’t use it, we won’t improve it.” To paraphrase Colin from PAX – they won’t improve charr armors “yet” because they aren’t popular. It seems to be going over your – the developers’ – heads that they aren’t popular because of the armor clipping. Yeah, there’s some other reasons but that’s by far among the biggest (second biggest is likely “I don’t like them because I’m a GW1 player and they destroyed Ascalon” or the such).

On the flip side, it feels like any old content – like, for example, the Personal Story – isn’t going to ever get overhauls, even minor ones, unless it’s something of focus for the community like the world bosses. They’ll at best get bug fixes. But imagine how much better the personal story would be if you went in and improved some of the big boss fights? How many more players would be more willing to replay if Retribution (retaking Claw Island) was more than “escort this NPC, capture these points, old Tequatl fight, we win!”? Even if it alters the plot a little (like, for example, making the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan a returning character – perhaps having it lead the assault on Claw Island and altering the cinematic to show it killing your Order mentor) some retroactive changes wouldn’t be hurtful – especially in later Personal Story.

And with the Living Story – why must the instances be temporary? Why not having them as expansions to the Personal Story? Will the Personal Story and what it affects be forever labeled as “forbidden” for touching because it’s meant to be stuck in 1325 AE or something? Why not bring back some removed Living Story content that would make sense to remain? For example, the events from Flame and Frost – the Molten Alliance has returned in the invasions. Why not having isolated forces keep at a “personal invasion”? Or the dungeons… were they ever really needed to be removed? It’d be like removing The Ruined City of Arah just because that story “was told.” They’re instanced and often out of the way. And simply bringing them back due to a change of heart wouldn’t be some grand blasphemy.

And just a little peeve I had – Twilight Assault. Why remove the Forward/Up path? Yes, it was perhaps the most unpopular dungeon path, but think about why it was – it was hated for one thing, and one thing only: the boss fight. Fix the boss fight, and it would have been perhaps the best Twilight Arbor explorable path of the three. I would have rather you remove Laurant’s path, and alter the F/U path so that Laurant would have a better chance at surviving… and if he did he’d follow you to the Nightmare Tree where he would take control rather than the spider girl (forgot name), thus you get 2 versions of the boss in one path. Would have been far more interesting, especially since the F/U path has three things unique unto that path – the husks, the bees, and fighting with Laurant.

TL;DR Don’t just ignore or remove unpopular content. Think of why it’s unpopular and fix it. Otherwise you’ll just funnel players to small areas and leave the rest of the game desolate – and by the “remove unpopular content” (or “replace unpopular content”) you’d be removing most of the game. Not a really good idea, IMHO.

It’s Not A “Living World” Story, It’s “Scarlet’s Story”
I’ve heard on the forum in the past that it isn’t a “living story” but a “random story.” I disagree with this. But I will say it is not a “Living World” nor a “Living Story” – it is a progressional story where earlier chapters are removed (thus leaving new players questioning what’s going on).

In my opinion, a “random story” would probably be preferable to what we have. A Living World would have multiple plots ongoing at once, in often unpredictable sequences. There are four cases I’d like to point to where a Living World was done… somewhat accurate.

• Shadow of the Mad King – in this update, we got the Modus Sceleris and Skritt Burglar events, the Forsaken Halls and Vexa’s Lab mini-dungeons, and the main plot of Halloween. You had the main plot, but you updates a large number of maps with stuff unrelated to the main plot – this has been lacking since, more or less.
• Flame and Frost: Retribution/Super Adventure Box – in April early this year, we got 2 updates only days away from each other, unrelated and though the second was initially an April Fool’s joke it became part of the Living World and even had some open world alterations when it was viewed by the community as just a joke. Two event plots, unrelated, occurring simultaneously.
• Cutthroat Politics – most of this update was extremely lackluster, with nothing but repeated content throughout. It was overall sad for an update. But there was one thing it did good: the preview to Queen’s Jubilee, with the tent over the Great Collapse.
• Blood and Madness – same as Cutthroat Politics, it was rather lackluster in content, probably because most of the team’s focus was on Twilight Assault, but one thing it did great was the preview for the Tower of Nightmares content.

The good points I listed are needed more of:

• We need more unrelated and permanent, open world activities to do being added. Events, jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, ambient dialogues – doesn’t really matter what. So long as they’re 1) permanent, 2) affecting areas of the world unaffected by the main plot, and 3) not related to any plot. They’re just additions for the sake of expanding the world’s story, not the “living story.”
• Previews to future living stories. And these previews don’t have to be only happening one update before the preview’s release. Imagine if we had that tent over the Great Collapse back with Dragon Bash? Or if we had Cragstead added in The Lost Shores with Braham present there, us not knowing who his mother is. but perhaps with him saying something about his mother fighting dragons. Things added months before they become relevant? THAT makes an interesting trail of intrigue, because we’ll start looking at anything and wondering “will that lead to something new?” And when you have a steady of the first point in, we’ll be wondering if it’s just a stand-alone addition, or something to further the story.
• And lastly, multiple activities happening at once. What if both Tequatl Rising and SAB:BtS were happening all month long, added at the same time? Two unrelated things happening at the same time. It would feel more like a living, breathing, world that is so sought after.

Scarlet Briar
And now I must come to the most… tenuous issue. It is very easy to get up in flames about Scarlet. Many call her a Villain Sue. The thing is, she isn’t – not entirely. The problem is that you would only know this if you listened to this interview. – if you only know her from the game, then you know nothing about her except she’s behind everything in the Living Story, to which I go point back to the Pacing section. If you read the short story, then you see her as a villain whom everyone for some reason liked and tried to pamper, and when you slap in the Molten Alliance and – if .dat mining and news presses are to be believed – this new Nightmare Court/krait alliance she made… you get someone who is unrealistically convincing, as if her just speaking indoctinates people Reaper style.

But when you listen to that interview as well, then you have someone who’s living a false life, and isn’t as grand as the short story’s rather unclear wording makes her out to be. Some may view this has hastened “clean up” from the rather negative responses about her, but I’ll just take it as face value – that’s what she is. She didn’t see the Eternal Alchemy and she didn’t go through the complete colleges. Attacking the Jubilee was just a whim and not somehow tied to the odd goal of freeing sylvari.

Which comes to another point (or rather, returns us to): we know nothing of her plans. She wrecked parties. She tried getting Mai on the Captain’s Council. She occupied Twilight Arbor. Why? Her actions seem random (see section above with “random story”) because we don’t know what she’s trying to do.

And another issue is that she just isn’t a threat. Yeah, she’s presented as this grand and brilliantly mad engineer. Okay, so what? She only ever succeeds at anything because we didn’t know of her antics. Molten Alliance? Did so bad because the Orders were pre-occupied with Zhaitan. Mai Trin? Another sneak attack. Jubilee? Again, sneak attack. Twilight Assault? We got the drop on her, and there was effectively no major threat from her other than she somehow captured Caithe. She’s only a threat if the good guys hold the idiot ball (as draxynnic puts it, which is very befitting). If she doesn’t pose a real threat – a threat when we come in to stop her actions – then she’ll forever be just a clown. And despite the odd fear of clowns and despite the Joker, clowns in of themselves don’t make good villains.

Dear admin, Sir/Madam,

I would be pleased to get few moments of your time.

I found that Thiefs are really really squishy in sPvP, and I tried a tons of builds, including my own, and I couldn’t get promising result. Simply, their damage is not enough, but their HP is even worse. Really, too squishy. I am really sad because this, since Thief is type of my playstile and I avoid it only because of squisheness.

Also, I am really disappointed I couldn’t get my Scythe or Mad King title this Halloween!

I also bought Phantom’s Hood from Black Lion Shop and found out its not transmutable and only able to wear on town cloth, which I found really really unpleasant experience(and I would really love to get fix for this and be able to transmute).

It would be nice to make all items available to us, players, not to make them never-to-get-again.

Thank you for your time,
Stefan

Living World… well I have my serious issues with it.

1. Temporary and not permanent content: Everything is temporary, what is “permanent” is not in any way impacting. Scarlet Invasions, the new TA path, Southsun thats all the permanent anything Living World has given… please make a new map or changes to the maps that are actually noticeable and worth it for more than the living story 2 week frame.

2. Go back to the dragons: I like scarlet but she is just not threatening, every part of her story comes too slow and she does NOT feel like a final boss at all. There are 5 other dragons out there and we have spent the better of 1 year doing nothing against them. Frankly a big story arc is the reason id like expansions to happen instead of this focus on living story where we get drizzles of content that get interrupted by seasonal events or things like a tequatl buff….

3. Stop with the achievement mentality: Everything is based on getting acheivements. There is little incentive and impact past this race to get the achievements by quickyl grinding them and even then the achievements usually give terrible rewards. This is particularly terrible since most things are time gated by the two week squedule….

4. New Maps with new content: Similar to Southsun we need new maps that have things to do and stick around with incentives to play in them.

The 2 weeks update rate is fast. The amount of new stuff is good, but its gone in a month, and all the while you get something new to do in the middle of that one month. While permanently added content suffers low player numbers, the 2 weekly new/reused stuff has 4 layers of overflows and overpopulation.

Maybe just my server, but Southsun is a ghost town, Tequatl’s lingering presence should have reached Lions Arch by now, and Scarlets invasions (that we fail to stop all the time now) should have destroyed more areas than a fresh morning flight from Kralkatorrik.

All the while nothing that should progress is actually progressing. The Living World is not the world of Tyria living, it is patches after patches, or i could say distractions. Distractions from all the stuff that should have been resolved or at least moved forward. The Charr-Human treaty? Still in consultation. The hundreds of renown hearts that could be progressed into their own living stories? Locked in a limbo. (I expected something more than a single sylvari explorer at the empty but ghost-ridden tomb of the white mantleon release, but how much its ignored in a year is just facepalm-worthy)
The DRAGONS? Nothing from them yet, we dont even have a clue of where Zhaitan’s corpse is.

There is so much in the original release of GW2 that could have expanded into interesting stories that give depth to the world, instead it feels like we get a new layer of activity on the existing stuff every two weeks that give little to no depth and one hell of a chronological headache to those few who want to get a clear sense of what is happening when.

Also on the topic of the 2 weeks, It is literally percievable how the rotation of the development teams go. Feels like there is a Scarlet-team that gave the Jubilee, the invasions and the Aetherpath, there is the Fun-team that gave the next world of Super Adventure Box, Halloween, and there is the Serious/Epic-team with Tequatl and the upcoming Krait Tower. Thats the only reason i dare hope there is something else than Scarlet being behind the krait tower.

I am somewhat confused as to the differences between Living World and Living Story.

I would like to see small but permanent changes to a few of the older zones, especially the lesser used ones. Ideally something along the lines of WoW’s Cataclysm, where they re-worked all the low level zones. That’s of course not possible at the current pace, but a slow and steady change here and there might be. It’s not much of a living world when about 95% of the stuff in the game hasn’t changed one bit since launch and 4% of the rest isn’t permanent anyway.

First i have to say i love the game. The living story however feels grindy with huge meta achievements. I would like to see the rewards available on the lesser achievements and leave something like a title on the metas. I don’t get to play as often as id like due to real world obligations and always feel as though I’m missing out because i don’t have time to grind achievements. Please consider this, two or three weeks to complete these achievements is alienating a lot of the players. Its great to have something to work for but those types of goals should be permanent additions and not time sensitive.

Secondly, the large amount of crafting requirements for some of the events is ridiculous. 1000 of something to redeem for 1 item that in turn needs another 99 plus to redeem for something useful is just crazy. Unless youre dropping 60+ at a time you are just promoting more grinding. Grinding is not fun not to mention it again alienates those of us who don’t have the time.

Finally the living story content doesn’t seem to fit with the overall flow of the game at times. It seems to be more a matter of giving us something to do then developing the game further. Unfortunately the grindy nature of some of the more recent events supports that assumption.

Again i love guild wars and have been playing since 1. So keep up what your doing right, giving us great story. Lets just work on making it more accessible to more casual players in the future.

I do not want GW2 to feel like my day job, which is what tends to happen since the release of new content every 2 weeks. Feels like playing catch up most of the time and has turned into a grind fest – especially as I havent found many of the 2 weekly events particularly enticing since Southsun). If you are not able to play and take part in events like Scarlet and Teq immediately on release when large groups rush to do the events, then basically you can forget it as interest wanes quickly and after a few days it is impossible for many players to find enough people who are also wanting to do the encounters.

I think it also might be an interesting option for casual players to be able to enter a single player story mode for all dungeons (including appropriately scaled down rewards). This could hopefully enable many who for whatever reason are not presently doing dungeons to increase their involvement via the dungeon storylines.

I can imagine with all the new content of the Living Story releases that development of an expansion might not be a priority but with so many players at level 80 with several characters I think most of them (I know I am one of them) would welcome an expansion and the level cap going to 90 at least.

I’d love to see more area’s from Guild Wars (1), like crystal dessert, Cantha, Charr Homelands etc.
Or just some lore from missing Guild Wars ( 1), things, like: The Monk monastary got blew up, that ’s why the Monks are now distinct.

Still Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game, I just miss some trowback to Guild Wars 1.

Generally, I enjoy the Living World content, especially as it’s fun to do the events with guild members.

It amazes me how much detail goes into the artwork for something that’s around for such a short period of time.

What I’d like to see added is the ability for guilds to work together to be able to earn a guild instance that rewards can be added to. For example, I’d love to get my hands on the airship from the Bazaar of the Four Winds, as long it’s acheivable for small guilds too.

I hugely admire Arenanet’s dedication to providing updates every two weeks, having come from another game that promised monthly updates and then couldn’t sustain that, I’m doubly impressed.

I, too, would like to see more LW updates related to the lore: more dragons; opening a route to Cantha and Elona; building guild instances and personal housing.

One thing I do dislike is the grind for event currency that’s around for a limited time. It should be fun, not a chore, to acheive a new weapon skin etc.

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 agree with Kai… it is as if the “real” living story came to a halt. We are not part of the story anymore. Who cares if you participate, someone else will step in. In the beginning you felt important, no you are just a merc like Kai said.

The funny thing is, I enjoy GW 1 more atm, you still feel part of things. Yes, I have done it a hundred times, but I love that sense of being part of the community.

As far as I know, Living story was supposed to like the next episode of a TV show. Right now the story as it is, I don’t know what to compare it to but its definitely not Game of Thrones quality. Gw1 in comparison had expansions that bought the story forward in a much better way . I know its very hard for a company with no additional resources to bring up the production quality like this. It might be better to sell expansions in that case. For living story to be really good, there has to be many things happening all over the place and most of them should be part of a story that is novel quality for example. If you were to write a chapter in a book for what happened this last two weeks, would people read it or would it be considered boring? You need to employ writers like for a show (not just two) and our money should be going to them for bringing a good quality show/world then to the graphics people/implementers.
On the good side, fractals seem like a good beginning to a separate story. About Tequatl, there is something about zerging that allows people who don’t know much about a fight to participate and win still not knowing much about the fight (this applies to events as well). The reason zerging in WvW works is because zergs fight with other zergs that are made up of people, not AI. People can react and counter play and keep things interesting and challenging. Now lets see what Tequatl has against mindless zerging:
1. Poison AOE: The turrets counters this, so like 6 people and the commander needs to know this.
2. Stack on Tequatl: Again just turrets need to know this.
3. Battery stage: The entire zerg goes ‘kill everything fast’ mode. Also, more people = more damage. So get more people. No one cares about the ad attacks because there are enough people to ress. So Tequatl never Tsunami wipes them.

So what’s new about this fight? The average guy stacks on the commander, dpses during the side event and stacks on the commander. Tequatl down.

Lastly, go dark and evil in the living story. Like totally dark.

Don’t remove content unnecessarily.

A super tough zone like SAB tribulation mode isn’t something I want to splurge on, it’s something I might play once or twice a week. But I’m not given this option. Instead of having an extra piece of awesome content to play at my leisure, I barely get to play it at all.

Temporary achievements are a buzzkill.

I’m more extreme about this than most — I even hate dailies and monthlies. When I log in and a game tells me “you only have a couple days/hours left to pound out these tasks and get a reward” I am a big step closer to never playing it again. There is never a time when I log into GW2 and have less than 3 different task timers counting down. Feels the opposite of relaxing. Better yet when the daily timer rolls over right in the middle of my play session.

Event currencies are a buzzkill.

It’s a royal pain to figure out what kind of appearance stuff I can make, what items I’ll need, and the complicated, grindy path to get them. I don’t think I’ve spent a single event currency on something interesting yet. Another problem is that most currencies equate to gold, so if I buy something it’s always at the expense of something else.

Event items: soulbound, prohibitively expensive, or kinda lame.

Pick at least one of the above. My favorite so far is shockingly the balloon from the jubilee because I can whip that out and mess around with it whenever I want.

The “old world” is entirely subsumed by the “living world”.

The absolute most fun I’ve ever had in GW2 was my first time leveling a character, exploring the world, finding jumping puzzles and just having a relaxing time. I still make a point to get my dailies done in Lornar’s Pass or some of my other favorite backwaters when I get the chance. But the pressure is to zone to whatever zone a temporary event is taking place in and knock out the temporary achievements. The game even pops up flashing messages to that effect. Again, it feels the opposite of relaxing.

But wait…

Realized I typed up a full post of negatives. Just wanted to mention that I appreciate that an IMPRESSIVE amount of work goes into these updates. The ART DESIGN in particular is amazing. This is the only game I’ve ever played that I log in and just look at the beautiful scenery. The airship from wintersday, the colosseum, the bazaar… so pretty. The couple factors above just make it hard for me to enjoy.

One suggestion for you. No walls of text this time, no long explanations.
Stop. Adding. New. Material. Without. Depth.
Stop. Expand on the lore you have, the lore of GW1, STOP with the continuous festivals, stop with the shallow stories, with the forgettable characters, with the horrible instances that last nothing and are so mind-numbingly easy it almost brings tears to my eyes because they seem so short and lazy. Yes, lazy.
Canach’s lair? Really?
Add more permanent, meaningful, long-lasting, interesting content; more dungeons, more élite zones, you have such a large pool of ideas and lore to refer to. Why haven’t you done it yet? I’m tired of goofing around, I want some serious stuff now.
And for the love of what is holy learn from your mistakes. Look at Trahearne and Scarlet and never do something like that again.
Also, please stop with the stupid and repetitive achievements, or at least lessen the amount of it. More interesting skins, skills and traits to unlock, thanks.
You don’t need to do it with a 2-week schedule, because all the content that comes out is bad and clearly rushed. Take your time and do something more solid.

Hi! I´m a casual player. I did not read all of the posts but the ones I did read no one seemed to mentioned the biggest problems I personally have with the living world.

1. The random disconnects and the lag.

When you don´t have a lot of time on your hands to completing the events you really want the few times you manage to participate to be able to finish it. Instead what I found was random disconnects throwing me out to overflow a few minutes before end of the event. I am mostly thinking about the Scarlet invasions and Tequatl. Perhaps if I had several hours to spend waiting and queuing this might not have been such a big problem. But for me it meant I was unable to complete the events and the achievements.

2. The waiting.

My second biggest problem is the waiting. When you are playing you want to jump right in to the action. Not stand around in overflow waiting to get in to the main map to then wait for the event to start. I think for a lot of people this might just make them not participate in that event. Or perhaps you try it out ones and realizes that its much time spent for nothing. I would much rather the living story was more like an ongoing event that moved across the map and you could join in at any given time. Something like the events in Orr. So it happens over a longer period of time and sure even if one of the big events is not going on you at least have something to do while waiting.

Then I have some wishes that I would love to see (more) in the living world updates

• More bug and lag fixing
• Alternative ways to gain experience
• Underwater content
• Permanent content/changes
• New (permanent) zone
• More story!

One suggestion I have is why not make one patch similar to the living story we have now but then on the next one focus on fixing bugs etc. Just a thought since I rather have less but more playable things to do. At least until most of the the bigger problems are fixed (like skill lag in WvWvW). Quality over quantity!

Other then that I like the living world (some more then others) and I always look forward to the next one!

/Senjej

First: thanks alot for asking us players!
I’m pretty sure that everything has been said already, but yet I’d like to put my two cents too. In advance please excuse my bad english

So, I also think that the LS concept (releases every 2 weeks) is a great deal and makes this game very attractive. But there’s no – as it has been said a few times – epicness. I mean we’re fighting dragons right? But after one year we only fought one elder dragon and there’s no noticeable progress in orr. The concept of a living story shouldn’t fritter into completely seperated storyline that have nothing(!) to do with the big story (fighting dragons, right?). I feels like reading a novel that has long fotgotten it’s common thread. There’s so much more content to release (only speaking of the elder dragons left) to fill a story that could last the next say 7 years. I don’t want to say there shouldn’t be content or storybranches aside of the mainquest, but everything has to fit, at least sometime, to the big idea.

To be constructive: why not put something like >phasing< to the world. In this stage of storyline (Zhaitan has been killed) there could be 2 instances of orr. The first as it already is, for players who haven’t fought him, and the second with maps on which we can clean orr from his henchmen. That should pretty well fit a serverwide cooperative content for weeks in which orr would change its face completely. Put hearts to it that firstly have to be unlocked by fighting a big boss or something else that needs a lot of players (for instance collecting 10000 whatever). Finally make orr a “normal” questing zone, before opening another say 3 maps that lead the players to the next elder dragon (content to last one year or so).

One thing to fading content: I see a lot of players that feel forced to play a specific type of content to reach all achievements. That’s not fun! I don’t think that making metaachievemts only reachable for players that login say 20 of 30 days is the right thing to do. Currently I see two kinds of LS content: the celebration content like hallween (which is great), wintersday, dragonbash and jubilee and the other “contextless” content. The first sort is well done. You should make every achievement available every time the celebration returns (what I think is your idea). The second sort is problematic. Here there shouldn’t be achievements so hard to reach as they were in the past. If the idea was putting them so hard to get that the players log in as often as possible, that backfires! Acutally that discourages people.

Finally one thing to the philosophy of putting LS instead of “real” expansions. I think there will be a lot more fomer players rejoin the game by releasing an expansion than by releasing permanent updates every 2 weeks. For someone who left the game month ago it’s an opstacle to rejoin because for him it feels like “huh, where do i have to go now?” What’s hard for a player that plays since release to get the living story, it’s nearly inpossible for someone, who made a break. New expansions (new dragon maybe) make a clear cut that potentially encourages those players to give it another try. And speaking for myself, i’d be agreeable to pay for new maps, new classes and such.

I’m closing by saying: Tell us the epic story there already is in the lore of the game.