Guild Wars 2

Is there any official explanation why this isn’t going to happen/taking so long to do?

This is going to be a long time coming. They’ve been kind of busy. They’ll need to completely redesign every single event from Season One, except the Queen’s Jubilee, to fit into a solo instanced event. Considering how much of that season was zone wide mass zerg events, that’s not going to be easy.

I too want to play living world season 1.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Is there any official explanation why this isn’t going to happen/taking so long to do?

I believe there is a recent Dev post addressing this issue, as part of another answer. You can read through the last few days’ Dev posts in the Dev Tracker.

Good luck.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Is there any official explanation why this isn’t going to happen/taking so long to do?

From here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Just-Completed-Personal-Story-WHAT/first#post5215101

I don’t disagree. We’ve stated before that we hope to one day rebuild LW Season 1, but we’re focused on HoT development right now.

To me it seems a no brainer to eventually put it back in some form – why waste all that content you spent time making? Also, you could chuck on all sorts of new achievements and rewards – it would keep a lot of people occupied for a long time. And remember, heaps of people missed all of it, so to many it will be all new content anyway. But it seems they are rather occupied with HoT right now.

Would love this as well, but I do see them having to basically rebuild a ton of it just to work as personal stories since most of it was open world stuff.

Since my family just joined GW2, I’ve wanted them to check out the whole Scarlet story, but sadly they can only see LW Season 2. So they have no idea what happened before, unless they go read about it.

So yeah, would definitely love to see LW Season 1 show up in our story journal or gem store (for those that didn’t get to play it).

Kal Spiro.9745:

They’ll need to completely redesign every single event from Season One, except the Queen’s Jubilee, to fit into a solo instanced event. Considering how much of that season was zone wide mass zerg events, that’s not going to be easy.

If you actually do the math, there are 30 instances and 2 dungeons from Season 1. In open world stuff, there was about half that in events or dialogue scenes that were important to the main narrative – anything else could be either left out or added in with little narrative change (would be like fighting the Toxic Spores in Brisban).

It’s really only Tower of Nightmares until the end that needs reconsidering.

The claim that most of Season 1 was open world is false. Though given how one accessed those instances, they might have to rebuild it simply because of that, but it wouldn’t be as hard as turning huge open world events into instances.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Kal Spiro.9745:

They’ll need to completely redesign every single event from Season One, except the Queen’s Jubilee, to fit into a solo instanced event. Considering how much of that season was zone wide mass zerg events, that’s not going to be easy.

If you actually do the math, there are 30 instances and 2 dungeons from Season 1. In open world stuff, there was about half that in events or dialogue scenes that were important to the main narrative – anything else could be either left out or added in with little narrative change (would be like fighting the Toxic Spores in Brisban).

It’s really only Tower of Nightmares until the end that needs reconsidering.

The claim that most of Season 1 was open world is false. Though given how one accessed those instances, they might have to rebuild it simply because of that, but it wouldn’t be as hard as turning huge open world events into instances.

Lets work our way through Season 1:

The Molten Alliance is causing weird things to happen, but are not yet revealed. This would be easy enough to instance. Do an initial conversation, or whatever, then in the open world make the items from scavenger hunt accessible again. Then another instance in LA to return them all.

The Molten Alliance attacks. Introducing Braham and Rox. Each had their own instance. Create first new instance to accommodate at least some of the MA attacks in Siverpeaks/Ascalon. The Molten Facility, do we ignore it? Hard to say.

The Aetherblades. Introducing Marjory. Dragon Bash was mostly instanced already where the story is concerned. Everything after that, however, was open world and another dungeon which is already a fractal, so how do we handle it, the same way.

The Toxic Alliance. Enter Kashmeer. The Tower of Nightmares was primarily open world. It would be easy enough to make a tiny instance for the Priory. Possibly even to dumb down the tower for one person to run through, including most of the events. There were instances at the top, so that’s covered.

Twisted Watchwork. Queen’s Jubilee was already an instanced event for the purposes of Scarlet, so this is covered.

Scarlet goes on a rampage. Maybe break down Scarlet attacks to be a single instance per alliance, each in a different zone where she attacked, culminating in a dumbed down fight with here.

The Marionette. Introducing Taimi. Now, I have an idea of how to make this work for a fractal/group event. But to make it soloable would just be terrible. We also should throw in a couple instances of discovering/fighting the thumpers.

The three parts to the Seige of LA. Maybe a few instances running through some of the more memorable events that took place during the initial attack, leading to an instance of one or some of the refugee camps. Get some choice dialogue from Evon. Back into for the aftermath events, maybe some of the bosses. Culminating with another solo battle with giant scarlet bots? That sounds terrible. And that leads to entering her ship. That fight would require a massive rewrite to make it even approach working for a solo. Granted, in this case they could just put everyone in the same place, Kiel and Hob-O-Tron included. Then the final scene.

That is still a massive amount of work. Especially if you consider how much work apparently had to go into just rearranging personal story chapters. Also the stuff I missed or forgot about.

That’s not entirely accurate.

• The Lost Shores – full open world, requires a bit of work
• Flame and Frost: Prelude – next to no story, just a bunch of preview stuff which for S2 has been removed (Festival of Four Winds, the slow transition of Fort Vandal, the destruction of Town of Prosperity)
• Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm – same as Prelude, but with events on top of NPCs; events can be added without change. If a story step is needed, it can be an open world one like Uprooting the Iron Marches while utilizing these events.
• Flame and Frost: The Razing – primary story is in 5 instance, some changes to old events
• Flame and Frost: Retribution – primary story in 1 dungeon and 2 instances; some open world dialogue, again little more than the preview-gets-removed stuff that we see inS2E3.
• Secret of Southsun – you got ~3 open world dialogues, can easily be put into 1-2 instance, but would be more work than most cases; would be nice to include the spore scavenger hunt, which can be done in open world ala Tracking the Master of Peace in S2E1.
• Last Stand at Southsun – 2 instances (3 if you count Canach’s Lair explorable with Subdirector NOLL golem)
• Dragon Bash – a few open world dialogues that aren’t important; then 4 instances and some random-throughout-the-world NPCs. The investigative NPCs can be re-added without issue to world narrative, made into an open world story step ala S2E1’s Tracking the Master of Peace.
• Sky Pirates of Tyria – a dungeon and Mai Trin in the open world which can be dropped, and a short instance
• Bazaar of the Four Winds – 2 instances, 1 open world zone; zone can be partially converted into an instance
• Cutthroat Politics – 1 instance (2 if count the Aetherblade Waves instance), 1 open world dialogue (Kiel’s victory); dialogue can be converted to an instance
• Queen’s Jubilee – 1 instance; all the events aren’t necessary to the main story, nor would they make sense in open world any more. Only issue in ignoring the rest is going from opening ceremony to closing ceremony, but we already see that in Season 2 (end of episode 3 says that it’ll be ‘a few weeks’ for the events of episode 4 to come to pass)
• Clockwork Chaos – 2 instances and 1 achievement series related to the invasions; latter can be done in a single step (1-2 instances)
• Tequatl Rising – one NPCs dialogue, not entirely necessary but would leave some dialogue later confusing if ignored
• Twilight Assault – all is in the dungeon, permanent already
• Tower of Nightmares preview – like other S2 previews, unnecessary to bring back
• Tower of Nightmares – 1 instance, bunch of open world events that aren’t necessary to the main narrative but some could be added as an instance I guess
• The Nightmares Within – 1 instance (+any Nightmare Chamber if you want), and a new zone; the zone may be difficult to do but can easily be a single instance
• Fractured! – 1 story mode dungeon, still exists in game; if worth making permanent (questionable), then turn into a story step with rebalance
• Wintersday 2013/The Nightmare is Over – had one open world dialogue scene (half are still around), 2 instances; the no-longer dialogue is important (shows the introduction of Rox+Braham to Marjory+Kasmeer) so an instance for that (or moving it to be part of another instance/story step) would be good
• The Origins of Madness – 1 world event, 2 instances
• The Edge of the Mists – 2 open world dialogue (convert first to instance, second is only partially relevant), 2 instances
• Escape from Lion’s Arch – 1 open world zone, 3 dialogue scenes
• Battle for Lion’s Arch – 1 open world zone, 3 dialogue scenes, 1 story instance
• Battle for Lion’s Arch: Aftermath – 1 instance

I might have missed a bit, but I am considering the primary story. I’m ignoring the effective equivilant to the veteran mordrem in Prosperity added with S2E2 – that is, open world events that show the progression of the story. Most of these events – particularly those added with Flame and Frost and Secret of Southsun – can be made permanent with little to no alteration; others like the festival celebrations aren’t needed to be brought permanently as they’d be better off as annual events for the holidays (they aren’t part of the main story anyways).

Is there a lot of work? Yes.

But is most of Season 1 open world stuff needing to be converted into instances? No.

Most open world stuff is just side stories that show the world’s progression a bit better. And half of them can be brought back with only a balance pass to them.

The plethora of work involved with LSS1 hands down is sheer complex and I don’t think I could find a way of suggesting it be re-delivered to us without breaking lore/current open world time line status.

I’ve skimmed through the above suggestions and they are great and all but so many ‘instances’.. it lacks the real open-world theme, not to mention the Marionette fight where tonnes of players were needed to successfully complete the event.. dumbing it down to solo-able or with a party of 5 is nonsense.

This is coming from someone who came back to the game right when LA was under siege so I too, have missed out on the whole Scarlet ordeal up until then.

I think there are some ways you can bring stuff back… but some things never were meant to be ‘brought back’ because it interferes too much with real time, even if they are instanced and involves vast work.

I would love to be able to experience LSS1 like any other like minded player does but it deems impossible due to the above mentioned.

However, I do wish rewards/items/skins from LSS1 that are now un-obtainable be re-implemented into the game somehow either by gem store or simply pricey laurel expenses.

Go look at, as an example, Scarlet’s Kiss rifle (I already own this) but one day there will be zero of those around and it’s already climbed a hefty price on the TP which I find sad for those that want an item/skin such as it.

I don’t agree with the analysis above. It’s overly naive in reviewing content as either open world or instanced. The actual core experience of Season 1 meant that nearly every story involved changes to the open world that people explored together. In contrast, Season 2 was designed to be primarily experienced within instances. That fundamental difference requires a complete redesign of the way in which the story plays out.

I don’t mean to suggest it’s impossible or even that it’s horribly complicated to pull off. I do mean to point out that it would be a large undertaking, in terms of staff and it probably would require bringing back the voice actors for new dialogue.

All that effort would go towards recreating a story from the past. It would be old content, when players have been clamoring for new content for ages.

tl;dr It doesn’t matter how much of the content actually took place in the open world; it matters that the story was designed to be experienced as a community, not in small groups. It’s a massive undertaking to rewrite that and it’s hard to imagine ANet devoting that effort to “old” content while veterans are clamoring for new content.

Season 1 was fundamentally designed differently than Season 2, it’s not as simple as tweaking a few things and dropping it in. The amount of work required to update season 1 to instanced repeatable content like season 2 is equivalent to the amount of work they’re putting into the expansion. This will be months, closer to years, in the making and they haven’t even started it yet (or at least admitted to starting yet).