Guild Wars 2

what i mean by live event your at the bank in LA all the sudden you hear npcs screaming you go out to see whats going on you see them running for there lives you look up and you see air ships headed your way you see army s coming to shore you hurry and tell your guild members to come to LA fast the kittens just got real and you see all the afkers getting killed becouse they have no idea whats going on… events like that would put this game on a hole new level being surprised like that because A net didn’t tell us that something was about to happen now that would be a true LS my question is is this kind of thing even possible

Technically possible, yes.

During the beta, Plains of Ashford was attacked by the Shatterer, corrupting players and enabling PvP in the zone (corrupted vs players) while Eir and Brimstone was walking around insta-killing corrupted players in sight (they where full level 80 and players where scaled down, lol). All to epic music.

Still best event ever :p

Like Dawdler said, technically yes. But ANet has a habit of implement repeating events so it will probably be on a timer (for good reason since an event like that would probably take a lot of time and effort to implement and who likes one time events). Not to mention the overflow and afk deaths which will probably see these forums aflame with complain last seen with the LA karka event.

CureForLiving.5360:

Like Dawdler said, technically yes. But ANet has a habit of implement repeating events so it will probably be on a timer (for good reason since an event like that would probably take a lot of time and effort to implement and who likes one time events). Not to mention the overflow and afk deaths which will probably see these forums aflame with complain last seen with the LA karka event.

im talkin about there not being a timer and i dont think people would be mad if crazy stuff like that happened allot ppl would wonder what going to happen next keep the game fresh

Wrong question.

Are live events desirable? and in many cases the answer is ‘no’. It becomes too much work for too few users with limited repeatability. you offend a dozen times as many users as you please.

We actually had one of these back in November 2012.
It didn’t go all that well.

Technically possible….yes and no.

The problem is as follows.
You can decide to not tell people to go here or there on that time and date. Many people will miss out the live event and will be angry. So there are two alternative solutions.

1: Tell nobody, but put the event on rotation (and tell people that as soon as the first event is done i nthe first hate topic showing up here). Everyone will wait on that spot for the next live event cause they know it is very epic and huge.
2: tell everyone that something big is coming before hand and where to go.

Arenanet choose option 2.

Halloween 2012. The anouncement was: at 6 pm UTC the mad king will come to Lion’S Arch at the central plaza.. At the said time lions arch was many times in overflow. all players where nicely put in a video (that worked pretty well), and in the central plaza was now a dungeon entry. all rushed to there and created a denial of service on the servers making it a big fail

November 2012: Karka’s invaded lions arch again as a live event. it was again announced and everyone again was there. The result was an event that was ultra laggy. We needed to collect some item and give it to an NPC. After pressing F to give in the two i managed to get it took literally 5 minutes to get the dialogue up and get the items in. 2-3 days later we got to southsun cove for the first time, again a live event. After allready being kittened off, I tried, but after dying 12 times due to lag I gave up and went elsewhere, not ever doing that one in a lifetime event.

Live events only work if they are un-announced or if they have a server capacity that is 50 times as big as now (with all the costs involved). unnounced make people who missed it angry.

So…
tl:dr: yes it is technical possible, but it is not desriable due to technical limitations. that is why Anet decided to not try it again.

I would absolutely love this.

Im Mudbone.1437:

I would absolutely love this.

Sure. The question is would you love missing it 9 or 10 times?

I think the only way live events would work is if they were common occurrences so people don’t zerg the zone. For them to be common they’d have to be relatively simple (essentially almost like the events that players throw…doubt players will ever be able to make events in game but it is an intriguing idea).

They can do it, and actually did do it, once. The Lost Shores event back in November 2012. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lost_Shores

Thankfully after that they decided to never do it again and moved (with a bit of experimentation) to the current model of either one-time events that are instanced and can be played at the players discretion or repeatable events within a relatively short time period (usually 2-4 weeks).

There were a lot of issues with Lost Shores. Firstly the obvious one: a lot of people missed some or all of it for various reasons and were disappointed or angry that because they had to do other things (like work) and couldn’t make a video game their first priority they missed out.

But even people who were there weren’t happy. The poor communication issues (which lead to having to sit at the computer pretty much all weekend because you didn’t know when something was going to happen) could probably be fixed but it would ruin the surprise element you’re hoping for.

But even if everything works perfectly having everyone who can get online all go to the same place to do the same thing doesn’t work well. It was a horrible mess of lag and poorly organised maps. Under normal circumstances the Ancient Karka fight would have been easy, but with everyone lagging and disconnecting and running around like headless chickens in between it took hours and it was pretty much blind luck if you were there at the end of it.

Ultimately as other people have said it’s too much work and too much risk of upsetting players for something relatively few people will get to see and even fewer will enjoy.

Nike.2631:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I would absolutely love this.

Sure. The question is would you love missing it 9 or 10 times?

Missing it?

Yeah as people have pointed out – they tried this once with the Lost Shores event in November 2012, it did NOT go well. There was MASSSIVE lag. Constant disconnects. the skill lag was insane – you could cast something and the icon just kept flashing for 10 minutes. So yeah. It doesn’t really work very well and they’re unlikely to ever try it again.

lordkrall.7241:

We actually had one of these back in November 2012.
It didn’t go all that well.

Basically this. It was really fun for those who got in (luckily, I didn’t DC.), and resulted in a permanent end in Southsun, see

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ancient_Karka

with a one time cinematic of it rolling in the lava.

But so many players DCed or had issues, that they missed the reward, forcing ANET to compensate them with a bonus chest.

That’s probably why you haven’t seen any since.