Guild Wars 2

@ Vayne

First of all, this is a terrible analogy. The human nation, which comprises a fifth of one of the major nations in Tyria is much more than some “isolated mountain farm”. Sorry, but if there are multiple giant dragons flying across Tyria (Which is one continent vs seven huge continents of Earth), I think it would affect me especially if I live right outside a major city of my nation. If you still want to continue with this analogy though, then don’t you think in WWII that Paris, London, Berlin, and the surrounding areas felt some sort of impact of the war? Farmers is Queensdale and the Gendarran fields are much more occupied with their moas than the threat of a giant dragon swooping down and destroying everything they’ve known. If a dragon has arisen and devastated a significant portion of the continent, then don’t you think people would be more wary of it?

Second of all, I think the point I was trying to make went straight over your head. When do our characters show any indication of their lives being affected by the dragon? Sure, the asura and norn were driven from their homes, but how do we experience this in the game? We never experience any sort of sentiment about how terrible the migration to the surface was and how devastated their race was by the loss of their underground cities. You also completely failed to address the point of caudecus. As the legate minister, don’t you think that his views on the elder dragon (Which we don’t even get to see) would effect his storyline somehow? That’s like if we found out that Russia had 1500 active nuclear weapons and had already released some in Europe, and all John Boehner wants to do is attack Obama and never address this bombs.

I will agree with you on the sylvari race. I feel that maybe because they are the new race, more effort may have been put into their role in the world, especially seeing how caithe is the only Destiny’s Edge character I find to be multi-faceted. Our sylvari heroes seem to be the only one with a direct motive to go after the dragons because we saw them in our dream.

Anyways I feel like this thread keeps getting thrown off track through attack of my examples, when instead the original purpose I think was to explore ways to better present the lore. And I have taken into account Anet’s post about giving good feedback in my responses—identifying the issues, giving some ideas on how to make the content better, and providing examples of where I have seen improvement in other games. Constant critique of my posts isn’t going to take this discussion anywhere.

Vogue.6305:

@ Vayne

First of all, this is a terrible analogy. The human nation, which comprises a fifth of one of the major nations in Tyria is much more than some “isolated mountain farm”. Sorry, but if there are multiple giant dragons flying across Tyria (Which is one continent vs seven huge continents of Earth), I think it would affect me especially if I live right outside a major city of my nation. If you still want to continue with this analogy though, then don’t you think in WWII that Paris, London, Berlin, and the surrounding areas felt some sort of impact of the war? Farmers is Queensdale and the Gendarran fields are much more occupied with their moas than the threat of a giant dragon swooping down and destroying everything they’ve known. If a dragon has arisen and devastated a significant portion of the continent, then don’t you think people would be more wary of it?

Second of all, I think the point I was trying to make went straight over your head. When do our characters show any indication of their lives being affected by the dragon? Sure, the asura and norn were driven from their homes, but how do we experience this in the game? We never experience any sort of sentiment about how terrible the migration to the surface was and how devastated their race was by the loss of their underground cities. You also completely failed to address the point of caudecus. As the legate minister, don’t you think that his views on the elder dragon (Which we don’t even get to see) would effect his storyline somehow? That’s like if we found out that Russia had 1500 active nuclear weapons and had already released some in Europe, and all John Boehner wants to do is attack Obama and never address this bombs.

I will agree with you on the sylvari race. I feel that maybe because they are the new race, more effort may have been put into their role in the world, especially seeing how caithe is the only Destiny’s Edge character I find to be multi-faceted. Our sylvari heroes seem to be the only one with a direct motive to go after the dragons because we saw them in our dream.

Anyways I feel like this thread keeps getting thrown off track through attack of my examples, when instead the original purpose I think was to explore ways to better present the lore. And I have taken into Anet’s post about giving good feedback in my responses—identifying the issues, giving some ideas on how to make the content better, and providing examples of where I have seen improvement in other games. Constant critique of my posts isn’t going to take this discussion anywhere.

You might not have followed the lore that well. The human nation does not represent one fifth of anything. They’ve been driven back to a single city. They are on their last legs. They have NOT prospers. They have their hands full.

From the human opening sequence talks about how they’ve been driven back. Lion’s Arch isn’t a human city it’s a conglomerate.

Humans have Divinity’s Reach and Ebonhawke. They’re hardly the empire they once were. And what I said was said by the devs anyway, so it’s not a bad analogy it’s how they see the game.

If you don’t want to believe what the devs have said about their own game, that’s fine by me.

I wouldn’t call GW2 childish. But it does lack a feeling of seriousness (darkness?) and a focused direction that GW1 had.

The PS and LS ..though I appreciate what they have tried to do, it very very clearly lacks the powerful delivery of GW1. It’s less consistent and lacks the feeling urgency and that serious things are happening. GW1 was more difficult too (I recently played it again and got wrecked. You definitely had to put more thought and planning into those missions in order to succeed).

I’ve always taken major issue with the fact that you can ever be under-leveled for your own PS. You get caught up on your story and then have to grind out several more levels before you’re strong enough for the next part. That is TERRIBLE DESIGN. You should be able to do one after another and have it give you enough exp to qualify for the next part, period. It really kills the sense of urgency and significance of what is supposedly going on, when you have to just stop, forget all about it and go do other stuff to get more levels because you’re too week to continue. Too weak to continue your own story even though you’ve successfully done everything prior? That’s not right.

Plus it makes it more grindy. GW1 never felt like a grind ..you didn’t even have much reason to care what level you were. You were just doing the story, and you’d be max level LONG before you got near the end, and I loveed that. I loved that there was SO much story ..way more story than levels. In GW2 they went in the opposite direction. 4x more levels, and less story for it.

The LS doesn’t have that problem at least because it’s “endgame” content and you should be done with leveling already. But the general delivery is still very haphazard and unfocused. I think that has to do with there being so many waypoints though, and this latest episode is an example of it. You can just zap all over the world in an instant – in fact the story expects it. In GW1, it was much more linear. You progress through the world as the story unfolds. It felt like such a long story and such a huge world. Remember the feeling when you FINALLY got out of Ascalon for the first time and made it to the Shiverpeaks? Or FINALLY made it past the Shiverpeaks and into lush and refreshing Kryta? Man, we hadn’t seen “green” since pre-searing, it was amazing! And this was all still so very early on in the game.

Now GW2 is less linear and more open-world. With various starting locations all across the world, I understand that complicates things as far as linear world progression goes (and I DO value multiple starting locations, open world, etc ..so I’m not complaining about that).

The GW2 world is way less linear than GW1. Does that mean the story simply “can’t” have a consistent and serious delivery? Obviously some things needed to be done differently but I think it still could have done a better job.

I feel like ANet should’ve just released Living Story as an expansion and scrapped the whole “no expansions” notion. I think expansions simply do a better job – being able to provide a fluid story with no pauses or breaks. LS2 will be okay, I can imagine playing through again when the whole thing is released will be a blast – but the biweekly updates to the story aren’t as fun as the whole experience.

hannah mee.7925:

I feel like ANet should’ve just released Living Story as an expansion and scrapped the whole “no expansions” notion. I think expansions simply do a better job – being able to provide a fluid story with no pauses or breaks. LS2 will be okay, I can imagine playing through again when the whole thing is released will be a blast – but the biweekly updates to the story aren’t as fun as the whole experience.

I agree. By this time in GW1 we had both Factions and Nightfall already. That was a HUGE amount of new geography and (consistently delivered) story. Granted, if we just don’t play the LS and “save up” the episodes, then we can do them all at once (I eventually intend to do that with a toon I haven’t played thru with yet). But that’s not so easy though ..to actually have new content and actively refuse to play it.

But doing it all at once does at least maintain a sense of urgency to it, unlike this “something major just happened, now let’s wait 2wks for the consequences”. I like getting updates frequently, but maybe they should be fixes and new features instead. It’s not like there is a shortage of features we’ve been missing. Save the story for an xpac / dlc where we can get it all at once and have it feel more legit.

They change.3526:

Am I the only person who has played GW1 that feels that a lot of the lore of the series …

I never play an MMO for the story (tbh i think very few do), i have offline games for that.

Played GW1, Ragnarok, Aion, Lineage 2, Perfect World and some other which i dont even remember the name anymore, i never care about story , most of the time it´s a wall of text that i just skip by spaming the “next” button.

I’ve played Guild Wars since Open Beta. I got my Beta key of Gamespy Arcade(remember that?) I loved the Art the story, the feel of the game. That’s why I still play it and have something like 16 toons. The story of Guild Wars 1 was amazing. Eye of the North is my personal favoret fellowed by Prophercies/factions/nightfall.

The PS was great right up till Claw island. After that it just nose dived. There was way too much back tracking(just like in LS2.) and I think they didnt think things through. They wanted to tell a great story in an ever changing world. Ok fine. But that’s already been messed up with Concordia. It’s been changed and it’s now effecting the PS. It’s suppose to be a new fort! And it’s not like they had to use that one. There’s another fort at the bottom of the map. They could have used that. That way the PS would remain uneffected by LS2.

Every MMO has “dead” Areas. Yeah it’s nice to try and get people into the old areas but do that with new events and festivals. You can’t have an ever changing world and a ever evolving story and be able to tell the story from start to finish in the same areas. And seeing as ANet have said they don’t have the tech/it would make the game files a lot bigger if they made copy maps to reflect the state of the map in the story point you are at. They have the whole of Maguma to play with and to do the story in, yet they feel the need to just mess up other areas to justify the story.

I understand people get exsited when they are talking about a story and how they want it to go, but there seems like there is no thought given for any other story’s that use the same place to be told too. They way the game playing out at the moment it’s a case of, if you didn’t play from launch you’ll not have a clue what’s going on. Not to mention the current trend in games latly of using Facebook Twitter and web sites to add ingame story to the game. When I play I game I want my story in the game. Not go hunting the internet of story elements that should be in the game. I have no problem going to the wikki if I want a deeper understanding of something in the story, but most of the important plot and back story to scarlet was on the web. Sure they have now added the information to the game now after her death. But I no longer care. She’s dead I beat her I don’t give a single f*** as to why she did it. It’s done. She’s woken up a dragon, we need to kill it. Not have time devoted to yet another NPC a lot of people didn’t like.

Sekai.2987:

They change.3526:

Am I the only person who has played GW1 that feels that a lot of the lore of the series …

I never play an MMO for the story (tbh i think very few do), i have offline games for that.

Played GW1, Ragnarok, Aion, Lineage 2, Perfect World and some other which i dont even remember the name anymore, i never care about story , most of the time it´s a wall of text that i just skip by spaming the “next” button.

I play MMO’s for story. Well ones that have a story. WoW only seemed to have a story when Wrath came out(and I liked the story) The game before that just seemed like a load of quests that didn’t really tell a story, other than the world was full of people too lazy to kill a few rats/bad guys/wildlife. But I do agree most single player RPG’s have the best story’s. MMO’s tend to be more about game play than story telling. I don’t think GW2 knows what it wants to be a Story driven RPG, or a Michal Bay Game play based MMO where things get blown up because people think that’s what we want to see over story.

Kartel.2561:

I wouldn’t call GW2 childish. But it does lack a feeling of seriousness (darkness?) and a focused direction that GW1 had.

I’ve always taken major issue with the fact that you can ever be under-leveled for your own PS. You get caught up on your story and then have to grind out several more levels before you’re strong enough for the next part. That is TERRIBLE DESIGN. You should be able to do one after another and have it give you enough exp to qualify for the next part, period. It really kills the sense of urgency and significance of what is supposedly going on, when you have to just stop, forget all about it and go do other stuff to get more levels because you’re too week to continue. Too weak to continue your own story even though you’ve successfully done everything prior? That’s not right.

I think you bring up a lot of great points in your post, but this has been one of my biggest issues with the story. I hate how I literally have to “take a break” from the story after every mission so that my character can be strong enough to complete the next mission. I was so surprised when I first saw this because of how seamless this process was in GW, where my player literally leveled exactly how he/she needed to as the story progressed. This really helped the feel of immersion into the story- you said it perfectly, it kills the sense of urgency if I have to go out and do some grinding to get two levels for the next mission. It’s gotten to a point that on new characters I don’t even touch personal story until I’m level 30 so that I don’t have to deal with the discontinuity.

Disappointed that it has become a blatant cash grab with each update with no quality content, lore, characters, etc, etc.

Vogue.6305:

Malkavian.4516:

Vogue.6305:

JBDanger.2603:

I find it funny that the ESRB rating is T for teen when it should be E for everyone. The writing is so childish, that I’ve seen saturday morning cartoons with a better plot line.

Ugh! This! So much this. I was literally talking to my guildies today about how childish the game feels in comparison to GW1. We don’t even have a real fleshed out enemy in this game. I mean we have the elder dragon, but they literally get no character development themselves at all. They woke up, destroyed everything, and now what? What do they want?)

Hmmm…. with regards to the elder dragons getting character development, I honestly do not think they need to. As for what do they want? Simple: dragon is hungry, dragon eats magic.

I really can’t agree with this. Having an intricate villain with multiple layers makes a story so much more interesting. Think about some of the great movie/comic/literature villains and how they contributed to creating a captivating plot… palpatine/the joker/ hannibal lecter/ even Smaug as a response to your dragon question. Remember all the ambition Anet showed pre-release? A game with such high aspirations deserves a better enemy than “dragon is hungry, dragon eats magic”. As players, we literally have no connection with zhaitan other than knowing that he damaged tyria. Our characters aren’t personally affected by him to begin with. Most of the contact we have with his devastation is secondhand… we help NPCs who were directly affected by his destruction.

Think about it like this. In GW1 prophecies, our first enemy was the charr… they destroyed our home, and from this point, the game furthers the plot, giving you a personal connection with the enemies you encounter. In factions, you’re working to fight this plague that threatens to wipe out your country and you see that even one of your fellow students has become infected, from here the story builds. In NF, Varesh Ossa invades your country, killing many of your comrades and capturing your leader, the entire plot deepens from this point.

Also, the threat and devastation of the dragon doesn’t really become an active presence in the game until you get to orr, which is pretty late on in the game. When I’m starting out and even in the surrounding areas when I’m mid-level, I have no real interaction with the dragon’s corruption aside from the few areas of the map that have rise.

In prophecies, the evidence of the searing was all around me. When I wasn’t fighting charr, my quests (hearts for gw2) involved me helping people overcome the problems the searing had caused them. I could give examples about factions and NF, but this post’ll get too long.

Another thing, if zhaitan’s power is really so threatening, then shouldn’t his presence reach into the subplots of our story? My last two characters I worked on were humans, so those are the ones I remember the best: the centaurs and bandits seem unphased and unaffected by the presence of the dragon. Especially among the centaurs. As a nation of intelligent beings (I mean, ventari was a centaur!), you would think something as powerful as the dragon would somehow affect their actions in the story . Also Caudecus plays a significant role in the human storyline, but I’m not even sure if he ever even brings up the elder dragon.

This is all stuff I feel like anet could improve upon when they introduce content for the other dragons. Thoughts?

You do make a good point about that. But when it comes to dragons as the main antagonist, I perceive them as beings of cataclysmic disaster, meaning that the fact that they are going to spell out “end of the world as we know it” is reason enough to get involved in his slaying. And I came up with that logic because dragons in general, intelligent or otherwise are still beasts that give in to their basic instincts, especially feeding.

As for his presence in the subplots, isn’t that what the Risen are for? From the lowly zombie to the Eyes and Mouths of Zhaitan, they are extensions of his being. However, I’d have loved more of Zhaitan’s lieutenants to expand their presences outside of Orr.

Sekai.2987:

They change.3526:

Am I the only person who has played GW1 that feels that a lot of the lore of the series …

I never play an MMO for the story (tbh i think very few do), i have offline games for that.

Played GW1, Ragnarok, Aion, Lineage 2, Perfect World and some other which i dont even remember the name anymore, i never care about story , most of the time it´s a wall of text that i just skip by spaming the “next” button.

Guild Wars has one of the best told stories, a really well-crafted world that ties in with its lore. ANet really spent a lot of time crafting Tyria. With that in mind, though, I’m not naive enough to try and compare this game’s story to BioShock, Kingdom Hearts, Infamous, God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Final Fantasy, etc. The game has a beautifully crafted story but sure as hell isn’t one of those games that is a story in playable form.

I don’t compare GW2 and GW1 because other than a few lore elements and a name they share nothing in common. If you take into account the level of technology of the time, GW1 is mostly superior to GW2 in every way.

In particular I have issues with the story in GW2. It has been a disaster since release. Check out the Story sub forum for the list of 100’s of obvious flaws (many involving the word ‘Trahearne’) in what has to be one of the worst written plots in any MMO I have played.

And things seems to only get worse. I groan in pain everytime I have to watch Marjory and Kas go through another borderline creepy, completely out of place love scene (and not because they are a same sex couple, but because it’s written with all the subtly of a Mac truck). I get it ANet. You’re a modern open minded company. No need to beat us over the head with it.

Vogue.6305:

-snip-

(some spoiler alerts might be contained within)

I think we can get our enemy fill within the subplots. The dragons are just ominous harbingers of destruction – the catalyst for the cycle of death and rebirth. It’s a kind of enemy that needs to be addressed. I think of Terry Pratchett’s books:

Noble dragons don’t have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

Down there are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.

But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

Then there was another line I couldn’t find but it was something about the nature of a dragon vs. the nature of an assassin. A dragon was big, it was menacing. But an assassin turned a corner and blended in with the crowd – a dragon couldn’t do that.

It’s just interesting, I think, to get different perspectives. While the dragons might be the big bad – we have some interesting characters and subplots that haven’t been explored completely (which I think would be better if they had just released this story as a continuous story in an expansion). When you think about it, we have the Master of Peace, the situation with Belinda (and, more specifically, her ghost that's interestingly at Fort Salma), Rytlock's disappearance, the situation with Taimi and the Council (they seem to REALLY dislike her). It’s interesting to have these fleshed out characters to balance the genuine, simple evil that is a force of destruction.

They might not be as fleshed out as The Joker or Albert Wesker or Sephiroth but these characters also don’t quite have the same degree of ability to be worked with. Having all of these go down simultaneously is a bit interesting, and feels genuine to the story. Sort of reminds me of the Batman: Arkham games – I feel like their ability to intertwine all of Gotham’s characters made the game feel stronger and more genuine than just having Batman focus on one particular villain’s mayhem.

bluejay.6739:

And things seems to only get worse. I groan in pain everytime I have to watch Marjory and Kas go through another borderline creepy, completely out of place love scene (and not because they are a same sex couple, but because it’s written with all the subtly of a Mac truck). I get it ANet. You’re a modern open minded company. No need to beat us over the head with it.

Thisssss. yessss. I like the fact that more and more gaming companies are embracing a greater diversity of heros, but stop doing it so blatantly. You don’t need to appeal to tumblr fangirls/boys who literally need everything shown to them at face point.

Don’t make it seem so forced. Let the relationship shine on its own merits.

This is coming from a gay guy.

Lack of GvG is a major let down, otherwise GW2 has some nice communities of players.

I think, the story in GW2 was meant to be good. I’ve read the 2 books before playing GW2, and of course finished GW1 many times. I liked the books.

I like the personal story approach and how it interacts with the open world. The problem is that it is visible that at some point (around lvl 20 that is) the developers had heard that the game is being released in 2 weeks and the rest of the personal story is expected to be ready then (or something like that). So the cool stories were cut (for example the story about the second Pale tree, or White Mantles/Mursaats etc) and we get the crap with the orders which is very low on quality and had (and maybe still has) tons of bugs. The same goes with the rest of the content btw.

Then there is an experiment on living world story. The season 1 was the first try to such approach and the devs playground. It was basically the “living world” alpha. Season 2 is beta, it is much better.

So for me it is hard to judge where the game is going. The story gets better and the quality of it is increasing. I see again the connection of open world with living story instances which i like. I see a lot more lore per 2-weeks than before. The story is more interesting for me and can be replayed which is very important for me. But what about the rest of the lore? Story mode dungeons, fractals and personal stories? I regret that the game was rushed and we are stick with low quality content next to high quality one. I wish the devs would remake the PS along with the possibilities to replay it. Same goes for all the dungeons. But I don’t see that coming. I wonder what about expansion?

RakaNishoo.6071:

I think, the story in GW2 was meant to be good. I’ve read the 2 books before playing GW2, and of course finished GW1 many times. I liked the books.

I like the personal story approach and how it interacts with the open world. The problem is that it is visible that at some point (around lvl 20 that is) the developers had heard that the game is being released in 2 weeks and the rest of the personal story is expected to be ready then (or something like that). So the cool stories were cut (for example the story about the second Pale tree, or White Mantles/Mursaats etc) and we get the crap with the orders which is very low on quality and had (and maybe still has) tons of bugs. The same goes with the rest of the content btw.

Then there is an experiment on living world story. The season 1 was the first try to such approach and the devs playground. It was basically the “living world” alpha. Season 2 is beta, it is much better.

So for me it is hard to judge where the game is going. The story gets better and the quality of it is increasing. I see again the connection of open world with living story instances which i like. I see a lot more lore per 2-weeks than before. The story is more interesting for me and can be replayed which is very important for me. But what about the rest of the lore? Story mode dungeons, fractals and personal stories? I regret that the game was rushed and we are stick with low quality content next to high quality one. I wish the devs would remake the PS along with the possibilities to replay it. Same goes for all the dungeons. But I don’t see that coming. I wonder what about expansion?

2 years since it’s release is still too soon for an expansion, I’d say give it a year or two more and I can see it happening.

They change.3526:

Am I the only person who has played GW1 that feels that a lot of the lore of the series is being told in a stale manner? The entire Instance with rytlock in the dragons reach was just so dumb. I mean the items were just found lying around in rocks. Whoever the writer is does everything in such a rushed manner. I also don’t feel like there’s anything to do because I liked hunting for my skills in GW1.

Let’s be honest. Lore has never been Guild Wars’ strong suit. I was pretty intrigued with the original plot line of pre and post-searing Ascalon and the conflict with the Charr, but that conflict was quickly abandoned even before the end of the first game. Every subsequent expansion introduced lore that had nothing whatsoever to do with the lore before. The stories have never felt cohesive, and one gets the distinct impression that someone’s just been making crap up as they go along.

Thankfully what ArenaNet lacks in lore they make up for with pretty graphics, performant interfaces, and superior skill systems. Unfortunately I have to say that I prefer GW1 to GW2. I’m sorry they ended its life so soon.

I played GW1 for a lonnnnnnng time. I was with it from Prophecies and stuck around for all of the expansions. Eye of the North was one of my favorite games. At the same time, my friend and I were really looking forward to GW2. We were both in the closed and open betas and were very optimistic about it.

But lore? I blasted through the GW1 stories to get them done and get a good weapon at the end. I paid attention to the story, and I know it well, but I never thought that GW1 told a really great story. Still, I respected the fact that they tried. Other MMOs don’t really do that (For example, I’ll never forget my disappointment when WoW totally ignored its lore when it was first released).

So going into GW2, I wasn’t expecting much lore-wise. Right now, I feel lukewarm about GW2’s lore. I did the personal story up until the high 70s when the game first came out, but I just found it boring. I couldn’t make any attachments to any characters. Worse was that unlike GW1’s story which terminated in a useful item, I found GW2’s PS story rewards to be totally useless. I mean, when I forced myself to complete the PS I thought I would AT LEAST get an exotic out of it but no. I just got a skin I will probably never use.

That said, GW1 I at least didn’t mind doing, and I’ve done the stories A LOT (in GW1 story completion unlocked hard mode). In fact, repeating missions was often a source of rewards in GW1. In GW2, I doubt I will ever do the PS again. After doing it once, what’s the point?

I should mention though that I am enjoying the LS right now, and I was a big fan of Scarlet. I think GW2 and its lore are improving, but at the expense of the PS.

I think this thread purely for pvf.

They are separate games. With the only real bothersome thing being that the successor of Guild Wars is named Guild Wars 2 and not Dragon Wars or some other wackadoodle name. Being name GW2 does Guild Wars a great disservice to it’s legacy.

….A little sad because all the old characters like Gween, Devona, Cynn died…. want them back in GW2…

How do I feel? Continuously disappointed mostly. Pretty much all updates have problems and issues and the only truly amazing thing done since launch was the wardrobe, which in the end isn’t as great as it could be due to how bad their armor designers are. It’s nice that were finally getting new zones and the LS S2 journal is a dramatic improvement as well. I hated how there’s been no storyline continuation at all to followup Zhaitan’s death but this feels kinda like I’m getting that finally with S2.

It’s just there’s been no actual gameplay changes or additions, no new legendarys weapons, no new skills, no new pvp modes, no new armor styles or armor fixes, no new dungeons, still billions of trait/skill fixes needed, and there isn’t any ETA on any of this. The new traits are very minimal and many of them are useless. My Thief is basically locked into one playstyle forever; I need a new way to play that’s actually useful and Anet would have to choose it for me since playing my way, which was originally intended, isn’t possible. I feel like it just isn’t possible till they do some major MAJOR redesigns on weapons or give classes more weapons to choose from. Then there’s the whole thing where they made Spvp awful making every game 5v5 with tons of waiting to hotjoin with no deathmode map support leaving it up to crappy custom rooms only that can be abused. No changes to wvw at all ofc either, and no guild halls and never will be. :/

Can only do the same thing over and over for so long.

Personally, I don’t find terribly much difference in terms of writing quality between GW1 and GW2. I mean, when you think about it, many of the elements that fans rage about in GW2 existed in GW1 as well.

“Because Scarlet?” I raise you with “Because Abaddon.”
Predictable storylines? Friend, you would to be blind and deaf not to see Vizier Khilbron being the Undead Lich coming from halfway across Tyria.
Trehearne stole our story? Kormir was stealing our stories before it was cool.

Come on, guys. Let’s not pretend GW1’s storytelling was amazing. If it was better than what GW2 has told so far, it’s not by so much to be a particularly kitten ing criticism.

What it is (in both cases) is… passable, which (sadly) is still superior to pretty much anyone else in the MMO genre. It’s like having a pinched nerve in a world where everyone has their spines crushed.

While I have few problems with GW2, I do feel like this is a kiddies version of the old game.
Less mechanics to build/design your fighting style (though I like the jumping and dodging)
It’s so much easier, back in gw1, one second of blinking could cost your life, here you can just spam 1 against the most "dangerous"’ bosses

Also the depth of the world, I dunno, it kinda feels blander, simplified. More child-friendly

chemiclord.3978:

Personally, I don’t find terribly much difference in terms of writing quality between GW1 and GW2. I mean, when you think about it, many of the elements that fans rage about in GW2 existed in GW1 as well.

“Because Scarlet?” I raise you with “Because Abaddon.”
Predictable storylines? Friend, you would to be blind and deaf not to see Vizier Khilbron being the Undead Lich coming from halfway across Tyria.
Trehearne stole our story? Kormir was stealing our stories before it was cool.

Come on, guys. Let’s not pretend GW1’s storytelling was amazing. If it was better than what GW2 has told so far, it’s not by so much to be a particularly kitten ing criticism.

What it is (in both cases) is… passable, which (sadly) is still superior to pretty much anyone else in the MMO genre. It’s like having a pinched nerve in a world where everyone has their spines crushed.

/shrug. Abbadon was a God. Scarlett was a snowflake vegetable. Bit of a difference there.

You can say both both GW and GW2 aren’t the pinnacle of of fantasy writing. Fair enough, but, one worked, one didn’t and hasn’t.

Had the same writers done GW, we would have spent 40 mins on a cutscene with Saidra and Evennia discussing all the curtains they would never pick out together. We would have known Saidra was doomed the first time we met her.

We would have sent Tahlkora to ask Koss to arrange meetings with Kormir.

The Gadd/Vekk father/son drama would have been worth an hour of dialog. Same with Koss/Melonni. Cynn/Menlo would have been at least 3 Campaigns worth of domestic squabbling breaking out at every turn.

Varesh would have laughed more. Lots more. Muahaa haaa laughing. After which the Harpy/Hylek alliance would have jumped in, followed by the Djinn/Eboga alliance. Then, in the middle of the wastes, we would have been beset by a gigantic wooden Badger and Corsairs on flying Carpets.

All thoughts of Shiro would have vanished as we became totally committed to solving the mantid mystery of Shing Jea island after the Harvest Temple. Togo would send Devona to his brother to arrange a summit.

LEY LINES!! And NOBODY in Tyria would ask what a “ley” was.

and so on

the big difference is skill needed, you can pretty much get trough everything in GW2 with even the worst weapons, you’ll die the instance you have the wrong build in GW1.
really, at times i almost want to close my eyes and listen to what happens, just position the mouse correctly and i can steamroll everything.
in GW1 however i need to keep an eye on everything, one wrong move and i can end up with 3 groups against me and believe me, some areas are not something to mess with.

however, the big problem GW2 has is that it’s possible to go everywhere on your own but you depend on other players when doing dungeons/fractures, in GW1 everything is already made for team play and they have henchmen/heroes to replace human players. (something they should really add to GW2, even if it’s just for dungeons)

it’s just that, in GW1 you can depend on each other the roles are clear and you can focus on fighting your enemies, if no player is around all you have to do is press “P” and choose your hench/hero team.
in GW2 there is just to much bickering about what gear you should take, which weapons you take, which traits you should take, etc…
Anet ones said that they want to make a game for the community, all they did was make a game for ex-WoW players who don’t want to do quests.
allot of GW fans (and no, i am not BSing you) ether never left GW1 or bought GW2 and hate it, there are even players that bought GW2, tried GW1 and left GW2 simply because of how much fun GW1 is.

i am not saying GW2 is horrible, it has it’s moments and there are some fun things about it but it’s a farcry from a successor.
it has no strategy, no fun quests to do, no interesting story and worst of all, it’s so much focused on gear and traits that it’s more a traditional MMO and less GW2.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

/shrug. Abbadon was a God. Scarlett was a snowflake vegetable. Bit of a difference there.

You can say both both GW and GW2 aren’t the pinnacle of of fantasy writing. Fair enough, but, one worked, one didn’t and hasn’t.

Had the same writers done GW, we would have spent 40 mins on a cutscene with Saidra and Evennia discussing all the curtains they would never pick out together.

We would have sent Koss to arrange meetings with Kormir.

The Gadd/Vekk father/son drama would have been worth an hour of dialog. Same with Koss/Melonni.

All thoughts of Shiro would have vanished as we became totally committed to solving the mantid mystery of Shing Jea island after the Harvest Temple.

and so on

I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to compare with that last one… but eh…

Anyway, I personally kinda LIKE the more detail and character centered stories. I kinda like the “day to day” stuff that GW1 just leaves assumed. I kinda LIKE that the player character can’t be everywhere at once and delegates things.

Is Marjory and Kasmeer squabbling about interior decorating trivial? Absolutely… but I kinda like the trivial details. It shows a depth of character that GW1 just glossed over as unimportant as it pushed you down its (I don’t want to use the word “generic”, but I really can’t think of a less negative connotation to use… normally words don’t fail me like this, forgive me) narrative.

It’s one of the things I find BETTER in GW2 than its predecessor, though I DO acknowledge that sometimes the forest got lost in the trees during those wind-down segments of the Living Story. I think they’ve done a better job dialing that stuff back in Season 2 so far. Whether that is simply because we’re in more of an “action” segment or if they earnestly learned from that is something I’ll have to see.

The biggest problem I had with the living story was OI, did that thing drag on for FAR too long. That entire season could have been told in half the amount of updates. It was a slog, to be sure. I dunno if it’s because they felt it had to take [x] amount of weeks before they even started or what, but ugh.

sorudo.9054:

that it’s more a traditional MMO and less GW2.

I think a lot of the criticism GW1 veterans have for GW2 can be boiled down to that.

Because it absolutely IS more of a traditional MMO, sometimes for better and often for worse. For someone who absolutely loved what GW1 was not, I can certainly understand this game felt like a slap to face, and one I’m still not wholly convinced was necessary.

Arena.net had a very devoted niche, and they certainly abandoned a good deal of that niche here in the effort to appeal to a more “mainstream” MMO audience. I’m not sure why they felt they needed the larger audience (by all accounts, GW1 was very profitable), but once they did… the end result was pretty clear, it was going to drift far closer to the cookie-cutter MMO experience.

Maybe I didn’t feel as betrayed because I kinda guessed this was going to happen. It generally does in MMOs, after all. I’ve… accepted the warts of the genre influence and have tried to focus on how it remains different, to varying levels of success.

hannah mee.7925:

Sekai.2987:

They change.3526:

Am I the only person who has played GW1 that feels that a lot of the lore of the series …

I never play an MMO for the story (tbh i think very few do), i have offline games for that.

Played GW1, Ragnarok, Aion, Lineage 2, Perfect World and some other which i dont even remember the name anymore, i never care about story , most of the time it´s a wall of text that i just skip by spaming the “next” button.

Guild Wars has one of the best told stories, a really well-crafted world that ties in with its lore. ANet really spent a lot of time crafting Tyria. With that in mind, though, I’m not naive enough to try and compare this game’s story to BioShock, Kingdom Hearts, Infamous, God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Final Fantasy, etc. The game has a beautifully crafted story but sure as hell isn’t one of those games that is a story in playable form.

But which of the games that you’d listed is an MMO? It’s an important question. MMOs have difficulties in story telling that single player games dont’ have. That’s not just Guild Wars 2, that’s all MMOs. There are problems here, because in an MMO you can’t be the one and only hero.

Take a game like Skyrim. In Skyrim you can be the one guy. You’re the guy who’s marked. Prophecied. You can be the head of all the guilds on a single character. Imagine if you could do that in Guild Wars 2. Then what would I do? After all, I’m one guy among myriad players all playing in the same world.

The same goes for story telling. In a single player game you can change the whole game, because something that happens affects only the person playing the game. You could even do that in Guild Wars 1. Because it was instanced. You can’t do that in an MMO though.

You can’t heal Orr because people haven’t done that yet. Any attempt to heal Orr would kill the entire premise of the game for anyone who’s yet to complete their personal story. Zhaitan must be alive.

Anet tried to do this with the first season of the living story, but people complained about temporary content and for other reasons, changing the open world causes problems. Like doing the stuff in LA after it’s been destroyed in the real world, but while it was still not destroyed in the Personal story.

Comparing single player games to MMOs is unfair for these reasons.

The reason why MMOs aren’t on your list at all is because they have specific challenges that have to be handled.

@OP:

Really i feel meh. I have never thought of gw1 lore as a great one, but certainly it was much better than what i see in gw2.

Whole gw2 hype focused on PS and epic adventure so i was expecting something way better. It’s not horrible but it’s not good either. I was very excited when they announced that gw2 lore will be focused on ancient dragons. It was so epic to search for signs of dragons in eotn.

When i completed PS i was reallyyyyy disappointed with Zhaitan. Like… it’s an ancient dragon kitten . He didn’t say a word through whole game(afaik). Even Glint in gw1 could speak and said something. Ancient dragons to me are too animal like, only difference is that they are way more powerful and that’s it. I would like to have a little background story that tells us more about dragons. Maybe it’s just that anet didn’t make it the way i expected.

I am huge RPG fan. I play tabletop RPG games few times a week, i am DM in fantasy rpgs. Tbh i would create story like that in few hours. It’s too simple, sometimes boring and feels nothing like epic adventure. I expected ancient dragons to be smarter and stronger. Fight with Zhaitan was too easy. If i would be able to control him i would destroy whole “army” in few minutes. He acts like stupid flying pigeon, not like ancient dragon.

When people say that story of gw2 is childish i think they mean it’s too kitten simple and naive + it has no background. I remember when i was writing 13 scenarios for d&d campaign – i’ve spent one day for each main characters, i wrote looong background so players could gather information and come out with some interesting theories about each individual. It makes lore much more interesting when you can discuss story behind each character, but in gw2 Zhaitan – main enemy – is just flying bone…
___________________________________________________________________

Ok so that was my take on PS. Now it’s time for LS.

oh My GOD

LS imho is way worse than normal expansion. I would really like to see expansions like in gw1 where you get tons of new skills, 2 new professions and whole new continent(or pack of vast areas).

Remember what LS changed in gw2… not much huh?

Remember that in GW1 during 1,5 year they released 2 huge expansions – Nightfall and Factions which gave us as i said before – tons of new skills, 4 new professions, new weapon sets, 2 continents ,2 different good stories, new cool pvp content(factions), new armours and weapon skins, completely new heroes mechanic with good AI.

So please guys don’t even compare gw1 progress in 1,5 year to gw2 progress in same amount of time. It’s not even worth to discuss, i see some people here defend gw2 so hard it’s just funny.

It’s worth to mention i love both games. I love gw2 as much as gw1, atm i am at 2000 hours in gw2 and i hope i will hit at least 4000

Peace

PS:Sorry for my english xD