Guild Wars 2

I strive to be an honest and fair person.

When the remodeled LA was first released and we all took to the forum to post our opinions, mine was somewhat negative.

I’m a bit of a stickler for lore, and I will confess that most of my opinion was formed around the opening load in area which I found to be somewhat elf-ish/plant people-ish in design.

I’m still not overly fond of those features, however upon closer examination of the city I have to confess that there is a staggering amount of detail that is elegant and worthy of praise.

Whoever did the textures, bump/spec maps. Wow! just wow! You have an amazing eye. Your choices brought a harmony to the table without having to over state any one feature. How in the heck did you pull that off? My hats off to you.

The modeling of the more Krytan structures are a step up from the older version with just mind blowing detail. The envelope was pushed to put that much detail in a low poly game environment.

I could go on and on about the little things like the palms swaying to simulate a coastal breeze and the shadows that follow, or the many different grasses and plants, but my point here is to offer a humble apology to the creative team.

I should have looked closer before I spoke. /respect

Don’t worry, ANET will probably blow it up again in a future storyline. Because why not?

It’s… very different from the original. Or even the partial rebuild.

I really liked the original lions arch – something about it just felt very… fitting. Not so much that it resembles the original lions arch (which, lets be fair, really wasn’t anything special) but that it seemed like a city that could believably have been built by pirates.

The new one is very… different. It incorporates obvious elements of pact design, and it is very well designed, but it’s not the lions arch that i knew and loved.

I’m trying to view it with an open mind and a newcomers eye – if i’d just started playing the game with the june patch, would i find the city so unappealing? it’s hard to say, but i think i probably wouldn’t. It is a very pretty city, even if it just somehow doesn’t seem to fit anymore.

meh. </rant>

I liked the old design of Lion’s Arch, it had it’s own character and unique qualities. now it just feels like someone came along, concreted over those unique qualities, and replaced it with a cheezy theme park.

while it is well done, the textures and stuff (the designers really did do a great job), it has still lost what it was. it isn’t Lion’s Arch anymore, it isn’t even somewhere I can take seriously anymore.

on the plus side it makes me appreciate the personal story instances that happen in old Lion’s Arch all the more.

If I’m upset about one thing, it’s that there’s not enough lions in Lion’s Arch. Too many dolyaks and sea creatures. More lions!

Really though, I hated a good chunk of the original Lion’s Arch. Difficult to move around in, not much to see. Yeh, it’s a pirate haven, etc yadda, but at least blowing it up somehow made it more convenient. The new design is bright and refreshing, and perhaps it’s a sign that Lion’s Arch is maturing with it.

Is it just me when people say “original Lion’s Arch”, the Lion’s Arch from Guild Wars 1 comes to mind?

Kudos to the OP for posting about how their views on the design evolved. It’s hard to admit to having made a mistake and hardly anyone is able to do so graciously, with allowances made for others who might not share the same opinion.

Whenever something in the game changes, I try to consider how I will feel about it a month after implementation, rather than on how annoying it might be to adapt to the change the day/week its introduced.