Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Something I noticed among myself and others that I play with who’ve played 2 years or more. We have problem seeing purpose in what we do.

We like to play content, but compared to vanilla content; we don’t play new content as nearly as much as we used too. I think the issue lies in purpose. “Why” should we play this content?

Since release the main sources of incentive seemed the following. Achievements (once they were added), Equipment/stats, and Skins. After playing the game for so long, they just don’t excite us like they use too. It used to be “we can’t wait”, but now we’re like “meh”.

You need to introduce more rewards/incentives to help keep the veteran playerbase. You don’t have the luxury of “resetting” every expansion like WoW does.

Agreed completely. the content really falls short in direction.

So the question becomes, what are your options besides skins, achievements, titles? What is a reward you’d find worth your time?

I really can’t say much myself, but… it truly does seem like GW 2 compared to GW 1 is very much lacking in the story-telling department. The aspect of releasing more content that involves more of a competitive nature over that of a story being told me is painstakingly obvious.

I remember GW 1 being very rich into the story-telling aspect of the journey we players take.

Jaymee.1560:

I really can’t say much myself, but… it truly does seem like GW 2 compared to GW 1 is very much lacking in the story-telling department. The aspect of releasing more content that involves more of a competitive nature over that of a story being told me is painstakingly obvious.

I remember GW 1 being very rich into the story-telling aspect of the journey we players take.

The story is decent.

The main difference between Gw1 and Gw2 for me was that in Gw1 each mission was its own story. There was no open world. Simply instances that were designed in at a specific time in the universe for a specific event.

It’s one of the reasons why I think the Living World is the major factor that kept this game alive for so long. The constant stream of new content helped extend vanilla life content, but kept story constantly interesting.

They messed up on a lot of things with the HoT release. I think there are two major things that are affecting their population. 1, no living world. Waiting almost a year after HoT to restart the living world was a horrible mistake. The game relies on it too much. It should’ve started in January/Feb. 2, Guild Halls. Guild Halls could’ve opened up a new avenue for adding purpose and incentives to old/new content. Same goes with Scribing decorations. Instead, they’re both huge gold drains. So the incentive behind this new content gets muddled into the incentive that has existed since release…earning tons of gold.

Guild Wars 1 was completely instanced and it’s easier to tell a story in an instanced game,because you control everything.

If you come out of a story mission in Fort Ranik, the events surrounding Fort Ranik can support the story, because it’s instanced.

But Guild Wars 2 is different. You have an instance which is completely different for people in different stories, and then you have a zone which depending on when you arrive there has it’s own internal architecture.

For example, if you’re doing the human story centered around your parents, there’s nothing in the zone that’s specifically about that. Because the zone isn’t instanced.

In Guild Wars 1 there was no real reason to go back to zones either, at least in normal mode. Those times were passed. But because zones were instanced you could change a zone so people who completed the story would get the War in Kryta content. You just can’t do that with an open world, at least not easily.

You couldn’t start a character in Prophecies and at level 2 jump into Factions. You had to get them to a certain point in the story. But that also meant if you started a Factions character and your friend started a Prophecies character, you couldn’t hook up. There are advantages and disadvantges to both types of storytelling.

Yeah, but it pained me, as I am sure it has pained many others that GW 1 vs GW 2… those of us who lived the GW 1 Lore for many years, are still forever wondering what became of Cantha. What of Elona?

It’s something I never once accepted about GW 2 in all the time I’ve been playing it. It’s almost as if they erased the existence of these two “continents” of the world and RARELY bother acknowledging their existence.

Sure, Logan asks us what our linage is. And some twit outside of the armorsmith in DR is forever missing her grandma’s Red Bean Cakes, but… it seems like that is the only evidence that these two societies even co-existed with Tyria and…. from a storybook point of view… that’s… pathetic, lmao…

We don’t know because those areas have been cut off from us. We know that Cathan fell under the influence of the Ministry of Purity and expelled the nonhuman races. We know that Elona is cut off by Palawa Joko. They’re cut off in lore.

I would surpise me if Anet didn’t have more lore coming that ties into the old game. A lot of things in game hint at it.

It’s just that games today take far longer to create than games ten years ago.