Guild Wars 2

Post 1-2:
I began playing Guild Wars 2 a few months ago and have finally managed to complete the main story. Now I have started to play through the Heart of Thorns expansion but one thing has always been bugging me about the games story. I can’t seem to make heads nor tails of it. Time and time again I find myself hearing about something within the game but get no explanation as to what it is or what’s going on. I find myself having to go outside the game to places such as the GW2 wiki page to read up on various subjects, and even then I either don’t get much information or have to continue reading up on other points for it to make any kind of sense.
Even though I have completed the main story I’m still not sure what I did exactly, or why I did it. Every step of the way I found myself asking more questions and getting very few answers. I’m not sure how much GW2 is linked to any of the previous games in the series, so it’s possible that some things were explained in those which I haven’t played.

At the very start of the game I was dropped right in the middle of a large battle, my first thoughts were “what’s going on? Who are these people? Why are they fighting? Which side am I on?” I never really got an answer to any of those questions but can at least assume that because afterward the people giving me quests were sending me after ‘the fire legion’ that they were the ones I was supposed to be fighting against for some reason.
That battle ended abruptly, and I was sent to ‘the citadel’ where other characters were hailing me as some sort of hero. Again I found myself asking “what happened with the battle? Why and how did it end? Why is my character a hero? What did he do?” Once again I don’t think I ever got an answer to any of those questions.

On the whole there seems to be a severe lack of explanation in this game with the story, the features, and the gameplay. I still don’t know how to use half the features in the game and can’t find any information online which really helps.

The next questions I had in regard to the story was when my character and some others found out that a necromancer was raising the dead, supposedly using a dragons power to do so. Of course I had to ask myself, “How do we know that?” and again I got no answers or clues.

On the subject of dragons, that’s the next thing that confused me. Out of nowhere a bunch of characters started talking about how we’re all fighting a huge dragon threat. There had been no mention of this up until the necromancer incident, so I was utterly confused, I had no idea what anyone was talking about until I looked it up elsewhere, I kept asking “What dragon? How do we know about this? Where is it? Why are we fighting it? I was supposed to be going after the fire legion, how did the threat suddenly turn into a dragon?” I found no answers within the game, ankitten ot sure if I even found the answers anywhere outside the game either.

Then things took another twist and I ended up fighting some sort of zombie invasion. I had no idea where these zombies came from but somehow every npc did know, and they also knew thee zombies were linked to the dragon. They seemed to be rising up everywhere but then somehow everyone knew they were coming from a place called “orr” which I had never heard of until that point when again it was brought up out of nowhere.

The story takes so many twists and turns that it makes me dizzy, but I still hoped that everything would be wrapped up and explained towards the end.

I still have no idea who Trahearne is or why he was there, but he just appeared and made himself the leader of an army for some unknown reason. He was helping to fight the dragon, I get that much, but about half way through he started saying that his “wyld hunt” was over and pretty much disappeared. I have no idea what this wyld hunt is since it wasn’t even mentioned until after he apparently finished it. I at least expected him to be at the final battle with everyone else but he was nowhere to be found. Instead a bunch of other characters appeared who claimed they were part of my team, but the only one I even recognized was a character called Rytlock, the others I had never seen in my entire time of playing.

But in the end everyone defeated the dragon and I remained just as confused as ever.

Post 2-2
From what I’ve experienced so far the Heart of Thorns expansion may not be any easier to get to grips with. Ttrahearne apparently reappeared again but his airship crashed, now out of nowhere everyone is talking about new threats such as people called Scarlet, Mordrem, and Mordremoth.
To make it even more confusing I did a mission where even more people seemed to know me who I have never seen before, they sent me into some VR battle simulator and talked about other threats called Primordus and Jormag, who I have also never heard of and know nothing about, but somehow both my character and every other character in the game seems to know all about these things.

This game does have a good story, it really does, but it seems to do an extremely bad job of telling it. I have no idea what’s going on half of the time and seem to get more questions than answers the more I play. Perhaps explainations are provided through various NPC chatter or something, but I often try to play the story and don’t take much notice of other side characters unless they are a part of it. I understand that I may be bashing the storytelling a bit too much here, and I do apologize for that, but it is something that has been bugging me ever since I started playing that I wanted to get off my chest.

In short, you missed the whole LS2 story (and the movie describing ls1 story).

Well, playing other races’ Personal Story (at least the first 3 arcs, or so) might help. Reading ‘Movement of the World’ might help, as well. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Movement_of_the_World

Watching the in-game synopsis of Season One, or the player-created video of Season One might help.

Playing through Season Two would help you get ready for Heart of Thorns.

Playing the previous Campaigns, or at least reading the stories in the Guild Wars Wiki might, again, help.

The story(ies) of Tyria have been, and are being told, over these last 10 years plus.

Good luck.

I honestly can’t recommend this enough if you weren’t there for season 1:
https://youtu.be/joLmVI5URak

as for season 2, I’d say buy it if you can, it is seriously worth it (personal opinion), but if you can’t afford it, you can always ask around and see if you can join a friend who does have it to experience the story. you won’t get the rewards like that, but you won’t feel so lost with the story

Astralporing.1957:

In short, you missed the whole LS2 story (and the movie describing ls1 story).

in all fairness that wouldnt do jack kitten towards explaining who trahearne is, why hes such a big shot Firstborn (have to play Sylvari story) who the flame legion is, why theyre the bad guys, and other such racial minutae. indeed, some of that does come from GW1, especially charr and human history

I notice that people have been mentioning seasons. I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Is it another DLC like the whole Heart of Thorns thing? Because that’s the only one I’ve seen advertised. I thought I had completed the main story, do I need any of this additional stuff for the things I’ve already done to make sense?

well, to be fair, seems like you are referring to the Charr story, it is rather clear why you are fighting them. Sorry to say this…..but seems like you either skip a lot of stories, do not go up to the NPC´s, or at the very least, run throug it all. The story does tell you at the very beginning that you are fighting the humans who used to live there, very upfront. I did not main charr, and leveled it to 80 fast, so can not say anything about it but….
I played Sylvari, very clear why the dragon was a threat, what my quest was from the “dream” and why I should kill it, also the small stories before that was clear why I needed to defend the new Sylvaries etc…….I really follow a story through and through, never skipped a single story.
…..to proceed, the mother (of sylvari) took me to Orr, so I had pretty good idea of why, pretty sure Charr explain it very well why Zhaitan is a threat, and the attack on LA was VERY clear, that the dragon knew where to attack and how. Like could not be more clear in the game-

I am sorry, but I really have to encourage you to not skip the story, if you are missing that much. Like…. you MUST have skipped so many talks, if you really do not know why the invasion on LA happend. From own experience, I am sure that Charr at least explains half of what you have said, and have not even finished the story with Charr

Mat.8137:

I notice that people have been mentioning seasons. I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Is it another DLC like the whole Heart of Thorns thing?

Sort of. It’s a “living world” type content – something that originally was to replace the need for expansions.

In short, Anet kept releasing short bits of content over the years, that formed a storyline advancing the events from the point where personal story from core GW2 ends.

First was Season 1, which was deployed in form of one-time events, that were available only for the people that were playing at the time the specific chapter was up (once the events passed, they could not be replayed by anyone anymore). Some of those events made permanent changes to the game world. Kessex Hills lake area got significantly changed, when first a big tower made by Toxic alliance got buit there, and then when it got destroued. The city of Lion’s Arch suffered much bigger changes, as it got completely destroyed, for a time existed in partially damaged form, and then got completely rebuilt – you can see how the old city looked only in personal story elements that took place in there.

As i have already mentioned, it’s impossible to replay this part of the story, but there is a recap ingame movie available to you once you finish personal story, and there are some films on youtube that offer more info.

Then came the Second Season, that continued the same story further. This time, it was made to be repeatable – you can buy chapter unlocks in gemshop now, and everyone that logged in when one of the chapters was up, got this chapter unlocked for free (the same system now is used for season three). The story ended up just before (and lead to) Heart of Thorns expansion.

It is the part you are missing.

In short, to fully understand the story from Heart of Thorns expansion, you need to:
1. Finish the personal story from the core game. Preferably you should do the first, starting chapters from each race. Barring that, i’d advise to pick sylvari storyline, as it’s most relevant to the expansion (which used story that was strongly tied to that race).
2. Watch the Living Story season 1 movie/recap.
3. buy the Living story season 2 unlock, and play through it.

Excelsior.

I kind of like the way things are being told. In real life, I know my boss’ name and what we are doing right now, but I do not ask for his vita. Same with Trahearne. Or what the “Wylda Jagd” (Wyld Hunt?) is, and I do not care.

But I understand you somewhat.

However, since I am an Asuracist, I knew what is going on in the Asura story line because I suck up all the Asura lore like a sponge – the other stuff is being explained or can be guessed.

Overall, I just “selectively care” about things. I have no idea what exactly happened to Ascalon, but it has to do with the cats. I don’t know about the guys in the Maguuma Jungle – but they accept me as their leader, so yeah… When that one cat joins the fight, I was like “Who’s that?!” but the other NPCs liked him and we are not enemies, so I am fine. Just like a new colleague from a different branch of the same company. We know our business and now let’s work together, no need to for more details right now.

In real life, I also do not have knowledge about every detail in history or politics. I still miss about the Hutu/Tutsi thing in ’94, even though I watched Hotel Huanda and read so much about it. Just as example.

If you are really lore-hungry and want every piece of the puzzle, you gotta get trough all stories. I, for my part, focus on the long-eared midgets and let the other stories and races be vague.

Maybe it’s just the nature of mmorpgs. I’m playing Black Desert at the moment and I literally have to alt tab out of the game for so many quests/items/mechanics just to see if anyone figured it out through testing.

zengara: Yeah I’m playing as a Charr character. As far as I’m aware I haven’t been skipping the story when it’s presented to me. I try to watch what happens but half of it doesn’t make much sense to me because they keep bringing stuff up which hadn’t been established yet. It was as if the characters knew what they were talking about due to actually living in that world, but they forgot to pass on that information to the player.

From what I’m getting out of these replies, to understand the story I would basically have to play through the story of every type of available character, kind of like one of those bad dreamcast era Sonic games. That sounds increadibly time consuming just to understand what’s going on with the game in general.
Also where are these season things that I’ve been hearing about? At the very least those sound like they could be worth looking up whether I decide to get them or not.

if truth be told original personal story, was more cohesive than it is now, during time arena net decided to remove or rework some content from the original personal story that can cause confusion.
anyway, you can have a more knowledge of the lore by playing different character races, like sylvari for example, which will fill the gap on things like the wyld hunt and so on.

also the part about primordus and jormag are from season 3, you shouldn’t play that if you didn’t play heart of thorns story.

about dragons it’s a matter of lore.
we now elder dragons exist and usually are in slumber, every cycle they awake and bring destruction to the world we know and than go or are put to slumber again.
the time we are playing is a cycle of elder dragons waking up from their slumber. they are a great menace for all the living creatures of tyria reguarding of their races and personal history. dragons corrupt and destroy.
the difference from the past is that we now are killing elder dragons instead of putting them to slumber, by doing so we are somehow (explained in season 3) making the remaining dragons more powerful and even more dangerous.

so yes, dragons are the main of our concern as a renown hero

Mat.8137:

zengara: Yeah I’m playing as a Charr character. As far as I’m aware I haven’t been skipping the story when it’s presented to me. I try to watch what happens but half of it doesn’t make much sense to me because they keep bringing stuff up which hadn’t been established yet. It was as if the characters knew what they were talking about due to actually living in that world, but they forgot to pass on that information to the player.

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From what I’m getting out of these replies, to understand the story I would basically have to play through the story of every type of available character, kind of like one of those bad dreamcast era Sonic games. That sounds increadibly time consuming just to understand what’s going on with the game in general.
Also where are these season things that I’ve been hearing about? At the very least those sound like they could be worth looking up whether I decide to get them or not.

Again, I have not completed the Charr, but I will answer some of the above. Living story is after Zhaitan, and literally does not have anything to do with the main story “to reach zhaitan”
As I said, I have not completed the Charr story nor have I played the Guild Wars 1 story. I never searched during my play throug of the Sylvari class for anything online related to the main story (around 3 years ago).

The game is not designed for you to complete multiple stories, to understand the main story. I will hold on to the first part where you got in the middle of the fight without knowing anything whilst your charr knows everything. Ive seen throug 2-3 replays of 3 year old youtube videos. The game does explain slowly why you are fighting them around 1 hour into the game, but because of hectic start, you are just getting into the story “in-medias-res”. The dungeon story in the Charr´s home also explains it well, why the ghosts are there.
Again, I am very happy that I started of with the sylvari story, in my own personal perspective, it is one of the stories that is very explainatory, you never feel alone, the actual homeplace is filled with small and funny quests that get you ery much into the world, like a frog that transforms you etc.

In short, no, the story are not meant to be seen from multiple sides. The living stories do not explain the previous story ( the road to Zhaitan). Again, idk how good Charr is explained, but Sylvari story was well painted out, after you defeat a small time boss (like lvl 10 or something) mother sends you to orr through a glass to see the horror of the hands, spiders, the water creatures etc……….

Mat.8137:

I notice that people have been mentioning seasons. I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Is it another DLC like the whole Heart of Thorns thing? Because that’s the only one I’ve seen advertised. I thought I had completed the main story, do I need any of this additional stuff for the things I’ve already done to make sense?

Yes. HoT is not an independent story, it flows directly on from season 2 which flowed on from the now discontinued season 1 which took place after the personal story.

Season 2, like season 3 after HoT, is available from the gemstore. Episodes were free if you logged in during their launch window.

Mat.8137:

zengara: Yeah I’m playing as a Charr character. As far as I’m aware I haven’t been skipping the story when it’s presented to me. I try to watch what happens but half of it doesn’t make much sense to me because they keep bringing stuff up which hadn’t been established yet. It was as if the characters knew what they were talking about due to actually living in that world, but they forgot to pass on that information to the player.

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From what I’m getting out of these replies, to understand the story I would basically have to play through the story of every type of available character, kind of like one of those bad dreamcast era Sonic games. That sounds increadibly time consuming just to understand what’s going on with the game in general.
Also where are these season things that I’ve been hearing about? At the very least those sound like they could be worth looking up whether I decide to get them or not.

Okay, make it a bit easier:

• You don’t have to have played Guild Wars 1 or read the novels to get everything. They, however, enhance your understanding and significance of things.

• If you play through the GW2 mainstory (it doesn’t matter which race or Order), you will go through these steps: Your Character Background, your Race Problem, Becoming a Hero of your Race, Joining an Order, Rise in Rank with the Order, Discover the Danger of Zaithan on L.A. , bring the Fight back to Zaithan, Weaken Zaithan and finally defeat Zaithan.

• You mostly meet unknown characters in the last part of the mainstory. Mostly, because they wanted to have all come together there. It might be confusing, but often you just need to role with it.

• However just following the story, won’t give you the whole picture. You get more information if you look at the lore presented in the maps (Enviromental Storytelling). For example, the whole Orr maps are showing the struggle of the Pact against Zaithans forces and that is referenced in the Story. That means, you liberating and holding Orr, is the progress the mainstory is referencing (like claiming temples there, etc.)

• The other significant story starts with the dungeons. Each race has a hero (For example Rytlock Brimstone for the Charr), who was part of a legendary Guild called Destinys Edge. They have split up after a certain event (discribed in a novel, but also told about ingame). You first meet a hero in the PS (Personal Story) as your liason and then you meet all member in Lions Arch. From there you can help them reform their guild via the Dungeon Storymodes.

• The Living World/Story (LS). Right now we are in the 3 Season. The 2nd Season is available in the gemstore. Each episode of a new season will be free, as long as you log in, when it goes live. The experimented with season 1 and changed the format in season 2. Without going into details, you have to read up on LS1, as it isn’t available anymore today.

• Raids are a new thing that came with LS3 and they are given auxilary lore, that is highly significant but you get the gists outside as well.

• Current Events, extra quests you can go on, who change the world, but are mostly hints towards future events. For example the Anomalys that run around several maps.

To give you a chronological order (Not nessessary to follow all):
GW1 (+All add ons and Mission Packs) → Sea of Sorrows (Novel) → Ghosts of Ascalon (Novel) → Edge of Destiny (Novel → GW2 Personal Story → LS1 (Wiki and Movie ingame) → LS2 (gem-shop) → HoT → LS3 → Future expansion.

theres a couple wiki that can help to summarise the story, e.g

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1

Mat.8137:

to understand the story I would basically have to play through the story of every type of available character, kind of like one of those bad dreamcast era Sonic games. That sounds increadibly time consuming just to understand what’s going on with the game in general.

Nope. The only race I ever play is Sylvari and I understand the story perfectly fine. I don’t care much about other races.

Mat.8137:

From what I’m getting out of these replies, to understand the story I would basically have to play through the story of every type of available character, kind of like one of those bad dreamcast era Sonic games.

No. Racial (and order) storylines would fleshen out some side info. For example, each of the racial stories introduces one of the members of the Destiny’s edge (Caithe, Logan, Rytlock, Zojja and Eir), that keep appearing later on. Sylvari story also introduces Trahaerne earlier than others, and gives a little bit more info on him (since he’s a Sylvari) and gives a bit more info on sylvari race, the Dream, Nightmare court and the Soundless, (things that will be referenced later on during LS2 and Heart of Thorns).
Some story about Destiny’s Edge gets introduced through dungeons’ story mode (theoretically you should do them during your personal story, since the final story dungeon – Arah – is also the final element of the personal story). Specifically, Twilight Arbor story introduces Faolain, the leader of sylvari Nightmare Court, someone that will also be relevant for Heart of Thorns story.

The OP is an eloquently expressed and not entirely unfair assessment of some of the shortcomings of the storytelling in GW2 but I think there’s a much more fundamental issue here. This is an MMORPG, not a single-player RPG.

The assumption that there is a clear, linear storyline that every player will follow, understand and share is simply untrue. Although the term “virtual world” has fallen out of fashion, MMOs by and large do still feature multiple perspectives within a global whole that is not designed or intended to be wholly visible from any one perspective.

As a player you aren’t “expected” to play all the classes or races in order to understand every aspect of the wider story. That would indeed be asking a lot of most players. Instead you are not expected to know, experience or understand many of the details of the story first-hand at all. Playing a Charr, as the OP is, you would not be expected to know the minutiae of the Asuran or Sylvari backstory and it would be entirely proper for much of it to seem puzzling, assuming you even notice it at all.

In an MMO with five playable races you can reasonably assume that 80% of the story content in the early part of the game does not apply to you at all. As a player you can indeed roll other characters and experience it if you want to, but you don’t need to and the game doesn’t expect you to.

As you level up those stories will come together and by the time you’re 80 you will mostly be doing the same thing and seeing the same story as all the other races. Even then, however, there may be elements of flavor or small tidbits specifically included to amuse and entertain players of other races that mean little or nothing to you. That’s intentional and is the sort of thing that makes many people prefer MMOs and their virtual worldliness to static, single perspective RPGs.

That said, the story the game tells you about the race you are playing should be clear and consistent and I agree that in GW2 it isn’t always. Because GW2 is a sequel to a long-running game that not only had multiple, complex storylines but also spawned a number of novels, a great deal of foreknowledge is assumed or even expected and that’s a flaw. I certainly would not have the insight and understanding, and certainly not the emotional connection, with much of the main storyline of GW2 had I not made a point of buying and reading the “Edge of Destiny” novel in particular.

I don’t think there is any point fighting it, though. This is how most successful and/or long-running MMOs work. It’s part of the form of the genre. Happily, a failure to follow the narrative rarely has any impact whatsoever on gameplay so if it all seems too much to bother with you can safely just ignore it.

Start by reading this wiki article which gives a very brief summary of the lore from the first game.

Then read The Movement of the World, which gives some background on the current state of the major races and the conflict with the elder dragons.

Those two articles should be enough to give you at least some general context for most of the events happening in the game. Although I’d recommend going a step further and also reading these short articles about each of the five races — which talk about some of their key organizations and persons of note:

The Line of Duty

The Legions of the Charr

A Spirit of Legend

That Old College Try

Dream and Nightmare

If you’re REALLY wanting to dive in to the deep end of the lore, you could also read about some of the NPC races who you will encounter frequently throughout the story:

Grawl
Krait
Quaggan
Jotun
Kodan
Skritt

Even without going into all the races, that should be enough to get you through the first personal story campaign (up through the defeat of Zhaitan).

When you begin the Living World part of your personal story, unfortunately the first season is no longer playable in game because it was largely a series of “live” events which happened out in the open world. You can read a summary of what happened here: Living World Season 1 Summary.

I’d recommend digging a little deeper into Scarlet Briar, since her actions during Season 1 had a lot to do with what happens in the Heart of Thorns expansion.

At that point, you should be able to play through Season 2 with enough background context to understand who’s who and what’s going on. Season 2 starts making more references to the original Guild Wars (mostly just the first campaign: Prophecies), so you may want to read The Storyline of Prophecies to get some context around events and people from the past who are mentioned. Season 3 also has a lot of references back to Prophecies.

And one final suggestion: if you see something happening in-game that you don’t understand (a dynamic event, a renown heart task, etc.) try talking to some of the NPCs in the area. While Guild Wars 2 doesn’t require you to follow the traditional MMO quest style of “talk to quest giver, kill foozels/collect gizmos, return to quest giver for reward” – you CAN still do that to get more context about what’s going on in the area and why in the world you just received a random task to collect harpy pheromones for some strange asura off in the distance.

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

zengara.8301:

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

Not unless you play the content in chronological order (and watch the video for season one):

- original campaign
- Living World season 1 (visit NPC in Lion’s Arch + watch this video)
- Living World season two
- Heart of Thornes
- Living World season three

Ashantara.8731:

zengara.8301:

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

Not unless you play the content in chronological order (and watch the video for season one):

- original campaign
- Living World season 1 (visit NPC in Lion’s Arch + watch this video)
- Living World season two
- Heart of Thornes
- Living World season three

This… ^

@ Mat You can buy Season 2 Story Complete pack and Season 3 chapters in the gemstore under Upgrades. But you should play the story in order as Ashantara.8731 has mentioned. Doing so will complete the experience you’re missing. =)

Roughly said:
The order is like this, small descriptions (really generic and general) are provided under spoilers. Pieces of Info regarding Scarlet and her impact on Tyria can be seen in multiple maps….. More on that at the end of this post

The storyline consists of a lot of storysteps nowadays;
SPANNING THE STORY MODE AND THE LIVING STORY!
It is (pretty) difficult to get any idea of the story when passing on the Living story….

1. The Guild Wars 2 Personal Story (Main Game Story) (approx 35 missions)
   Micronized version of Personal Storyis the introduction to Tyria, The hero's of Destiny's Edge, your struggle and the fights to become a hero and get a function in the pact, then a place as commander, then find the first dragon.
   (Tyria Vanilla(Ascalon(Charr) (,Shiverpeaks(Norn),Maguuma Forest(Sylvari and Asura), Tyria(Humans), Orr…)
2. LS World 1 (not playable/repeatable, only short cinematic to show events) A full season of world changing content, unfortunately not repeatable….
   Micronized version of Living Story 1is both the introduction to the new heroes who'll become a (your) new warband, with allies like the Zephyrites, as well as the fight with Scarlet who rallied forces; The Toxic Alliance, The Aetherblades, The Watchwork Creatures, and fight a huge battle, causing disturbances in the physical flow of magc in Tyria, which in turnshowed te locations of dormant dragons, and awake the second dragon.
   (Southsun Cove, Dominion of Winds(Zephyrite landing area)
3. Living World Season 2 (Replayable, 1600 gems for 8 episodes if not unlocked) 8 episodes with 3-4 story missions each (~30 missions)
   Micronized version of Living Story Season 2Is the search of the warbands group to find out what Scarlet was after. Eventually leading up to the discovery of a second dragon and it's minions... (Maguuma Wastes: Silverwastes/Dry Top
4. Heart Of Thorns (Expansion Story Line) 14 episodes, quite a bit more mission steps…
   Micronized version of The Expansion Main StoryIs the events following the Awakening of Mordremoth and the frantic attempts of the People of tyria to protect themselves.... Leading to the second dragon....(Heart of Maguuma: Verdant Brink/Auric Basin/Tangled Depths/Dragon’s Stand)
5. Living World Season 3 (replayable 200 gems/part if not unlocked) now 4 story steps with ~ 14 or so missions….
   Micronized version of Living Story Season 3Is the present story line and the shattering of stability and the rise of Magic in Tyria, providing hints on the rise of more dragons....(Bloodstone Fen,Ember Bey,Bitterfrost Frontier/Lake Doric)

Apart from this:

• Trahearne has a pivotal role in the Story until the End of HoT story.
• Scarlet was the main antagonist providing the leverage to awake the dragons, but her “achievements” in the story are only partially visible nowadays, and this will be mostly in Fractals where a large part of her exploits and minions are encountered, though somewhat ripped apart… Remember Fractals have no correlation with the present and are instances you intrude in from a different time and location (for Dr. Who fans, The Fractal Hub is Tyria’s TARDIS….)
  Examples where you can meet parts of the Living Story S1 in present content:
  - Aetherblade Faction: (Split up aetherblade story) Aetherblade fractal, Aetherblade Boss, Mai Trin,
  - Scarlet herself : Thaumanova, she still makes a personal appearance in this fractal.
  - Toxic Alliance: while distinctly different the Nightmare Fractal give a good ida,
  - The Molten Alliance: (Split up molten dungeon) Molten Facillity, Molten Boss,
  But also outside Fractals in the World; for example in:
  -the Not so secret Jumping puzzle, in Gendarran Fields
  -Kessex Hills,
  -Southsun Cove,
  -Lornar’s Pass…
  -Dry Top
  -and in lesser form in Lion’s Arch itself, which used to be distinctly different in Pre Living Story 1, as can be seen from the Story instances around lvl 40 and 50…
  You’ll see or encounter evidence of Scarlets War if you look around enough….

• The living world Season 2 will have extensive information hidden in it’s chapters regarding the life of Scarlet. A holovid is placed halfway one of the story parts detailing the life of Scarlet…. And this will be a vital piece of information for people who missed LS S1…..(I think this was LW S2 E1 or 2,) but the whole story will integrate scarlet into Tyria’s past…

• Dungeons provide further depth in story mode and the storymode will add to the depth of the world. Plaing the vanilla storyline with other races and other factions will tell you more as well…

So In order:

1. Play vanilla story with story dungeons.
2. watch the cinematic in LA, Explore the relevant fractals
3. Activate Living Story Season 2 and complete it
4. Play HoT story
5. Activate Living Story Season 3 and complete it
6. Hope for a Flame and Frost Expansion Soon…

Ashantara.8731:

zengara.8301:

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

Not unless you play the content in chronological order (and watch the video for season one):

- original campaign
- Living World season 1 (visit NPC in Lion’s Arch + watch this video)
- Living World season two
- Heart of Thornes
- Living World season three

thats a 4 hour video tho

zengara.8301:

Ashantara.8731:

zengara.8301:

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

Not unless you play the content in chronological order (and watch the video for season one):

- original campaign
- Living World season 1 (visit NPC in Lion’s Arch + watch this video)
- Living World season two
- Heart of Thornes
- Living World season three

thats a 4 hour video tho

And you think in 4 years we had nothing happening??? It wil be quite entertaining Guild Wars 2 the Movie!

Felahr.9830:

Astralporing.1957:

In short, you missed the whole LS2 story (and the movie describing ls1 story).

in all fairness that wouldnt do jack kitten towards explaining who trahearne is, why hes such a big shot Firstborn (have to play Sylvari story) who the flame legion is, why theyre the bad guys, and other such racial minutae. indeed, some of that does come from GW1, especially charr and human history

He FINISHED the main storyline. So, he already knows who Trahearne is.

If you prefer to watch/listen instead of read, Wooden Potatoes (on youtube) has several lore videos that may interest you. He’ll mix in GW1 lore to explain the GW2 lore which can give you quite a bit of depth. Here’s his rundown on “The World” as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARZWX51hYYk

zengara.8301:

Ashantara.8731:

zengara.8301:

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

Not unless you play the content in chronological order (and watch the video for season one):

- original campaign
- Living World season 1 (visit NPC in Lion’s Arch + watch this video)
- Living World season two
- Heart of Thornes
- Living World season three

thats a 4 hour video tho

So? It still beats doing all the research yourself, which takes a lot more than four hours when you don’t have a clue and check out several sources in an attempt to put the puzzle pieces together on your own. No?

zengara.8301:

Ashantara.8731:

zengara.8301:

kitten this convo got deep.
I think everyone is just trying to tell you that the main game does provide you with enough knowledge about your main story

Not unless you play the content in chronological order (and watch the video for season one):

- original campaign
- Living World season 1 (visit NPC in Lion’s Arch + watch this video)
- Living World season two
- Heart of Thornes
- Living World season three

thats a 4 hour video tho

I played through the LS1 content, and during my map completing/g-missions today, I played this video entirely, just listening to it is enough. I totally forgot how epic ls1 was.

Heres how i deal with the story.

Delete. Purge. Ignore. Ultra Delete.

the story is pointless, useless, etc, etc.

Here is every story you will ever see :

Party A, B, C, D…..ad infinitum is in conflict with Party 00, 02, 03, …..and so on.

They fight, talk, drama, rinse and repeat.

there you go. Every story every made. blah blah blah.

Your welcome.

If you are interested in this universe, explore the events that took place during GW1 and read the three amazing novels. Anything related to GW2 should be forgotten as we all know how rushed, cliché and milked the overall story is.

Here’s the simple answer to why you cannot understand what is going on. This is not a story outline, it merely tells you WHY you seem to be missing LARGE CHUNKS of the story:

Things you should know before buying HoT:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Things-you-should-know-before-buying-HoT/first

I skimmed through this conversation, noting that most people are saying the exact same thing over and over again, so I’ll try and add a few other things that have been skipped over:

*Not all of the GW2 story is told through the Personal Story. There are 6 starting storylines for each race, a single story about how to deal with a race-specific threat with branching information, the three order plotlines (with 5 minor race stories, partially dependant on race) and the Orr storyline, which also branches slightly. Even if you played all of that, though, some of the storytelling is done through the events and NPCs related to it. I remember there’s a Statue to Dwayna out there, hidden away, that if you kneel at it, a ghost will pop up. Some of the story is hidden there. Just bulldozing through the story, only partially paying attention, will definitely confuse you if you jump straight into Heart of Thorns (HoT).

*There is a story journal tab on the Hero Panel (default H, the one with the star) that tells you all the chapters of the main game chapters, as well as the Living World (LW) stuff. You’ll see that there were 8 chapters to Season 2, and we got the 4th chapter of season 3 a week ago. It also slots HoT in between those two, so you can instantly tell the chronological order of the stories.

*I hope you didn’t skip over the dungeons. Even if all you do is story mode for all 8 of them, it will still tell you things about the main overarching plot that isn’t really mentioned later, especially during the final dungeon instance.

*If you have specific lore-related questions, try asking them in the Lore section of the forums. The people there eat, sleep and breathe this stuff, and know it inside and out. They don’t know everything, because ANet doesn’t TELL us everything, but that’s also half the fun.

RandomWolf.3986:

If you are interested in this universe, explore the events that took place during GW1 and read the three amazing novels. Anything related to GW2 should be forgotten as we all know how rushed, cliché and milked the overall story is.

Three novels? I’m only aware of two (Ghosts and Destiny’s Edge). What’s the third?

Thank you all for the well thought out and detailed replies. Though I guess my main gripe isn’t that I don’t understand the plot, it’s more that I don’t think it’s explained to the player too well through the game, so things are constantly happening with no real reason behind it. You’re told to do things and simply follow along like a mindless drone, trusting the other characters because you have no other option.

I am getting a bit confused by some of these replies though, there seems to be mixed messages with some people saying I have to play as a different type of character to get the full story, while others say I don’t need to play as anyone else.
Some people have mentioned that important plot points are told in “dungeon” missions. I didn’t know anything like that existed, how do I find those kids of missions in the game?

Aparantly I have to play things in order to understand the plot, though I thought I was since all I’ve been doing is following the little map pointer which tells me where to go. I guess it’s possible that I’ve been doing things out of order but I’m not sure how if it’s automated on the map.

The seasons which people have been bringing up seems to be in a gem store but I haven’t found one of those yet in game. I’ve only found ones which accept coins/karma points, unless it’s a web store on the GW2 website somewhere which I’m missing.

Someone said that since I’ve completed the main story I already know who Trahearne is, but I don’t have the slightest clue, so that’s one of many things which I will be looking up later as I sort through the above links.

One last thing. Some people referenced something called LA, what does that mean?

The main story is told regardless of race. Each race has it’s own unique take on the early part prior to joining an order, but it is flavour and lore enhancements rather than any impact on the main story.

The dungeon story is set up via in game mails. You will have received these as you level and progress through the game. They will direct you to the dungeon which will have their own story mode you can play through. They link loosely to the final story instance, but are not essential.

Following the map pointer is all you have to do to understand the main arc. Everything else is peripheral. It’s a Living World, so other stories are often going on around you – whether that takes the form of Hearts, Dynamic Events, Current Events or Dungeons and Raids, they are not vital for the understanding of the main plot – they merely enhance/deepen the experience.

Seasons
- Season 1 is gone, probably for good. After you finish the Personal Story you will get access to a summary video explaining bits. It is largely incomplete so you may need to seek external sources like the Wiki for completion

- Season 2 is a gem store purchase. Each episode was free if you logged in for the launch, otherwise you will need to buy it. To access the gem store, press O in game.

If you have completed the Personal Story, Trahearne was the Sylvari who led the Pact throughout the latter half of the story. You spoke to him a lot and he led the offensive to cleanse Orr and take on Zhaitan.

LA is short for Lions Arch. It is almost the Capital City of the game, being a nexus for all the races. If you have completed the Personal Story you will have been there many times.

Daddicus.6128:

RandomWolf.3986:

If you are interested in this universe, explore the events that took place during GW1 and read the three amazing novels. Anything related to GW2 should be forgotten as we all know how rushed, cliché and milked the overall story is.

Three novels? I’m only aware of two (Ghosts and Destiny’s Edge). What’s the third?

Sea of Sorrows. It takes place during and after Zhaitans rise and sets up the founding of Lions Arch as it appeared at GW2’s Launch. It is reasonably well written, with a decent supporting cast and (in my opinion) a bland hero. Whilst I didn’t really think it was an interesting story, many people liked it the most and there are nods to it with an achievement to find the monuments to Cobiah Marriner in key locations mentioned in the book.

Mat.8137:

Thank you all for the well thought out and detailed replies. Though I guess my main gripe isn’t that I don’t understand the plot, it’s more that I don’t think it’s explained to the player too well through the game, so things are constantly happening with no real reason behind it. You’re told to do things and simply follow along like a mindless drone, trusting the other characters because you have no other option.

I am getting a bit confused by some of these replies though, there seems to be mixed messages with some people saying I have to play as a different type of character to get the full story, while others say I don’t need to play as anyone else.
Some people have mentioned that important plot points are told in “dungeon” missions. I didn’t know anything like that existed, how do I find those kids of missions in the game?

Aparantly I have to play things in order to understand the plot, though I thought I was since all I’ve been doing is following the little map pointer which tells me where to go. I guess it’s possible that I’ve been doing things out of order but I’m not sure how if it’s automated on the map.

The seasons which people have been bringing up seems to be in a gem store but I haven’t found one of those yet in game. I’ve only found ones which accept coins/karma points, unless it’s a web store on the GW2 website somewhere which I’m missing.

Someone said that since I’ve completed the main story I already know who Trahearne is, but I don’t have the slightest clue, so that’s one of many things which I will be looking up later as I sort through the above links.

One last thing. Some people referenced something called LA, what does that mean?

Honestly, I was away from the game for a few years and came back for Heart of Thorns so I missed a bunch as well. All you need to know about Trahearn is that he’s a Sylvari and many of them come into the world with a specific destiny known as a Wylde Hunt. His Hunt was to cleanse Orr and you succeed in doing that in the Original story by becoming a commander and helping him to become the leader of an inter-racial and inter-Order alliance called The Pact.

There are only two things you really need to do to get the basics and all caught up without buying Living World Season 2.

1) Go to the beach in Lion’s Arch over by the White Crane Terrace and speak to the lady next to the tent to get a short video and recap of events.

2) https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World – It lays out everything that happens in each part of the Living World and is what I used to get caught up on what I missed in Season 2.

These two things are what put the story together and I had no questions when I started on HoT even though I had been away for a while. Whenever I want to know anything about a specific character, I just look it up in the wiki Guild Wars 2 has a very well-done and in-depth wiki and you can even access it easily from in-game by typing /wiki.

Hope this helps.

Randulf.7614:

Sea of Sorrows. It takes place ….

Thank you!

Truthfully mat, you don’t have to play with different character to understand the plot. However, it help to do so in the sense that you got somewhat of a biger picture of what happen. If we talk of the story from a charr viewpoint here is how it happen :

- First, you are mobilized to fight against the threat of the ascalian ghost and gan some merit from your prowess.
- You are then tangled into a plot linked to your family/specialty. In this plot you resurect your old troup and it most likely lead you to stop a burning legion raid on the black citadel. Again, your name and reputation sore to higher height.
- After this, since you are so dependable, the higher up introduce you to the 3 orders who each like to handle thing differently. After a few mission they ask you to chose for who you want to work.
- You then gain a mentor in this order that you have to help throught some tribulations that lead you to the explosion of zaithan threat on the island. This is where you encounter Trahern whose fate/dream is tied to the death of Zaithan (whatever your race, if you carefully listen to the plot you should have understood that the 1st sylvariis have a “fate” which they discover while they “dream” just before their awakening)
- In the plot, you help Trahern to understand it’s fate and with your support he soon unify the 3 order and lead the war against zaithan to purify Orr. In the process you become a hero of the pact and have a pretty high rank in it. (I’m not saying that we do everything but it’s close…)
- Then come season 1. It start with some disturbance in the north and some charr territories. It’s here that we first encounter the stupid norn brat and the wise lil’ ranger’s charr. After resolving the first trouble we were asked to look for clues about why all this happen. Along the way we had to resolve some disturbance and we encounter all the companions that “support” us since then. Sadly, the mastermind behind the disturbance achieve it’s goal or at least a part of it’s goal before dying.
- Here start season 2. At the begining of this season, great disturbance affect tyria and again you are asked to look at what’s happening. Clue after clue, we understand that Mordremoth have awaken and he is quite good at bothering us. After a big event, the different race decide that it’s necessary to unify against this threat and the pact is sent at the frontlines. Obviously you can only help yours brothers in arm from the zaithan campain.
- Alas (here come HoT) when the pact start pushing onto mordremoth they got nearly anihilated. So you follow the plot of HoT and end up suppresing this big guy high spirit. This come along with a few sacrifice.
- And season 3 start. New disturbances arise and political faction start to want to tie you to the pact. Fed up you decide to create your own guild (lol) in order to move freely. The stupid brat go out of control and human internal politic plots as well. Well… that’s probably the worst plot Anet cooked up until now. It’s so ridiculous…

PS.: It also help to do dungeons story mode to understand the history of tyria (especially for the main plot of the core game : Zaithan arc)

I arrived to the game at the end of LS1 and messed around more or less aimlessly (and concentrated on exploring Queensdale and Kessex to its fullest) until LS1 finished and I managed to completely miss the destruction of Lion’s Arch. Once I started doing story in more earnest (and with my newer charr character then), I felt the same kind of “what the hell are we on about” feeling as the OP does. And all I did was arrive to the game two years too late.

I did grok the racial things, but not so much the story NPCs. In fact, I have no idea about the Marjory-Kasmeer-Taimi-Rox-Braham crew still, other than being, now, comfortable with them that I am supposed to know them. They just appear out of nowhere. (Didn’t help that I first entered the Dead End when it was in Aftermath mode, and I had not the slightest idea of what they were on about)

It didn’t help that the Personal Story transports you back two years, this isn’t well emphasised, and for most of my time in the game (until LA got rebuilt), it showed the later destroyed LA instead of the pristine pre-Scarlet one that it should have shown. It was chronologically confusing, even more than now. But now you have to deal with T plus nearly 4 years of stuff in the Current Events, whereas the PS still happens back in 1325 without adequately transporting you back there. Or I don’t think it does, anyway. I mean, I just created this character in 1329 (or whatever), This is my story, and then we do things four years ago. Sweet.

And I’m a lore freak. I talk to everyone green, I read every little yellow item, I spent an hour in the library instance looking around when in LS2 we did that thing for Ogden. It still took so long for things to fall into place, simply because I hadn’t been here from the start.

first there was gw1 3 expansion. then gw2 some part of the story was season thing that if you missed you will not get (that introduce braham rox taimi). after that there is living world (ls) after that you have invasion of scarlet in lion arch I think you can buy ls before heart of thorn expansion then there is more ls 3 and 4.

Unfortunately, the game has two major ‘scars’ in the continuity that were a result of “Seemed a good idea at the time”. One was Living World Season 1. It was an attempt at innovation, but it left the world’s continuity a mess after its completion. The other was the rework of the Personal Story with the NPE, in an attempt to solve the complaint of ‘level up to resolve the cliffhanger/urgent situation’. Instead of just removing the level requirements from the missions and keeping the structure in place, it looks like they tried to restructure the story completely. Unfortunately, the process damaged a lot of continuity, and several details and choices got lost.

That said – I think the Sylvari storyline is the most ‘complete’ – it introduced Trahearne and Zhaitan immediately, and has the most foreshadowing of Living Story Season 2 and Heart of Thorns. The other races’ introductory missions are more worldbuilding than anything else, giving an insight as to how the races’ cultures function, and the drama therein.

That said – The story is like some weird pyramid of replayability – All the missions happen. You just get to select which missions you see with each character, and their events. For example – the “Blacked out Norn” storyline introduces the Gear warband that shows up in the Vigil path at the end. Tegwen, Carys, and their Orrian Mirror show up in one of the Sylvari paths (Also introducing Trahearne), then a Priory option, and finally twice in the assault on Orr – once as trying to see into Orr, and once in the Vigil path. Likewise, Galina Edgecrusher and Snarl Backdraft show up in the Iron Legion charr story,

Unfortunately, all the fun characters introduced in the Personal Story get ignored (A few, like Medic Ceera and Lord Faren, show up again. Larenthir of the Wild, introduced in the Vigil, has a large role in HoT as well) – I don’t know if any of their fates were visited in Season 1 or not, but I miss Galina and Snarl (I’d rather have them than Marjory and Kasmeer). We ended up getting a second set of heroes in Season 1 that continue through to the current. Why couldn’t we get Ellie, Snarl+Galina, Lord Faren, Laranthir (Though I guess Canach’s cool), and one of the more significant Norn from the personal story instead?

I have finally recreated (mostly anyway) my HoT-beta-era Revenant and since she’s human, I started playing the human storyline again. I definitely didn’t remember being told in the starting cinematics that the character leaves DR to look outside and be of help and that’s how they found Shaemoor in such dire state (then again, my first character was pretty long ago…) — so dunno, maybe they did change the text at some point to make it clear why you’re in Shaemoor outrunning centaurs?

Sartharina.3542:

Unfortunately, all the fun characters introduced in the Personal Story get ignored (A few, like Medic Ceera and Lord Faren, show up again. Larenthir of the Wild, introduced in the Vigil, has a large role in HoT as well) – I don’t know if any of their fates were visited in Season 1 or not, but I miss Galina and Snarl (I’d rather have them than Marjory and Kasmeer). We ended up getting a second set of heroes in Season 1 that continue through to the current. Why couldn’t we get Ellie, Snarl+Galina, Lord Faren, Laranthir (Though I guess Canach’s cool), and one of the more significant Norn from the personal story instead?

This 100000000 times. While I think Taimi and Canach are formidable characters, the rest of the “biconics” are sadly bland and uninteresting. I would simply LOVE to have Ellie and the siege tigers back with me.

Mat.8137:

I notice that people have been mentioning seasons. I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Is it another DLC like the whole Heart of Thorns thing? Because that’s the only one I’ve seen advertised. I thought I had completed the main story, do I need any of this additional stuff for the things I’ve already done to make sense?

seasons are basically free story update that progress the story between the personal story and the expansion there have been 2 seasons first which isnt available and second season which you can buy to play second season isnalso the introduction to the hot story.

Astralporing.1957:

In short, to fully understand the story from Heart of Thorns expansion, you need to:
1. Finish the personal story from the core game. Preferably you should do the first, starting chapters from each race. Barring that, i’d advise to pick sylvari storyline, as it’s most relevant to the expansion (which used story that was strongly tied to that race).
2. Watch the Living Story season 1 movie/recap.
3. buy the Living story season 2 unlock, and play through it.

You know, I have to wonder why Anet doesn’t inform new players of these things. Currently the only way a new player would know that there is story missing from their normal progression of playing the game is through word of mouth, coming across that information online, or coming across that information in the H interface.

Djinn.9245:

Astralporing.1957:

In short, to fully understand the story from Heart of Thorns expansion, you need to:
1. Finish the personal story from the core game. Preferably you should do the first, starting chapters from each race. Barring that, i’d advise to pick sylvari storyline, as it’s most relevant to the expansion (which used story that was strongly tied to that race).
2. Watch the Living Story season 1 movie/recap.
3. buy the Living story season 2 unlock, and play through it.

You know, I have to wonder why Anet doesn’t inform new players of these things. Currently the only way a new player would know that there is story missing from their normal progression of playing the game is through word of mouth, coming across that information online, or coming across that information in the H interface.

u get a mail about season 1 trailer not sure you get notified about the existance of lw season 2 tho