Guild Wars 2

I was sort of okay with the article until I reached the Game of Thrones comparison. That sort of leads me to believe that Anet might actually believe that Scarlet’s story is… good story telling? George RR Martin could do better than Scarlet if he were deprived of Oxygen.

George RR Martin with his IQ reduced to 10 and deprived of Oxygen could do better than Scarlet and all of the random baseless events that the story has been based on. A story more like The Game of Thrones is what GW2 needs.

Sirendor.1394:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

People complained about getting too much content, so Anet slowed things down.

Actually no. People complained that Anet sent in “patch” after “patch” (hardly called a patch), with filler content that didn’t really seem to lead anywhere and that brought little to no reward in exchange for grind. What people want is a bigger gap between content releases, but content that actually is good and will keep us busy, not for 1-3 days, but weeks if not months. If they released an expansion with 1-2 new classes, + several maps, new mechanics to explore, I’d be busy with that a long while.

Honestly, if their “Season 2” of Living Story addresses that “not much permanent left behind” bit I would hope that would be good.

Darkstar.6178:

We find out Scarlet is Trahearne .
“Laces OUT!!!”

No, Scarlet kills Traherne in an attack on Fort Trinity, we defeat Scarlet once and for all with Rox, Braham, and Canach helping out. With her last act, she grabs Braham and whispers in his ear, he turns around and says slowly.

“What the heck is rosebud supposed to mean?”

juno.1840:

I feel bad for ANet in a way because they’re a victim of their own success. They have a history of excellence with GW1 and we fans are rabid about the franchise. So much so that we build up massive hype with anything they say. In addition, there’s so many things to do in GW2 that everyone has their own idea of what’s “great”. So when deliveries do occur it’s a let-down from super-high expectations as you can’t make everyone happy.

I’m hoping for a good GW2 year so I don’t shelve it when the next good thing comes to town.

Why would you feel bad for ArenaNet? They brought everything on themselves. They hype up stuff to insane levels, see “Tyria will never be the same” or “The end is near”, then when customers get upset because it’s just a tiny patch with 1 or 2 hours of actual content it’s a HUGE letdown. Their class balance team is glacial in it’s pace and their SPvP team is clueless at best. This isn’t a case of one portion of the game getting a patch and the people who prefer other stuff are letdown, this is a case that universally almost every patch is a let down to the targeted players. Finally, they mislead their playerbase constantly. The obvious one is easy to obtain max stats, which was kicked out the window by ascended. However, there are certainly other occasions where they’ve done it as well. I know early on necromancers were told certain things that were blatantly false(the jagged horrors lasting 11s(iirc) comes to mind). The rangers being told constantly they were getting lots of fixes next patch only to receive no major changes. Or how about them having ascended only available through fractals was a mistake, yet it took them months to even change that for current ascended and what did they do with new ascended weapons/armor? Crafting only! Well there is an infinitesimal chance you might get a drop, but we are talking reliable means.

I could go on. The point is that ArenaNet is not innocent in this by any means. Sure sometimes players will take liberties and assume, but usually ArenaNet is right there saying it will be “amazing”(never has been the case), “game changing”(never has been), etc.

I really hope ArenaNet lays off the fluff content and actually buckles down and makes some game changing content and class system reworks.

timidobserver.7925:

I was sort of okay with the article until I reached the Game of Thrones comparison. That sort of leads me to believe that Anet might actually believe that Scarlet’s story is… good story telling? George RR Martin could do better than Scarlet if he were deprived of Oxygen.

To me the comparison would fall flat IF they were saying the LS is on the same level as A Song of Ice and Fire , with all its myriad plot lines. However, this is the content of the paragraph:

“By its conclusion, Season One will have been developing for 15 months. What ArenaNet wanted to create was a complex plot that kept people theorising and speculating in the same way a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that) does – to have “people realise what the power of having a video game that can tell a story like a television show is”."

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

It’s certainly not BAD storytelling. I mean, it’s not like a janitor from New Jersey got exposed to toxic waste and became a super hero. NO one would EVER watch something like that, right?

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

The only guessing game people are indulging in now is guessing when Scarlet will finally be gone.

Darkstar.6178:

timidobserver.7925:

I was sort of okay with the article until I reached the Game of Thrones comparison. That sort of leads me to believe that Anet might actually believe that Scarlet’s story is… good story telling? George RR Martin could do better than Scarlet if he were deprived of Oxygen.

To me the comparison would fall flat IF they were saying the LS is on the same level as A Song of Ice and Fire , with all its myriad plot lines. However, this is the content of the paragraph:

“By its conclusion, Season One will have been developing for 15 months. What ArenaNet wanted to create was a complex plot that kept people theorising and speculating in the same way a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that) does – to have “people realise what the power of having a video game that can tell a story like a television show is”."

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

It’s certainly not BAD storytelling. I mean, it’s not like a janitor from New Jersey got exposed to toxic waste and became a super hero. NO one would EVER watch something like that, right?

The way they are doing the story is the complete opposite of the type of story the The Game of Thrones tells. It isn’t a matter of levels or degrees. They are literally two different types of story telling.

The Scarlet story line is not complex at all. Random != Complex. They apply just about every fantasy trope or stereotype that exists, whereas the Game of Thrones goes out of its way to avoid doing that when possible. I am not wondering what Scarlet is doing at all.

For example, the story of the Old Republic sales. The game kind of fell off, but the books did very well. If the story of Scarlet were turned into a book, it would sell less than 100 copies unless it was marketed as an ages 7-11 book.

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

There’s a major difference between “keeping people guessing” and “keeping people confused”.

We already know WHY she is doing the things she does, she tells us about it all the time — its what she saw during her delusional, drug-induced state. How much of what she saw is true — who knows? not enough clue to even start speculating about that.

Right now, she is perceived to be insane and delusional, and that’s a really bad character building if she turns out to be the one trying to save Tyria — only misunderstood because of her radical ways.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Right now, she is perceived to be insane and delusional, and that’s a really bad character building if she turns out to be the one trying to save Tyria — only misunderstood because of her radical ways.

Why do I think her version of “saving Tyria” has more in common with Maester Seymour’s method of “saving Spira”?

morrolan.9608:

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

The only guessing game people are indulging in now is guessing when Scarlet will finally be gone.

Clearly you don’t read lore forums or reddit. On reddit, people are speculating constantly. There are many threads about what’s coming and have been for a while now.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Right now, she is perceived to be insane and delusional, and that’s a really bad character building if she turns out to be the one trying to save Tyria — only misunderstood because of her radical ways.

Why do I think her version of “saving Tyria” has more in common with Maester Seymour’s method of “saving Spira”?

That’s a typical cliche twist in many stories — bad guy turned savior.

edit: typo

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Right now, she is perceived to be insane and delusional, and that’s a really bad character building if she turns out to be the one trying to save Tyria — only misunderstood because of her radical ways.

Why do I think her version of “saving Tyria” has more in common with Maester Seymour’s method of “saving Spira”?

That’s a typical cliche twist in many stories — bad buy turned savior.

You don’t get the reference.

That’s okay, nobody really played Final Fantasy 10 either

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Right now, she is perceived to be insane and delusional, and that’s a really bad character building if she turns out to be the one trying to save Tyria — only misunderstood because of her radical ways.

Why do I think her version of “saving Tyria” has more in common with Maester Seymour’s method of “saving Spira”?

That’s a typical cliche twist in many stories — bad buy turned savior.

You don’t get the reference.

That’s okay, nobody really played Final Fantasy 10 either

I get it, I have FFX in my PS2.

But the reference doesn’t start/stop there since it is a typical “misunderstood good guy” or “bad guy turned savior” cliche.

We’ve seen this in books and movies like Snape in Harry Potter, Doc. Oct in Spiderman 2 movie, and Laxus in Fairy Tail.

Typical.

edit: my brother’s gonna kill me for misspelling “tail”.

“And we are only available in Europe, North America and Australia. We haven’t launched in China, Korea, Russia, Southeast Asia, Brazil – many of the world’s biggest PC gaming hotbeds are places that the game is not yet even available.”

Meanwhile, russian players successfully play in GuildWars2. Moreover, part of them already left this game.

I just recently deleted the game outright from my SSD, didn´t even bother to move it to my HD. As once you´ve ran it from an SSD, it´s pretty much unplayable from HD anyway.

I will probably come back when ANet is back in delivering on their promises instead of drowning in their own ambitious yet empty projects.

Releasing constant Zerg& Grindfests while masking it thinly in a disjointed story just doesn´t cut it for the longterm.
Glad ANet finally noticed this, maybe even not too late.

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

The only guessing game people are indulging in now is guessing when Scarlet will finally be gone.

Clearly you don’t read lore forums or reddit. On reddit, people are speculating constantly. There are many threads about what’s coming and have been for a while now.

Reddit…..lol. It’s like the mirror universe of 4chan.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

The only guessing game people are indulging in now is guessing when Scarlet will finally be gone.

Clearly you don’t read lore forums or reddit. On reddit, people are speculating constantly. There are many threads about what’s coming and have been for a while now.

Reddit…..lol. It’s like the mirror universe of 4chan.

. . . which one has the goatee?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

The only guessing game people are indulging in now is guessing when Scarlet will finally be gone.

Clearly you don’t read lore forums or reddit. On reddit, people are speculating constantly. There are many threads about what’s coming and have been for a while now.

Reddit…..lol. It’s like the mirror universe of 4chan.

. . . which one has the goatee?

I think they share one and just switch days.

killcannon.2576:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Darkstar.6178:

To my mind, this says only that they wanted to make it complex and keep people guessing. Well, they kinda did that…I saw a lot of people stating “I wonder what Scarlet is doing with these things this time.” Just because we know who is behind it doesn’t mean we know how things are going to work out, or really even WHY she is doing it.

The only guessing game people are indulging in now is guessing when Scarlet will finally be gone.

Clearly you don’t read lore forums or reddit. On reddit, people are speculating constantly. There are many threads about what’s coming and have been for a while now.

Reddit…..lol. It’s like the mirror universe of 4chan.

. . . which one has the goatee?

I think they share one and just switch days.

As someone who follows Reddit for a couple things in particular? Yes, this wouldn’t surprise me at all.

On topic again.

If they can make the LS Chapter interval longer and make them more rounded so they’re not “whack-a-chievement” type things then I’ll give it a C- . . . if they can actually work up something permanent people actually feel like doing after a month or two, they’ll get B+.

They won’t get an A until I either get to kill mursaat, crown a new human king/queen, stand in Sifhalla again, or get those asura siege engineer assistants.

juno.1840:

I feel bad for ANet in a way because they’re a victim of their own success. They have a history of excellence with GW1 and we fans are rabid about the franchise. So much so that we build up massive hype with anything they say. In addition, there’s so many things to do in GW2 that everyone has their own idea of what’s “great”. So when deliveries do occur it’s a let-down from super-high expectations as you can’t make everyone happy.

I’m hoping for a good GW2 year so I don’t shelve it when the next good thing comes to town.

There’s no defense for them at this point. They knowingly did something different despite people’s ardent pleas otherwise. The same leadership, vision, and staff that made Guild Wars great have largely departed. There’s no defense for them ignoring the core game, shifting their resources towards living story, and then putting up a smoke screen to fool us into thinking something is coming.

For all we know, the spring megapatch will be more of the same – there’s no indication that it will actually be something worthwhile. There’s no reason for them to stray from the tried and true formulae of MMO – expansions existed for a reason. Their loss of revenue and player population are solely on their business decision to pursue living story and inability to have a cohesive release plan this late in the game.

We should not be seeing posts from Colin and whoever else saying they’re figuring things out – your game isn’t in beta. I’m sure both investors and players alike would love to see some standards conventions – like an expansion.

Actually, it sounds like there is an expansion planned. “We have a couple of really big Guild Wars projects cooking in the background,” Johanson told me.

Later, he added: "Some of our players believe that because we are doing this Living World seasons, and these features or these big feature-builds, that it means that the features you would traditionally get in an expansion, or the content you would traditionally get in an expansion, is not something that will get added to Guild Wars 2. And that is not true at all.

“Not only are we doing those things, new features and content you would traditionally get from a boxed expansion are also things that will be added to Guild Wars 2.

“The thing that we haven’t decided yet,” he went on, "is what form that type of content will take. Is it right for Guild Wars 2 for that kind of boxed expansion? Is it right for that to be something we add, live, through storylines in the game? Is that something we want to sell through our in-game store? There are a lot of different options available to us.

“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”

Mike Zadorojny, clarifying his comments from last year – which suggested there wouldn’t be an expansion any time soon – said: “The answer I gave you [in 2013] was that nothing was off the table.”

That sounds like a huge hint at an expansion to me. Especially the first paragraph and the last paragraph. He says, the answer I gave you [in 2013] was that nothing was off the table, sounds like a huge hint that this year there is one planned. Hint Hint.

Excellent post Destai. All I can say is that I agree.

Destai.9603:

We should not be seeing posts from Colin and whoever else saying they’re figuring things out – your game isn’t in beta. I’m sure both investors and players alike would love to see some standards conventions – like an expansion.

They may not have the game in beta, but they didn’t make an MMO before with Guild Wars 1. It was a different game, most akin to a bunch of players funneled into lobbies for short jaunts of adventure at their own pace. Loot wasn’t too important, the difficulty wasn’t too hard for most players, and it was full of buildcrafting I hadn’t seen then since MTG.

Guild Wars 2 . . . is a far more traditionally worked MMO. Class customization was trimmed back in favor of streamlining how they worked, loot is either very important or unimportant depending on who you ask, and “short jaunts of adventure” exist but have the potential to turn “five guys and a ranger” into “five guys, a ranger, and the whole server.”

I didn’t mention the story in either case because, frankly, GW1’s story was nowhere near as groundbreaking or awesome as people want to hold it up to. The only difference was characters people latched onto and enjoyed seeing, and there was less eye rolling at them – note the recurrence of certain henchmen characters who have their own personal storylines going on throughout every outpost you can talk to them in. Now note how many of them were cliches.

The writing hasn’t gotten worse, it’s just not gotten better and it’s been exposed to more people.

I’m still in the wait-and-see crowd. I’m not overly wowed by the trailer (I think the giant Watchwork would have made for a much more memorable permanent world boss than another Wurm), but this is just the 1st of 4 parts.

I’m glad that ANet has taken on board the feedback that the Living Story as it currently stands is not working as well as they had imagined it would. I look forward to seeing what this large “feature release” they’re doing will contain, even if it’s not till March at the earliest. (If it comes with a new PvE wardrobe, I will be over the moon.) In the meantime, I’m still having a lot of fun taking my characters through the general game itself; after more than a year of the game being out, I’m only JUST bringing my characters into the 50-60 zones. :P (Maybe by the end of 2014 I’ll have finally visited Orr!)

Darkstar.6178:

I don’t know how you can’t like Scarlet…after all, she can do fantastic stunts…with tiny feet, no less.

I actually would think Douglas Fairbanks as Scarlet would be an improvement.

Kanto.1659:

Well… Months of wait between content which is going to be eaten in a week anyway?

Thumbs down. What kept GW2 different was the stream of new content. Maybe not great content, but new, something different every two weeks.

‘Confusion’ smells like ‘too much trouble to keep on doing it’.

i think it’s great news. i don’t touch pve content much anyway. however, a large feature update like that could mean the rumored weapons addition.

really i don’t mind Living Story, it’s a great idea to pump new content, although temporary, on regular basis. but i do mind the speed of which they are deployed. 2 weeks. man, sometimes i can’t catch up.

they should maintain it like the current one.. one month, instead of 2 weeks.

Hyperionkhv: For the purposes of software releases and the like, Russia is considered to be part of Europe. Few companies these days will release something to private consumers in Europe without including Russia.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Atlas.9704:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Besides, she’s friggin psycho.

Exactly why we should keep her.

We have enough psychos though. XD

Yeah the Asura are enough lol

But none have the voice of a pony!!!

How very disturbing….

What next the desire for flutter pony wings, and an instance of Dream Valley?

Nah. Everfree Forest.

darkace.8925:

juno.1840:

I’ll up it a bit more — if it was an expansion, why not just call it such? ANet went so far as to explain what’s going to happen in Q1/Q2 2014, yet they didn’t use the word “expansion”.

Not only did they not use the word “expansion”, they gave the same vague, ambiguous answer in response to the issue of expansions they gave us over a year ago…“big project in the background”. If this “big project” were an expansion, we’d have heard something about it by now. But we haven’t. Because there isn’t going to be one anytime soon. That whole interview was just an exercise in marketing.

Actually, game companies lately have actually proven quite effective at keeping what they’re doing under wraps until they choose to announce it. There was very little leakage of “Project Hydra” over at Blizzard before D3 released, for instance, and there are games I can think of that were secretly being developed for years before they became known to the public.

Sometimes, it’s not what you hear about that gives you hints as to what’s happening, but the conspicuous absence of hard information on what somebody is up to.

For instance, apart from Sea of Sorrows, what have Ree and Jeff been doing since GW2 released? Because they haven’t been playing a major role in the first season of the Living Story – that’s Bobby Stein’s project.

With regards to that… one problem with comparing it to Game of Thrones is that the latter has a variety of factions and characters within factions with a wide variety of complex motivations, and we know what their motivations and goals are if not how exactly they’re going to try to fulfill those goals, and we generally know soon after the fact how and why they did what they did. This gives us a basis from which to make meaningful speculation.

In Scarlet’s Story, we effectively have two factions: Scarlet’s versus everyone else. Everyone else’s motivations and goals have basically been “react to and minimise the damage from whatever Scarlet is doing today”. On Scarlet’s side, though, there is only one character that has survived with their liberty past their first appearance – Scarlet herself – and we simply haven’t been given enough information on her motives and methods to really make any meaningful judgements.

Yes, according to the interview, some people have guessed it… but those people have no idea that it’s them that are being referred to and not the next theory along. With the number of theories that have been thrown out, successful guesses are probably more akin to the infinite monkeys principle than that we’ve really been given the clues to make logical deductions.

Darkstar.6178:

Sirendor.1394:

“Tyria really won’t be the same after it, and what happens at the end will also set up Season Two.”

This sentence does get me a little excited. What is going to change? o_O

We find out Scarlet is Trahearne .

“Laces OUT!!!”

OH NO. Scary thought. Worse than the giant wurm with several heads sitting in the jungle. Worse than a robot thing with heels and narrow female figure.

It’s…

~dramatic music que~

THE TRAHEARNINATOR.

@darkace, killcannon and ZudetGambeous

How much time should Arenanet be given to deliver new zones? Its not been 1 year and 1/2 yet since release. A lot of MMOs take longer then that to release expansions. WoW takes even 2 years between expansion releases. Rift took over 2 years. Lotro takes between 1.2years – 2 years etc… And lets not forget none of these release new content every 2 weeks and while looking at individual content releases its understandble to think they’re quite underwhelming compared to an expansion lets not loose sight of what they developed for us to keep us entertained until the big projects they’ve said they’ve been working on since day 1!

We got like 14 fractals so far, a ton of new dynamic events, a ton of guild missions, 4 new pvp maps, revamp of WvW, 3 new mini dungeons, Costumes, ton of new crafting recipes and even new materials, quality of life changes, a few new skills, a couple of new conditions, a load of new enemies, a good number of new minigames and new jumping puzzles, a truckload of new minis, a good number of new dungeons, leader boards, an over abundance of new back skins, custom arenas, tournaments, WvW traps, 1 new world boss and 1 revamped world boss, a new path in an existent dungeon, a container load of new weapon skins, SAB 3 holiday events, 2 new zones, changes to rewards, the achievement overhaul and new achievemnent rewards. Daily overhaul like twice, Magic find revamp, new runes, new dyes, new consumables, new sigils, changes to obsidian sanctum, new WvW progression.

On top of all this we also had LS every 2 weeks essentially which had new characters, their own new events and sometimes even instances. None of those MMOs that take even as long as 2 years to release an expansion release even remotely to so much content in between. Hence shouldnt at least we give them just as long before bashing them to the ground that they should have released new zones by now? It would be understandable if they took even twice as long as others considering how they’re splitting their resources, if they can do all of this and release a good number of new zones every 2 years that would be completely amazing!

I know you all feel how you all feel and no one can call that wrong because well it is how you feel but please consider on this when you judge how quickly they’re delivering the stuff that you wish to see.

Galen Grey.4709:

@darkace, killcannon and ZudetGambeous

How much time should Arenanet be given to deliver new zones? Its not been 1 year and 1/2 yet since release. A lot of MMOs take longer then that to release expansions. WoW takes even 2 years between expansion releases. Rift took over 2 years. Lotro takes between 1.2years – 2 years etc…

We got stuff within this time-frame for Guild Wars 1. Of course, we also got one zone and one “dungeon” (Grenth’s Footprint, Sorrow’s Furnace) before then so we were doing right about on target.

Also given the bold statements, I’m expecting to see something along the lines of sizable permanent content coming this year. Or equivalent.

(If their “something big” is not permanent content and instead getting that balance right so Berserker isn’t king of everything in everyone’s heads, horizontal progression starts to be more than something on paper, and I can murder asura guilt-free . . .)

And lets not forget none of these release new content every 2 weeks and while looking at individual content releases its understandble to think they’re quite underwhelming compared to an expansion lets not loose sight of what they developed for us to keep us entertained until the big projects they’ve said they’ve been working on since day 1!

The problem with talking about that content is how it’s temporary content, and at least a couple times it’s apparently a festival-type thing where there wasn’t very much going on. Yes, it’s content, and yes it took labor hours to create. But alas, when the content becomes inaccessible outside a window it might as well not be there to others who missed it.

We got like 14 fractals so far, a ton of new dynamic events, a ton of guild missions, 4 new pvp maps, revamp of WvW, 3 new mini dungeons, Costumes, ton of new crafting recipes and even new materials, quality of life changes, a few new skills, a couple of new conditions, a load of new enemies, a good number of new minigames and new jumping puzzles, a truckload of new minis, a good number of new dungeons, leader boards, an over abundance of new back skins, custom arenas, tournaments, WvW traps, 1 new world boss and 1 revamped world boss, a new path in an existent dungeon, a container load of new weapon skins, SAB 3 holiday events, 2 new zones, changes to rewards, the achievement overhaul and new achievemnent rewards. Daily overhaul like twice, Magic find revamp, new runes, new dyes, new consumables, new sigils, changes to obsidian sanctum, new WvW progression.

It’s an impressive list, to be sure. But if you start striking off things which disappeared and aren’t available anymore . . . things get . . . less impressive and more of it looks like “normal routine patch/revision” stuff.

Best thing that happened is the adding to Fractals in Fractured – that allowed the two mini dungeons and boss fight encounters to become repeatable content.

@Tobias Trueflight

Well factions was released 1 year after release
nightfall and impressive 6 months after that and eye of the north about a year after nightfall.

Though I would once again point out two things…

1. being a bit old its zones were low polys and plain. Not saying it was bad or ugly, not by a long strech just that the work needed to create a single gw2 zones is orders of magnitute larger then it was to create a gw1 zone in my opinion. Not just the much more complex terrain geometry but there are props almost everywhere be it trees, grass, ruins, towns etc…. Not just that but for some reason they decided to go the extra mile and make so many variants of trees and grass models that its hard to identify the same model twice. Obviously all this takes time. In gw2 they also have caves and underwater which gw1 zones didnt have. that Also means more work in terms of animations, mobs need to know how to swim and scripting etc..

2. there is the content they’ve been releasing every two weeks.

for these reasons I dont think its realistic to expect the same release schedule of gw1 in gw2. Wouldnt you agree?

Yes and No. Yes in that sure if I joined Gw2 today there might as well have been no Labyrinthine cliffs cause I never got to experience that at least yet. But on the other hand No because for players that were there the content existed and played an important role in their enjoyment not to mention even if they never decide to reuse any of it, it still helps by giving them at least some assets then can reuse be it music, textures, characters , sounds or perhaps even models though they seem to avoid that for some reason.

Much of what I listed is actually still accessable, removing whats not accessable today it still would leave:

We got like 14 fractals so far, a ton of new dynamic events, a ton of guild missions, 4 new pvp maps, revamp of WvW, 3 new mini dungeons, Costumes, ton of new crafting recipes and even new materials, quality of life changes, a few new skills, a couple of new conditions, a load of new enemies, a good number of new minigames and new jumping puzzles, a truckload of new minis, leader boards, an over abundance of new back skins, custom arenas, tournaments, WvW traps, 1 new world boss and 1 revamped world boss, a new path in an existent dungeon, a container load of new weapon skins, 1 holiday events, 1 new zones, changes to rewards, the achievement overhaul and new achievemnent rewards. Daily overhaul like twice, Magic find revamp, new runes, new dyes, new consumables, new sigils, changes to obsidian sanctum, new WvW progression.

Still a very impressive list and thats not a complete list either.

Not to mention the amount of content Guild Wars 2 initially launched with was greater than the amount of content in Prophecies and Factions put together. Prophecies only had a bit over 200 quests. It has 25 missions. One starter area.

With factions they added another game and another couple of hundred quests, and another 13 missions.

That’s a far cry from 300 hearts and 1500 dynamic events, even if you don’t include jumping puzzles and such.

Then there are dungeons. There weren’t really "dungeons’ per se in Guild Wars 1 until Eye of the North. I guess you could say Sorrow’s Furnace was a dungeon. There were elite areas, but nothing like the Fractals.

Shrugs.

The content that existed in Guild Wars 1, whether you like it better or not, was far less than the content here. I mean five start zones is a lot more content than two. In fact, in it’s entire live, Guild Wars 1 only had 3 starting zones. Add all the quests and missions together, and Guild Wars 2 launched with more dynamic events.

It’s a whole different ball of wax to develop for.

Anet themselves said they’d need 3 times the number of events in zones, compared to quests in the old system, which means it has to take longer for new zones to be developed.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, Scarlet kills Traherne in an attack on Fort Trinity, we defeat Scarlet once and for all with Rox, Braham, and Canach helping out. With her last act, she grabs Braham and whispers in his ear, he turns around and says slowly.

“What the heck is rosebud supposed to mean?”

It means the robber barons are back and the writer is subtlety inserting a personal vendetta.

Vol.7601:

tldr: expansion in summer

You are going to be disappointed in summer.

We need to stop setting ourselves up with false expectations that ANet never indicate. The last we heard from them regarding the content expansions is “no classical expansions, just Living World.” (Remember “Living World” is distinct from “Living Story,” LW is the concept, LS was the first attempt at an implementation) March may bring quality-of-life expansions (that would be complete rebalancing, some more horizontal/vertical progression, etc.) but don’t get your hopes up about EDs, Tengu and maps (I am only expecting these when I actually see other players in Timberline Falls).

Next thing we know, in March, there is a thread up here saying that “you broke your promise ANet.” Be very clear – the only thing that they have promised is “big changes.”

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Why do you hate Scarlet so much? You do realize that her voice actress is a pony in real life? That alone should keep her as a main character for the life of GW2.

I just realized that there is still no any Sylvari hero in Living Story yet so your idea is interesting xD.

…An expansion? Dare I feel hope?

Nightarch.2943:

…An expansion? Dare I feel hope?

No, shelter your heart, lest it break completely.

This is really good news. The two week DLC value proposition is one of the larger missteps since launch. It is actually bad from a software development standpoint as well as being “distracting” to players. It simply can not be done successfully if you want a quality product. I’ve lobbied for a 2-3 month development cycle and would really prefer 3-6 months. Less than three and you can’t really think about what you are doing. This bodes well for the future.

Do people really still think they development content every two weeks. We have been told over and over that it is a 4-month cycle as is. If content is released only every 3-6 months, then it takes 1 to 2 years for each release. It seems people already complain about feedback being implemented in a timely manner. I hope it is just a misunderstanding about release cadences, as I would not look forward to waiting half a year for an update. And, until this particular interview, it was re-iterated many times that the timing of the cadence wasn’t going to change. Perhaps, only what the content will be is what is changing.

zamalek.2154:

Vol.7601:

tldr: expansion in summer

You are going to be disappointed in summer.

We need to stop setting ourselves up with false expectations that ANet never indicate. The last we heard from them regarding the content expansions is “no classical expansions, just Living World.” (Remember “Living World” is distinct from “Living Story,” LW is the concept, LS was the first attempt at an implementation) March may bring quality-of-life expansions (that would be complete rebalancing, some more horizontal/vertical progression, etc.) but don’t get your hopes up about EDs, Tengu and maps (I am only expecting these when I actually see other players in Timberline Falls).

Next thing we know, in March, there is a thread up here saying that “you broke your promise ANet.” Be very clear – the only thing that they have promised is “big changes.”

Thats incorrect. Since they one they said that only part of the team is working on LS and they also have other teams working on much bigger stuff.

here as far as december 2012
http://gamingbolt.com/guild-wars-2-interview-we-talk-to-areanet-about-how-the-mmorpg-has-been-doing-post-launch

“we are actively working on a bigger expansion as well.”

“We will also have paid expansions”
etc..

in time they decided that perhaps instead of paid expansions they’d give them out for free but they never stopped working on them.

Example:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-unlikely-to-get-expansions-Interview/page/2#post2343665

“Just to clarify a bit, as Mike said there are numerous teams beyond our Living World teams, and some of them are working on much longer term projects which we’ll go into details on much further down the road.
It’s entirely possible some of the types of content which you might traditionally find in expansions would be released through an expansion in the future for Gw2, and it’s possible we’d try something different when it comes to integrating those type of releases.
We have no final plans one way or another about expansions at this time, and certainly haven’t ruled them out, it’s something we’ll discuss more in the future.”

and as recently as this week you got that interview

“Some of our players believe that because we are doing this Living World seasons, and these features or these big feature-builds, that it means that the features you would traditionally get in an expansion, or the content you would traditionally get in an expansion, is not something that will get added to Guild Wars 2. And that is not true at all.

“Not only are we doing those things, new features and content you would traditionally get from a boxed expansion are also things that will be added to Guild Wars 2.”

“but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”

“Not really. ArenaNet is full tilt with the Chinese launch of Guild Wars 2, the Season One finale, the feature-build update and the two big background projects.”

In short they said from day 1 they’re working on expansion like content which in the last interview they even stated means “large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races.”

Because they’re spliting their resources with the living story it will just naturally take longer then other MMOs to complete new zone and such long term stuff (if at all I mean some mmos release expansion every 2 years anyway)

But no matter the case from day one they said they’re coming and they never changed their version in that regard. They said they might release the new content through the living story instead of a paid expansion but they never said they’re not going to do it. Never ever!

Quote from that interview (Colin)

“But we definitely will do paid expansions down the road.”

Interesting, how did so many of us miss this interview…

Even still, they could have quite possibly scrapped stuff from 2012 for an expansion and used it elsewhere (like the scrapped GW1 expansion).

Galen Grey.4709:

bigger stuff.

And does “bigger stuff” explicitly means “expansion”? No. It could, but it doesn’t reliably mean that. I happen to lean on the probably not because I am a pragmatist, but this thread is wildly out of control thinking an expansion is definitely coming.

• bigger stuff could mean more sPvP modes
• bigger stuff could mean Edge of the Mists
• bigger stuff could mean stuff only relevant to Asia/China
• bigger stuff could mean horizontal/vertical progression and results from the CDI.
• bigger stuff could mean engine improvements.

Galen Grey.4709:

Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2

Emphasis mine. 1 year later is hardly lifespan, not by a massive longshot.

Galen Grey.4709:

They said they might release the new content through the living story instead of a paid expansion but they never said they’re not going to do it. Never ever!

I never said “never ever,” I said very likely it’s far too soon for this type of stuff given ANet’s very firm stance on it.

If you need to convince yourself that March is definitely an expansion, then by all means go ahead – but at no point have they said that’s definitive meaning of what they said in the interview. Everyone keeps reinforcing this lie; and what’s going to invariably happen is everyone is going to forget that it one massive delusion you all set up and rage about how ANet didn’t live up to the promise of an expansion.

Look at it this way, if an expansion was coming why wouldn’t they just go ahead and say it’s coming? By this stage they would be dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s if it was an expansion and would easily be able to say “we are aiming for March.” It would make sense for them to say it’s coming so that the playerbase could ramp up in preparation for it. They haven’t. Stop deluding yourselves.

Come talk to me this December and I’ll probably be singing a different tune entirely.

@zamalek: EXACTLY — there’s little value in hiding an expansion at this point if it’s coming in 2014. Imagine the marketing boon that is an expansion announcement along with supporting media. Giant ancient dragon ftw!

They announced GW2 itself years before release (not months, not one year, not two years… many years).

And “big projects” might not be what the community thinks it is. Given the size of the LS updates, a “big project” could be a single new zone (which wouldn’t be bad at all, everyone would love it, but it’s not the equivalent of an expansion and all the hype that goes with it).

juno.1840:

Imagine the marketing boon that is an expansion announcement along with supporting media. Giant ancient dragon ftw! They announced GW2 itself years before release (not months, not one year, not two years… many years).

/nods

juno.1840:

could be a single new zone

Technically that is a big project and is a possibility – but, I have the standpoint that they would want to see a better distribution of players through the existing zones before adding a new one (that’s my gut feel). I am expecting a lot more content like Tequatl and Wurm before we see any new maps added to the game.

Galen Grey.4709:

@Tobias Trueflight
Well factions was released 1 year after release
nightfall and impressive 6 months after that and eye of the north about a year after nightfall.

It was late and I was being too lazy to dig up the timing of those things. All I remember is “I bought a Guild Wars campaign last year right?” when it came to Nightfall. Also remember getting an extra code as a mistake and giving it to my brother so we could play together.

1. (Snip)

Well aware of this, also well aware as detractors would say “this isn’t an excuse to half-bake it”. Like they have from time to time with some of these Living World entries.

2. there is the content they’ve been releasing every two weeks.

Which was a choice which could have gone the other way to release instead more permanent material every six months. Close your eyes and imagine the Living Story being doled out and always available like War in Kryta/Hearts of the North/Winds of Change.

I don’t think as many people would have gotten so severely annoyed by it appearing and disappearing in two to four weeks.

for these reasons I dont think its realistic to expect the same release schedule of gw1 in gw2. Wouldnt you agree?

I, personally, don’t expect it. Simply by virtue of adding voiced NPCs requiring increased studio time, that inflates production time. Any “overlays” of existing zones (meaning where the temporary LS content is present on top of normal content, as opposed to what happened in Kessex Hills) also require much more rigorous testing to see if anything breaks when that content interacts with existing content. Such as “Scarlet invades, Tequatl takes a nap”.

Yes and No. Yes in that sure if I joined Gw2 today there might as well have been no Labyrinthine cliffs cause I never got to experience that at least yet. But on the other hand No because for players that were there the content existed and played an important role in their enjoyment not to mention even if they never decide to reuse any of it, it still helps by giving them at least some assets then can reuse be it music, textures, characters , sounds or perhaps even models though they seem to avoid that for some reason.

I did note the Molten Alliance factory and Aetherblade lair both became Fractals, as did their boss fights. So yes, the assets and information isn’t gone forever. Except the election bit, I’m pretty sure that’s something everyone missed out on.

By the way, most of this is just taking time to point out they could be doing different/better with all this Living Story. I really hope they do.

Vayne.8563:

Not to mention the amount of content Guild Wars 2 initially launched with was greater than the amount of content in Prophecies and Factions put together. Prophecies only had a bit over 200 quests. It has 25 missions. One starter area.

With factions they added another game and another couple of hundred quests, and another 13 missions.

That’s a far cry from 300 hearts and 1500 dynamic events, even if you don’t include jumping puzzles and such.

Don’t need to sell me on the content measuring contest. There was a lot more to do, different things to do, and in general more fun things (at least fun for me) to do. Of course, I wasn’t big on the Battle Isles material . . . which is what a lot of people miss, it seems.

The content that existed in Guild Wars 1, whether you like it better or not, was far less than the content here. I mean five start zones is a lot more content than two. In fact, in it’s entire live, Guild Wars 1 only had 3 starting zones. Add all the quests and missions together, and Guild Wars 2 launched with more dynamic events.

Careful pulling numbers like that and going “obviously since there are more, it is better”, Vayne. There were one starting zone per campaign on Guild Wars 1 because that’s all it needed. Everyone started fresh characters in the same place since there was no compelling reason not to. The PvE was a campaign, a story starts on chapter 1.

Guild Wars 2 has five starter zones since there are five races and they either only barely get along or . . . don’t really get along that well . . . with others.

It’s a whole different ball of wax to develop for.

Anet themselves said they’d need 3 times the number of events in zones, compared to quests in the old system, which means it has to take longer for new zones to be developed.

Yup. Not to mention needing to figure out what, exactly, would make it different from an existing zone to keep people revisiting, without just “throw more loot in it as rewards”. Or otherwise to draw people from existing zones . . . you don’t want to add new zones to cannibalize old content use.

Yargesh.4965:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, Scarlet kills Traherne in an attack on Fort Trinity, we defeat Scarlet once and for all with Rox, Braham, and Canach helping out. With her last act, she grabs Braham and whispers in his ear, he turns around and says slowly.

“What the heck is rosebud supposed to mean?”

It means the robber barons are back and the writer is subtlety inserting a personal vendetta.

Actually we do know what it means. Scarlet Briar is the same color as a rose, and so ‘rosebud’ means she found a way to survive by copying herself over into a newly developing “pod/fruit”.

Of course, then she’s more stable and on the good guys’ side. Call it the “King Piccolo” solution.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yargesh.4965:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, Scarlet kills Traherne in an attack on Fort Trinity, we defeat Scarlet once and for all with Rox, Braham, and Canach helping out. With her last act, she grabs Braham and whispers in his ear, he turns around and says slowly.

“What the heck is rosebud supposed to mean?”

It means the robber barons are back and the writer is subtlety inserting a personal vendetta.

Actually we do know what it means. Scarlet Briar is the same color as a rose, and so ‘rosebud’ means she found a way to survive by copying herself over into a newly developing “pod/fruit”.

Of course, then she’s more stable and on the good guys’ side. Call it the “King Piccolo” solution.

Oh god I hope she doesn’t blow up the moon >.<

Good article and glad to here some honesty from the developers , so its More LW untill 4 th of march then prolly a month break until some Real updates comes

Time for a break , im just not feeling the LW at all and i cant take another 3 months of spvp atm

thanx , laters

Vayne.8563:

Not to mention the amount of content Guild Wars 2 initially launched with was greater than the amount of content in Prophecies and Factions put together. Prophecies only had a bit over 200 quests. It has 25 missions. One starter area.

With factions they added another game and another couple of hundred quests, and another 13 missions.

That’s a far cry from 300 hearts and 1500 dynamic events, even if you don’t include jumping puzzles and such.

Then there are dungeons. There weren’t really "dungeons’ per se in Guild Wars 1 until Eye of the North. I guess you could say Sorrow’s Furnace was a dungeon. There were elite areas, but nothing like the Fractals.

Shrugs.

The content that existed in Guild Wars 1, whether you like it better or not, was far less than the content here. I mean five start zones is a lot more content than two. In fact, in it’s entire live, Guild Wars 1 only had 3 starting zones. Add all the quests and missions together, and Guild Wars 2 launched with more dynamic events.

It’s a whole different ball of wax to develop for.

Anet themselves said they’d need 3 times the number of events in zones, compared to quests in the old system, which means it has to take longer for new zones to be developed.

You say that like it’s something of which we should all be in awe. The only difference between a starting zone and a mid/high level zone are A) numbers (mob health, loot tables, etc), and some tutorial elements for new players.

Please don’t take me wrong; I’m a guy who very much appreciates five starter zones. The four leveling paths, start to finish (with the exception of mid-levels zones for Maguuma) allowed me to have fresh leveling experiences with four of my five characters. If the game ever expands to new regions, I very much hope they add more starting zones (complete with new mid to high level zones chalked full of Renown Hearts, Points of Interest, Vistas, etc).

But let’s not pretend a few more starting zones are that big a deal. Or if we’re going to, let’s be fair and also contrast the number of end-game zones. And before anyone mentions the side-kicking system (another feature I love), unless the rewards (loot tables, salvage items, resource nodes, etc) reward players with T6 materials then I would argue it isn’t an end game zone.