Guild Wars 2

As the title says, are they one in the same?

Or is Living World more of creating new dynamic events scattered in the world, et..

They are often interchangeable in certain contexts since Anet themselves have never correctly defined the pair – often using them in contradictory ways.

Ultimately many people interpret as below;

Living World – updates to the Game World in any form that makes changes, whther it includes episodic stories, events, maps, expansions. It’s pretty much the same as any other MMO update, just with a marketable buzz word

Living Story – the specific episodes mentioned above for the pve story

“Living World” is the widest umbrella term, covering most of the major content updates, including the “Living World Season 1” and “Living World Season 2” updates. When people say “Living Story,” they’re explicitly referring to these seasons, or future ones like LS3. “LWS3” or “LW3” never seemed to catch on. I think people like “Living Story” because it contrasts with the “Personal Story.”

The term also includes festivals, although they’re frequently treated distinctly, both by Anet and by players. Living Story explicitly excludes holidays.

Complicating the terminology, you’ll also see “living world” thrown around as an ideal goal for the game, the idea that the game world should feel like it’s alive and changing. This old blog post introduces the idea of non-recurring events that permanently change the world in some way, unlike dynamic events which are on a constant loop. Nevertheless, you’ll occasionally see players complaining about how dynamic events on a loop fail to live up to the idea of a “living world,” even though that distinction is what defines living world events in the first place.

Back when they first started, back when seasons didn’t exist, the living world concept was called the living story. ArenaNet themselves weren’t decided on the name however as they used both names. Eventually ArenaNet labeled it as the living world as they wanted to clarify that it meant the entire world, whereas the living story could be confused with the personal story. If you use the living story now, you’re referring to the living world seasons, whereas the living world is basically anything.

In other words they’re largely interchangeable, but Living Story is a subset of the Living World concept specifically related to new storylines, whereas anything which adds to or changes the game world is part of the Living World.

So for example the Battle for Lion’s Arch – when Scarlet destroyed the old city and we had to drive away her armies was part of both the Living Story and the Living World, but the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch was only part of the Living World because it happened outside of the story. (Chronologically it was happening gradually throughout Season 2 of the Story, in reality it happened pretty much all in one update.)

Living Story is talked about more often, I think because it’s more noticeable and more easily identifiable. Outside of the story and occasional big things like Lion’s Arch the wider Living World stuff tends to be more subtle. It’s things like Kessex Hills getting new events and changes to existing events (and even hearts) as a result of the Tower of Nightmares, even after the story had moved on to other zones. Or Fort Concordia still being in ruins after Mordremoth attacked it – in a lot of games we’d have only seen it that way during the instance and the open-world version would have remained unchanged.