Guild Wars 2

Lion’s Arch has thus been…

=>-Exploded by the Mad King, where he also assumed control of the streets for Halloween.

=>-Invaded by giant Karka beasts, their young, their Ancient, and all around ruckus.

But, it’s never completely gone. It’s never completely stopped it’s business of people camping the bank and trading house. The gates still operated, the waypoints still useful. Why is this?

I would love to see the city shut down in such a way that other cities become optimal points of interest. There was so much work by artists, designers, programmers and the like on the other major cities that it should be considered a CRIME that they’re not used as much. Players only ever visit them for the map completion.

The event that led up to Wintersday did help this a bit, by having Tixx visit each of the major cities so that players had to go there to complete his toyland enjoyment. But that was a temporary patch to the overall problem of not enough visitors in other cities.

Summer is nearly upon us. What happens then? Festivals, carnivals, beach visits, and so on. Clearly there’s going to be something revolving around the Beach Resort that the Consortium is building on the south-eastern edge of Southsun Cove. But, how about getting that carnival going in Divinity’s Reach so that it will encourage players to go there for days and weeks on end?

I was really hoping that spring would have brought some sort of “Blooming Festival” for the Groove and the Sylvari race. But it doesn’t seem like that will happen, sadly.

P.S. Good work on the Flame&Frost content, but it’s not enough to encourage people to use The Black Citadel or Hoelbrak as their main hub for the time these events happen. Players just pass through them casually for these events for a single time, then practically never visit again.

P.P.S. Super Adventure Box goes above and beyond what other previous content additions have done for motivation for visiting another capital city. The whole month of April it encourages players to visit that city for what is a mini-game (a game within a game). Similarly, having Keg Brawl as part of a daily event does encourage players to visit Hoelbrak every now and then. More of these mini-games in different cities will most likely do the same in encouraging travel.

I actually really agree with this just to open the game up a little more, but I can see there would be quite a few against it. I used to play an MMO, don’t wanna name drop but a few might be able to tell, where there was an item held by the city and due to a siege event happening on a daily basis, could potentially be lost to the enemy. If you lost it because not many people turned up, then you lost all access to warps and other ways to travel etc so people were kinda forced to travel around all the areas. It was a hassle in a way but it kinda brought the community together more because 1. people were grouping up for the siege event more, and 2. people had to utilise each other to get around more effectively or look to each other for other routes.

I’m not saying doing exactly the same in this game is a good idea but something along those lines would be a nice addition to spice it up a little.

If I could travel there for free, I’d make Divinity’s Reach my go-to place.

ThiBash.5634:

If I could travel there for free, I’d make Divinity’s Reach my go-to place.

you can go there for free

PvP > Heart of the Mists > Lions Arch Portal > Asura Gate to Divinities Reach

Make map chat across all the main cities (Divinities Reach, Hoelbrak, Etc). This would be amazing, please do it Anet.

Flubble.8093:

ThiBash.5634:

If I could travel there for free, I’d make Divinity’s Reach my go-to place.

you can go there for free

PvP > Heart of the Mists > Lions Arch Portal > Asura Gate to Divinities Reach

He wants to save time by directly warping to DR. But we need more than “Free direct warp to your home city”. For most people to start spending more time in other cities.

I would definitely like more reasons to go to the other cities – lately I have been re-exploring them more thoroughly instead of just for mapping, and I’ve found a lot of little curiosities. Maybe a scavenger hunt type thing (like the Mad King stories at Halloween) but around one of the cities? Anyway, I explore for exploration’s sake already heh.

The problem with wanting a ‘new hub’ is that a hub only works if it’s the one obvious central place. Lion’s Arch is it, in lore and game terms. It’s a port. You can’t encourage people to go elsewhere and just replicate the same effect. Anyway, how many people explore Lion’s Arch beyond Trader’s Forum? I’ve never seen anyone else in the little house you can walk into in Western Ward.

I would like to see racial festivals, though. Decorations in the home city and a unique mini-game would be all it needed, not necessarily a world-wide event. It’d be a fantastic flavour thing.

This is why I “rolled” on the roleplay server. I’ve never seen a single zone in this game that wasn’t a hub of activity for somebody. Though it can be ‘weird’ running by an extremely remote spot somewhere and seeing two folks on a rock debating the finer points of Crystalline Metamplification Theory as applied to Norn ale next to a pack of wandering Risen…

That said, there is no reason to linger in Lion’s Arch other than gawking at other folk’s armor.

Its not like you need to be there to form a PUG. Use gw2lfg.com for that. Faster results.

Its not like you need to be there for crafting. It has one of the more annoying walking paths between crafting spots, bank, and trading post.

There’s not really much point to lingering there.

And if you’re on a server with a high population, its hard to go there anyway unless you turn your graphics way down or get lucky enough to be put into overflow… But if in overflow, you just missed all the map chat anyway…

Yeah I linger there a lot too. But I really can’t give a good reason why.

direct teleportation from PvP and WvW. It’s not nothing. Direct way to go to Karka’s isle. It’s the city of the Fractals. And it’s in the center of the map: teleport are cheapers.

Little details make everything. Why spending days in other cities than LA ? LA is just better. And it make me sad, believe me.

Curuniel.4830:

The problem with wanting a ‘new hub’ is that a hub only works if it’s the one obvious central place. Lion’s Arch is it, in lore and game terms. It’s a port. You can’t encourage people to go elsewhere and just replicate the same effect. Anyway, how many people explore Lion’s Arch beyond Trader’s Forum? I’ve never seen anyone else in the little house you can walk into in Western Ward.

This. Part of the problem with wanting a new hub is it only really works if everyone goes there. And a lot of people aren’t going to go there unless it’s convenient almost to the point of having no choice or they have to pass through regularly for other reasons.

GW1 has 3 hub cities. 5 if you include the two starter ones where a lot of players would hang out (Ascalon City and Shing Jea Monastery). But only one of them was ever really used at one time, when a new campaign was released with a new hub city the older ones were steadily abandoned.

And even then those were the hubs because they’re where you had to start from any time you switched maps. The description for The Kodash Bazaar makes me think they always wanted that to be where everyone went to trade, but why bother when you have to open up the map twice and go through 2 loading screens to get there? Why not just use the city you’re already in? (I’m not saying I agree with this thinking, just that it happens.) It was the same in UO, the main city had a designated market place, but it was virtually empty. The actual market was always around the bank because that’s where people had to go to pick up and drop off stuff anyway, so it was also where they’d go to sell or buy stuff.

I agree they could do a lot to make the other cities more interesting and worth visiting for more people (I enjoy exploring and talking to the NPCs but I realise I’m in the minority there) but I don’t think they’re going to be able to turn them into additional hub cities. Having 5 hubs wouldn’t work, it’d just reduce the number of players in each and if you make just one into a new hub all you’ll do is shift the players and leave LA in the same position the others cities are in currently.

I don’t see the point.

LA is almost centrally located to all the maps. Has jumping puzzles to easily get for the daily, crafting stations are fairly close to a TP rep to get whatever mats you bought. Waypoint next to the mystic toilet is really convienent for the mystic toilet itself as well as bank for stuff to toss into there like upgraiding siege, repairs, TP, crafting, trainers to reset your skills for PvE or WvW.

If they added a good LFG tool, people woudln’t have to hang in LA to work up a group.

I don’t mind events being spread around but I don’t see any need to force a different hub for players to gather.

Cause all the other Major Cities are empty!
Global TP is one of the culprit. If stocks travel from town to town on a weekly basis it wont be that bad.
Ofc there would be stocks in LA but its limited.
Wanna buy more ectos? Go to Norn City TP, only 10 left here in LA.
Same goes for other types of NPCs. This is just an example.

Make Divinity’s Reach the new hot spot! It’s a beautiful city full of life, but no player ever goes there, because everything is happening at lion’s arch…

Rata Sum is getting more popular because the TP and bank are so close together. You don’t have the jog between the two that you have in LA.

Kichwas.7152:

This is why I “rolled” on the roleplay server. I’ve never seen a single zone in this game that wasn’t a hub of activity for somebody. Though it can be ‘weird’ running by an extremely remote spot somewhere and seeing two folks on a rock debating the finer points of Crystalline Metamplification Theory as applied to Norn ale next to a pack of wandering Risen…

That said, there is no reason to linger in Lion’s Arch other than gawking at other folk’s armor.

Its not like you need to be there to form a PUG. Use gw2lfg.com for that. Faster results.

Its not like you need to be there for crafting. It has one of the more annoying walking paths between crafting spots, bank, and trading post.

There’s not really much point to lingering there.

And if you’re on a server with a high population, its hard to go there anyway unless you turn your graphics way down or get lucky enough to be put into overflow… But if in overflow, you just missed all the map chat anyway…

Yeah I linger there a lot too. But I really can’t give a good reason why.

Unless you have the portable mystic forge it’s the only place you can use it (outside wvw).

Jabronee.9465:

Cause all the other Major Cities are empty!
Global TP is one of the culprit. If stocks travel from town to town on a weekly basis it wont be that bad.
Ofc there would be stocks in LA but its limited.
Wanna buy more ectos? Go to Norn City TP, only 10 left here in LA.
Same goes for other types of NPCs. This is just an example.

So what that they are empty.

Having to go from city to city for a TP item would just annoy me and I don’t care to do that if I want to buy something from there. That is a bad idea because it is just not necessary.

People will congregate where it is convenient. People like things to be convenient when playing games. Making them move from city to city will just annoy them.

I like a central hub that is easy to access everything I want. If I want to role play having to run around for that stuff I can but I don’t want to so no thanks to that idea.

Events are fine but they will still mostly be empty except in the area around the event.

There isn’t any need to force people to go to different areas of the game for TP items just to get people to go there.

I find it odd that people would complain about what city became the “hub city” when it is normally chosen for its qualities. I, for one, am fine with LA because it serves its purpose, it has a bank, skill trainers, broker, etc.

Hub cities, in my mind, are always created due to what it can do for you. Back in FFXI the first hub city was Jeuno because you could do anything and go anywhere you wanted from that city, people even shouted and bazaar’d stuff there. It was years later that Aht’Urgan (probably spelt it wrong) was added in an expansion and that became the new major hub city (It even had a way to teleport back to Jeuno).

The only way I forsee a new hub city being created is if the content people want to do can only be easily accessed from another city without sacrificing much. Right now you can go anywhere from Lion’s Arch, and considering all the portals that aren’t active yet I don’t think we’ll be leaving this city anytime soon really.

People will always gather in 1 place, simply because that’s the path of least resistance. It is far better for a.net to kill the other 5 cities, than to kill Lion’s Arch.

Lion’s Arch has been around since the earliest beta weekends in 2004. That’s not a typo. Think about it.