Guild Wars 2

As the title says, do you understand what has happened during “season 1” of the living story? Were you able to comprehend the gist of it all without referencing GW2 wiki, dulfy, or any other 3rd party sites to read about what was happening in the story? Ive only missed a few LS updates, but have participated in most and I still haven’t a clue.

For myself, all I know is Scarlett was behind flame and frost, and shes been wreaking havoc across Tyria for months. There has been a myriad of NPC story characters scattered throughout the story such as Roxx and Broham, Marjory and the blonde chick, etc. Where does Marjory even come from? Why did the queen of DR need to have a jubilee? Where does Scarlett come from? Why is she doing this? If we find out these answers toward the end of the story, thats kind of bad. I need to know the back story of these characters before the last few chapters, otherwise its not worth reading.

So for me, if someone asked me to tell them the story of ..the Living Story, without referencing other sources, I cannot.

How about you?

Well I can’t recite the LS without other sources because it is in my nature to search for all scraps of information. Though I too can agree the game itself hasn’t really explained Scarlet’s motives. Marjory started in Dragon’s Bash because Logan hired her (along with a pretty sweet looking cut scene too) for the murder of Theo Ashford.

As for the Queen, based on what I can remember the Jubilee was made to show that humans are still in the fight.
The game does have great idle conversations at times with NPCs, but they do lack an overall plot synopsis. ANet knows about this and they are trying to work on that in the future.

I think one of the (many) flaws of the Living Story, or at least it’s delivery, is that the allied NPCs have no reason to be around. Usually when you have a story you have characters that are relevant to that story. The allied NPCs (Rox, Braham, Marjory, Kasmeer) had reasons to be around when they were first introduced, now I see them and I think “Why are you even here?”.

I found these characters more interesting when I thought they would have an actual story. Figuring out what happened with Mendel’s death, tracking down Kasmeer’s father (or figuring out more about that if nothing else). When it became clear that Marjory and Kasmeer are just pretty pictures that move around Tyria with skills added whenever the story needs it they became much less interesting to me. I honestly don’t even know why Kasmeer exists at all other than to be the fanfic partner to Marjory, she doesn’t do anything that an existing character doesn’t already do (Faren was the noble who mixed with heroism, Anise, Jennah and countless others are actual accomplished mesmers etc). Even Rox (who had a strong introduction in Flame and Frost) was linked to Tequatl with a flimsy story reasoning (“Rytlock sent me on the most general mission ever”). Braham was only at the Queen’s Jubilee because Rox invited him. I feel like these characters (as enjoyable as they can be at times) are weakening the overall narrative because they waste so much time with flimsy reasonings for why they are present in it at all let alone the most prominent characters in these conflicts (it hurts the scope of the conflict when such minor characters take leading roles when more accomplished Tyrians should be in the spotlight). Kiel had her thumb in every pie and the personality of a wet napkin but at least it made sense with her position in the Lionguard.

As far as where does Marjory come from, it was answered in he short story on the website. Where does Scarlet come from? Short story on the website. A lot of your questions can be answered on the website. Talk to the NPCs at the camp after doing the new Kessex Hills instance. They tried to shoehorn the Scarlet short story into the game so that more of this information is available to players, but I agree that overall the story has not been communicated well and in many cases it simply doesn’t exist yet (to the player).

The Pale Tree now has dialog options that reference Scarlet. Some Asura in Rata Sum talks about her as well. A lot of relevant Krait backstory was given by NPC’s outside the Tower of Nightmares.

This LS was indeed delivered poorly. But Anet’s getting better at it.

I understand the LS fully and have gotten all my info aside from the short stories here on the site from the game.

It’s all been there and pretty straightforward as well.

I understand what is happening but I have no clue why its all happening.

The entirety of the LS can be summarized down to ‘Scarlet did stuff’.

I didn’t till I asked, and even then it sounds very kittening dumb.

I took a break between the release of the Aetherblade dungeon and the introduction of the Aetherblade twilight Arbor path, before I looked it up in the wiki I had no idea who Scarlet was or what happened to the big hole in Divinity’s Reach. Before I looked it up I thought the events of Flame and Frost was an attempt by the Flame Legion make up for the lack of Iron Legion engineering by duping the dredge into doing it all for them before seeking to re-enslave them.
Coming back I find out that actually some omnipotent and omniscient sylvari who is the master of everything ever because of argle-bargle decided to do it just because along with a bunch of other faff.
It’s safe to say I have no idea what’s supposed to be going on. All I know is that my perception of the living world has gone from a thing that was supposed to make the world live to a thing that bolts senseless gibberish onto a static one.

I truly and totally hate it. It messes up the normal gameplay and often interferes with the normal PVE world. I was totally excited when I read that the Toxic whatever was over so I went straight to Kessex Hills to get back to normal play only to be disappointed again. It still looks like a war zone only now the toxic Krait are gone.

Been a player since day 1 beta, got 13 characters level 80 all with Exotic Armor and weapons. Came over from GW1 and now I’m really questioning if I want to continue. This has been a mess since day 1 of the Living Story. If they are wanting to attract new players they are going about it the wrong way. If they are trying to run off current players then I guess the answer would be good job.

Apparently they are going to show us in the new year why Scarlet has done all those things. (blogpost)

I guess I missed out on when and where they explained a few key parts. I have no clue other than scarlet is bad, and shes been causing problems.

Not really. I’m just glad instead of being able to focus on Winter’s Day we have yet another LS meta that begs to be grinded out. Woots.

I think the really sad thing is the living story adds nothing to the game for me personally, I understand others will disagree and that is fine. My point of view is another set of endless grinding, armor repairs and hopefully finding groups that are already there to join up with. Some of us are more solo players and the original GW could accommodate us to a certain degree.

GW2 is almost to the point of punishing if you are not of the Guild mindset, when it comes to the living story. Mind you, I know, it is called GUILD Wars, I get it. What the game developers do not seem to get is:

1. Not everyone is the hard core gamer with a bunch of friends who are like-minded enough to work out the longer quests.
2. I don’t think this game could survive off of just the hard core folks. Law of averages, there are more casual and routine players than the hard core group.
3. The whole story, the static story, the dynamic story and the living story can change on a time whenever someone decides it is too easy for them, regardless of how the rest may feel. Someone complains, skills change, range of weapons change, the story changes in the process. If the developers want to stick with those individuals, then let the rest of us have the game and the gems free. It isn’t like we really count in the decision process anyway, so why bill us for what the others will wind up deciding?

Scarlet is actually Traherne’s evil crossdressing alter ego. It all makes sense. He was sick of being the goody goody but was granted extreme powers due to the plot and the tree and whatever crap and went mad due to having absolutely no personality whatsoever and thus being rejected by pretty much everyone else, deciding that the world needed to be reimaged as something more diffrent.

Stupid salad being stupid and pointless, go figure.

ArchonWing.9480:

Scarlet is actually Traherne’s evil crossdressing alter ego. It all makes sense. He was sick of being the goody goody but was granted extreme powers due to the plot and the tree and whatever crap and went mad due to having absolutely no personality whatsoever and thus being rejected by pretty much everyone else, deciding that the world needed to be reimaged as something more diffrent.

Haha. I agree, and the poster below you…I hear what you’re saying. Two bad NPC characters that are sylvari.

I think arenanet has admitted to some of their faults in telling the story, but I don’t really think we will see any changes between now and the end of this arc. And how they tell and handle the next LS arc will probably determine whether or not GW2 has a quasi healthy future or not.

Is the poor story telling related to the cadence that, at the moment, they refuse to budge on?

Is it due to the fact that you just can’t have and tell a nice flowing cohesive story broken up in 2 week bits?

Or is the writing just plain bad. This one would strike me because I did like the personal story. Sure, it has its issues and you hardly make any difference at all (choose your own adventure, I laugh), but they actually voice acted the story and told it well, if nothing else.

As i understand it we got attacked by Karkas, killed the karka queen (epic fight, though extreme lag) and went with Ellen Kiel to Southsun Cove and we stopped an evil Sylvari there later. Then the Dredge and Flame legion attacked us in the shiverpeaks and ascalon. Then the pirates attacked us and we went to their hideout, i think the inquest was with them on it. After that Scarlet came to divinity’s reach to mess with us and now she have been building a tower with the krait to take over Tyria, the tower plan failed though. What’s up next? something bigger.

I don’t really get the context of all this. Is Scarlet behind it all or what? was this evil sylvari in southsun cove one of her subordinates?

Yes.
I usually just talk to the npcs and read the short stories. I also discuss the LS with other people here in the forums, but I hardly ever get any new information from that since everything other people know about the LS by reading third party sites I know too by playing the game and reading the short stories. Sometimes, a dev posts something relevant that is not in the game or in the short stories (like how Canach suffered and how he is not really a bad guy or crazy or anything, just desperate and misguided, and that he raided the Molten Facility during F&F).

ArchonWing.9480:

Scarlet is actually Traherne’s evil crossdressing alter ego. It all makes sense.

ROTFLMAO

A question to all the people who are saying they don’t know what’s going on in the game.

Do you talk to NPC’s or listen to their idle chatter?

Delvoire.8930:

A question to all the people who are saying they don’t know what’s going on in the game.

Do you talk to NPC’s or listen to their idle chatter?

i do not i have to play with the sound off on my computer because i get that super loud pop/crash sound bug and it hurts my ears if i am plying with headphones

ArchonWing.9480:

Scarlet is actually Traherne’s evil crossdressing alter ego. It all makes sense. He was sick of being the goody goody but was granted extreme powers due to the plot and the tree and whatever crap and went mad due to having absolutely no personality whatsoever and thus being rejected by pretty much everyone else, deciding that the world needed to be reimaged as something more diffrent.

Lets make this the explaination for the next scarlet patch and let scarlet and trahearne die and get on with Gw’s Progression.

gidorah.4960:

Delvoire.8930:

A question to all the people who are saying they don’t know what’s going on in the game.

Do you talk to NPC’s or listen to their idle chatter?

i do not i have to play with the sound off on my computer because i get that super loud pop/crash sound bug and it hurts my ears if i am plying with headphones

Ehh.. that sucks. You should still talk to some every now and then. Especially around the LS updates and where those LS updates are implemented. At the least, you can read the dialogue boxes. Unfortunately you won’t be able to hear the idle chatter that sometimes drops hints. I think that it does show up in the chat box though.

Scarlet is NCSoft CEO’s daughter.

Only logical explanation.

Mesket.5728:

Scarlet is NCSoft CEO’s daughter.

Only logical explanation.

Can’t except that. Ex-wife … I can see that.

Delvoire.8930:

gidorah.4960:

Delvoire.8930:

A question to all the people who are saying they don’t know what’s going on in the game.

Do you talk to NPC’s or listen to their idle chatter?

i do not i have to play with the sound off on my computer because i get that super loud pop/crash sound bug and it hurts my ears if i am plying with headphones

Ehh.. that sucks. You should still talk to some every now and then. Especially around the LS updates and where those LS updates are implemented. At the least, you can read the dialogue boxes. Unfortunately you won’t be able to hear the idle chatter that sometimes drops hints. I think that it does show up in the chat box though.

yeah i really wish they would fix the sound bug so i could listen to this stuff.

Behellagh.1468:

Mesket.5728:

Scarlet is NCSoft CEO’s daughter.

Only logical explanation.

Can’t except that. Ex-wife … I can see that.

I meant she was molded to his daughter desires.

Next update, more plush back pieces and cotton candy weapons.

To build off Shiren’s assertions about the various characters that follow us and the LS around:

I expected them to play a large role in each of their respective Living Stories and then we’d move on to new characters. Ultimately, with Scarlet behind everything, we’d be tasked with journeying throughout Tyria, entreating our former-allies to band together for a Destiny’s Edge Redux-style superband to take Scarlet down. We’d Marjory in a dingy bar trying to settle a bet, aid her, and then she’d join us. We’d find Kasmeer on a boring and tacky date with Ferrin, help her let him down easy, and then she’d join us. The same with Rox and Brahm and even Hobo-tron. Each new LS introducing us to new allies to ultimately join forces.

But Shiren’s right. Marjory & Kasmeer are together (for some reason) and now they’re the go-to people to assault the Tower. I thought Marjoy was a shadowy investigator. Now she’s a talented alchemist with a penchant for poison. Anise has always been the master Mesmer in Kryta but now Kasmeer is taking the lead?

I don’t understand why so many people find the Living Story hard to follow. Unless you’re the type who starts mashing the spot where the ‘skip’ button will be as soon as you realise you’re about to watch a cut scene and then it’s your own issue.

I don’t have time to type it all out in full now (that would be an extremely long post), but here’s a brief summary from memory:

Last January a lot of refugees started appearing in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau, making their way down from the northern Shiverpeaks. They refused to say what exactly they were escaping from, only that it was pretty horrible.

Finally their enemies – who proved to be an alliance of dredge and flame legion – moved far enough south that they ran into us. We started fighting them back while the NPCs in Hoelbrak, The Black Citadel and Lion’s Arch tried to figure out what to do with the refugees, who couldn’t or wouldn’t go back home. Along the way we met two allies – Rox and Braham who for personal reasons had similar goals to us so we teamed up.

Finally we identified a series of Molten Alliance bases and started taking them down, destroying their new machines and their ability to take more. We didn’t completely wipe them out but we weakened them enough that they were forced to retreat back north and leave us alone.Worryingly some of the prisoners didn’t seem to think we’d won; they hinted at much worse things to come but we didn’t have time to follow that up.

Which is because we now had to help with the refugee problem. While we’d been fighting the Molten Alliance the Consortium had “kindly” offered the refugees new homes on their recently discovered island of Southsun Cove. And apparently neglected to mention that it was full of huge karka monsters. When the refugees got there they discovered their new homes were not even built yet and they were effectively slave labour enlisted to do the building, trapped by contracts they had signed when they got on the boats. Many NPCs were worried about how all this trouble would affect LA’s upcoming Dragon Festival, others were worried that a Dragon Festival was not appropriate in a world being attacked by dragons.

All this culminated in a lot of fighting between the refugees/settlers and the Consortium and while we could take sides we largely ended up siding with Lion Guard Captain Ellen Kiel trying to get the settlers out of their unfair contracts without killing the Consortium. All of which was complicated by the actions of a rebel Consortium member called Canach who was using the island and the settlers as a testing ground for his new toxic pollen which was enraging the local wildlife.

We just got the settlers situation sorted when these experiments resulted in the appearance of a giant Karka queen who, of course, we had to take down, then track down and stop Canach. However the island was permanently changed by the experiments, leading to various karka queens re-appearing from time to time. In spite of which some of the settlers decided to stay.

The rest went back to Lion’s Arch for the Dragon Festival, now re-named Dragon Bash. This was supposed to be a break for everyone from all the trouble but unfortunately that was ruined when the closing ceremony was attacked by a new group of multi-racial enemies, the Aetherblade pirates who had stolen Pact technology and modified it and who managed to kill one of LA’s Captain’s Council.

Of course we helped the Lion Guard track them down and kill them, eventually capturing their leader Mai Trin. Who made references to the fact that her boss, someone called Scarlet, was not going to be happy with the pirates but more importantly was going to be seeking revenge on us.

But Scarlet failed to show immediately so once again we moved on to more urgent concerns – Lions Arch was electing a new Council member and although we aren’t residents of the city all our characters visit there regularly (some may as well be resident) so we had a vested interest in the voting and helping promote our chosen candidate. Getting to visit the Bazaar of the Four Winds and the elusive Zephyr Sanctuary was a nice bonus too.

For a while things seemed to be going well, the Bazaar was a success, the Council elected their new member (Captain Ellen Kiel) and we headed off to Divinities Reach for the Queen’s Jubilee. (There’s no specific reason this event happened, any more than there was a reason for the UK to celebrate their queen’s jubilee a few years ago, or why people celebrate New Years every year, basically an excuse for a party). Everything was going well, even the inevitable political wrangling with delegates from other nations, until the closing ceremony was attacked by the Aetherblades, who we thought we’d gotten rid of.

Then the Molten Alliance showed up, working with the Aetherblades and things got really frantic. Suddenly we were chasing them all over Tyria trying to stop their attacks and catch their leader – Scarlet – who seemed more than a little unhinged and motivated by nothing more than a desire to wipe us out.

We couldn’t catch Scarlet, and we couldn’t completely stop her attacks but we stopped her doing any real damage and slowed the pace of them. Unfortunately things went from bad to worse when Tequatl one (or a series?) of Zhaitan’s lieutenants went on a rampage and we had to head down to the coast to stop him. Again we couldn’t completely fix the problem but we seem to have slowed it down to the point where it’s manageable and the area is no worse off than it was before.

While we were doing that our allies were carrying on investigations into why on earth the Molten Alliance were working with a bunch of pirates, where they had all come from and how they were able to appear out of nowhere to attack us. They uncovered a secret base built into Faolain’s abandoned hide-out in Twilight Arbour and called us in to destroy it. Which we did, but frustratingly Scarlet wasn’t there by the time we arrived so we missed her again.

Our allies went back to hunting her while we went back to LA for the annual return of Mad King Thorn, which this year surprisingly included the appearance of his son Bloody Prince Thorn (or Eddy the Emo as I call him) thanks to an inadvertent discovery by Priory member and Thorn historian Tassi. Fortunately the strange magic of the Mad Realm pulled King Thorn back and we shut Eddy back in his coffin shortly afterwards.

By which time our allies had uncovered a huge tower which the krait and a faction of the Nightmare court had been building in Kessex Hills. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point we discovered Scarlet was behind it – having persuaded the two to work together by promising the Nightmare Court new and untold power the Krait a way to resurrect their Prophets, who they believe will lead them to victory over all other races.

We fought our way into the tower, destroyed the strange hybrid toxic monster they had created and eventually destroyed the tower itself. Scarlet escaped again and worryingly didn’t seem too concerned about us destroying all her creations, but for now at least she’s gone.

So for now we’re cleaning up the remnants of the toxic alliance and also celebrating Wintersday. We don’t currently know where Scarlet is or what she’s doing and we don’t know what all these experiments of hers are leading to, but a lot of people suspect she’s behind the mysterious thumper towers that have appeared around Tyria so it looks like she’s got a new experiment running and sooner or later we’ll find out what.

In an out-of-universe note we know for a fact that will be 21st January 2014 when the next patch comes out, but in-universe we don’t know that and in both cases we have no idea what it is she’s planning.

We’ve also recently been told that Scarlet’s story will end on 4th March, so we’ve got 4 more releases to both find out what she’s ultimately planning and to (hopefully) stop her. Which I suspect will involve finding her actual hide-out, but that’s just a guess.

Teege.4623:

Not really. I’m just glad instead of being able to focus on Winter’s Day we have yet another LS meta that begs to be grinded out. Woots.

I take it you haven’t really looked at this release? There are no rewards to grind for. There’s a back item skin given at the end of the story instance (which takes about 5 minutes to complete) and other than that it’s just a key for the Tri-Colour chest which was at the top of the tower for weeks. If you’re not interested in playing the content for it’s own sake the only thing you’ll get from it is a few achievement points.

On top of which they’re some of the least grindy LS achievements we’ve seen in a long time. Many only require you to do one dynamic event once. The ones that do need repeating are things like ‘open the chest 5 times’, ‘jump over 5 shock waves’ ‘do 10 dynamic events’ etc.

Danikat.8537:

All this culminated in a lot of fighting between the refugees/settlers and the Consortium and while we could take sides we largely ended up siding with Lion Guard Captain Ellen Kiel trying to get the settlers out of their unfair contracts without killing the Consortium. All of which was complicated by the actions of a rebel Consortium member called Canach who was using the island and the settlers as a testing ground for his new toxic pollen which was enraging the local wildlife.

This is not completely correct. You got Canach’s motives wrong.
Canach was not testing his new toxic pollen, he was trying to get revenge on the Consortium (and specially on Noll, who sent assassins to kill Canach) and to destroy the original contracts that were forcing the settlers to stay in Southsun Cove. He was trying to be the hero of the settlers while punishing the people that let him take the fall when the Karka attacked LA and that were hunting him down like an animal after he escaped prison.

Other than that, everything is pretty much like you said.

I don’t follow the living story much. I don’t even know who Scarlett really is other than the fact that she is apparently rivaling Trahearne on the annoyance factor with people around here.

I’ll have to read danikat’s explanation of the story tonight(bathroom reading!). Thanks for it(sincere).

However, let me ask the question to people: Do you think its possible to tell a story in two week bits and have everyone understand it from start to finish? Along with that, even if it is possible, do you think its a good idea to do this?

I ask this because I wonder if waiting two weeks(or more sometimes it seems), before we progress in the story, the story pieces lose connection and you lose understanding of it.

Furthermore, if someone misses even one of these arcs, you are behind. I missed Dragonbash, apparently when Marjory was introduced. I came back, and see her as a main cog in the wheel…thinking to my self, who the heck is this person? Where does she come from? Why is she so important?

So between the two week cadence possibly losing connection between the pieces, and missing an event completely, one can fall behind rather quickly and need to revert to third party websites, or the forums. Thats not an ideal way to tell a story. Its pretty bad.

Comparing the LS to our personal stories…if I had to take a month off of the game for whatever reason, I can come back to the game and the story may lose connection with me, but I wouldnt have missed anything. I pick up from where I left off.

IMO, the living story should really be more personal, instanced, and playable at anytime. Something discussed in the CDI and something I hope they work toward. I also think that voice acting tells the story better than two sentences on my screen and a cut scene or two.

To be honest, I don’t know the LS anymore, don’t care to, don’t see a reason to know.

The writing and scenario for Flame and Frost was trite and dreadful, the characters canned and unoriginal. The alliance was a strained concept, to say the least.

And sadly, Flame and Frost was the “best” of the Scarlet storyline. It hit bottom, and then they grabbed shovels and dug the hole deeper.

I’ve gone from simply not participating to actual resentment of the story, writers, and continuance of it when I see the destruction they have wreaked upon Kessex and the intrusion of this “story” into WvW.