Guild Wars 2

So in the preview on the website, it says we can replay a living story event by simply logging in once while the event was running to permanently unlock it, but eventually the game will be ahead several living story events and what happens with the group content?

How can someone replay the festival of the four winds, if only 5-6 people are replaying the event?

Does that mean Living Story is going to be less focused on group content?

I suspect it means LS missions and some cinematics will be repeatable. Expecting to be able to relive Kessex tower runs or Bazaar is probably a bit much.

endirasae.3015:

I suspect it means LS missions and some cinematics will be repeatable. Expecting to be able to relive Kessex tower runs or Bazaar is probably a bit much.

Well, this doesn’t make much sense though. The whole purpose of the preview was the entire Living story Season 2 would be permanent.

“Open world content additions to Living World updates will permanently expand or change the world of Tyria and will tie to the theme and story of the episode. This means you can play the open world content and the story content (if you’ve unlocked that episode) anytime you want, on every character you ever make on your account! You’re no longer limited to completing the episode during its two-week release window. This means that going forward, all of the content and all of the rewards for Living World will be permanent.”

Perhaps, the Open-World content will be something akin to the Marionette, or Teq, or such things. The Toxic Alliance-related events in places such as Kessex Hills are still there, and, thus far, permanent.

I always wonder why people want so many ‘permanent’ things added, though. They might just dilute the population, or end up like the mid-level zones, but with MegaServer in effect, hopefully not. =)

Chase.8415:

Does that mean Living Story is going to be less focused on group content?

Living Story will be like Personal Story a single player instance where you can bring your friends with you.

The rest, I assume, will be added maps in the open world with some new bosses that can be repeated like the “megaserver bus schedule timetable”.

Greetings.

The way I imagine this working is like Zok said. New episodes will contain instanced content like The hatchery / freeing cragstead from season 1 for example. I expect Those will be the LS elements we’ll get unlocked in our journal. Big events like Marionette and such would have to be permanent additions to the world and accessible by anyone or simply not done at all unfortunately. Everything has a price you gain one thing and loose another.

As for the bazaar, the bazaar itself is not part of the living story, we had some living story happening there but the bazaar itself is seasonal content that comes and goes so not really under the same rules we’re talking about here. It was only used as a stage so to speak. Going forward new stages (like new zones etc..) will be permanent from what I understood and again dont need to be unlocked, they’ll be accesable to everyone at any time.

Festival of the Four Winds is a seasonal thing, as other have said. It will return from time to time and we’ll be able to participate like we have been now.

When it comes to the Journal, let’s take ToN as an example. The way I see this working is something like the tower itself would be open world, like it was previously. The component that would go into the Journal though, would be the instanced ‘mini dungeon’ if you will, from the top of the tower (where we fought the Toxic Hybrid – the first go ‘round). Which we could do alone, or with friends. Then even if the tower went away (cause we blew it up) we’d still be able to go back and experience the story that happened as part of that component.

I can see the open world content progressing over time (most being permanent, some have to be temporary because of actions taken, etc) but the story instances themselves would always be there, via the journal.

Great example, Lanfear. I would love to see repeatable story steps in the journal of Toxic Hybrid (and the hatchery/cragstead events) caliber.

To the OP, cyclical content like FotW shouldn’t be permanent, and there will always, by necessity, still need to be some temporary content (like the open world activities in the Lion’s Arch invasion). In order for the world to change and feel alive, some things simply cannot be permanent.

For the much of the content, however, they have a solid toolbox of ways they can keep it around and relevant (without really diluting the population), including:

- The new Living Story Journal instances (examples from S1 could be Cragstead, Hatchery, Toxic Hybrid, other instanced areas from tower, fight against Canach’s Lair, cutthroat politics enemy wave defense events, queens speech where scarlet attacks, etc)

- New Guild Missions (Bosses from LA invasion as new bounties, Scaled down Marionette as guild challenge, instanced, empty Tower of Nightmares as guild puzzle, etc)

- New Dynamic Events (fixing signs, helping refugees in Southsun, rogue clockwork invasions, etc – there is really alot of potential here)

- New Champions (Aetherblade captains, bosses from tower – which they did, etc)

- New World Bosses

- New Non-Instanced Mini Dungeons

- New Fractals/Dungeon Paths

- New Mini-Games

I look forward to Season Two. While I firmly believe the HUGE world changing, open world events need to still be temporary, I see the permanent face of the game becoming more interesting as the game progresses.