Guild Wars 2

It needs to be reworked. HoT is done.

I got S2 for Christmas, but, frankly, Scarlet? Steam Creatures? The Tower of Nightmares? Wha? S1 contains vital info. I’m lost. I have the backstory, I read summaries, but it just isn’t the same as playing through it.

The plot holes! OoooOOOoo!

Also, with F2P, there are new players, and new players don’t know what happening in ways of the world story. It’s wrong to continue the story without filling in the gaps.

Living story season 1 was much open world content. Hard to make available to play like season 2. This was big complain from season 1 and probably why season 2 mostly instance. I think there is some NPC can visit to get some story of season 1 but I forget.

I can’t imagine them converting S1 to anything. It had large scale, often map wide events. There’s no way they can make the fall of Lions Arch or the map invasions that required a full map of people to do them into a story that’s soloable by one person. How can even 5 people do the Marionette, much less one person. I’m afraid a summary from an NPC with a video highlighting the important parts is about as good as it going to get.

(Though I do wish they would bring the Marionette back as a meta event boss).

I seem to remember them saying something along the lines of they are/will be working on it but it will take time to finish it. Certain aspects on LS season 1 (can we give content meaningful titles in game please it is a journal after all not an online exterior commentary) will have to be reworked into instances. Such as the zone invasions by Scarlet’s minions. The grandness of that can be retained by use of NPCs and providing some structure to going around and completing the dynamic events within the instance instead of the random aim of zerging that occurred. The amount of NPCs would decrease with the number of actual players teaming up for it. But it would be more open ended using the squad system we now have that allows for more people to be in instances you could say have 15, 20 people teaming up or as little kitten . The number of NPCs that follow the players would adjust accordingly. I don’t want to get wordy and describe out how everything would get updated to be able to replay but it is very feasible to get it done and to have it all feel much like it did with all characters being actual players. The ground work they have done in the game to date would be pointless if it wasn’t in part meant to make LS season 1 able to be replayed.

I personally miss season 1. Even if it was a zergfest sometimes, at least you could play with others without having to party up. The 2 week updates were awesome even if some of them were lackluster (fence posts).

Players wanted an XPac and more instance based story mode, so be it, but I will always remember season 1 with fondness.

Edit: then again I am currently in an MMO transition (again) so I sadly, most likely, won’t see the likes of it ever again.

Yeah, sadly what made Season 1 great is also what prevents it from being made repeatable/permanent content like Season 2 is. Maybe ANet will figure out a way to scale down the map-wide events that required 100+ people to work together (or more like 80+ people to work together and 20+ people to afk and leech), but they probably have too much on their plate right now to revisit old content.

During the Marionette no one could leech, I guess – best event ever. I still haven’t yet started the final LS2 story – I’d love to say I’ll never will, but I want the AP and MP. Otherwise: LS1 was great – really sad it is gone. But then again GW2 is a completely different game now from what it has been.

Flop Sweat, I’ve played all of Season 1 and I can assure you that you’re better off not knowing exactly what you’ve missed. Some of the zerg events were fine, but when it comes to the story and its NPCs or Scarlet… let’s just say you’re better off thinking about how cool it would have been to experience it first hand and hoping that you’ll never have to see how cool it actually was.

off-topic but the Living world Season 1 was way way better than Season 2. Not the story but the things to do was really fun.

The entire point of living world season 1 was to make a true living world. A world where timed moved on, instead of being in a perpetual frozen state. It achieved this gallantly. It made the PvE world come alive. You cannot redo it because… well, its in the past. Was it harsh that people missed it if they couldnt attend? Well yes. That’s how time works.

GW2 definetly lost something unique when they stopped doing this.

There’s a lot more work to be done till they can start working on releasing season 1 stuff. They only have so many people, it’s not as easy as saying “let’s do this!” and a day later it’s done.

Dawdler.8521:

The entire point of living world season 1 was to make a true living world. A world where timed moved on, instead of being in a perpetual frozen state. It achieved this gallantly. It made the PvE world come alive. You cannot redo it because… well, its in the past. Was it harsh that people missed it if they couldnt attend? Well yes. That’s how time works.

GW2 definetly lost something unique when they stopped doing this.

Absolutely .. i loved LS1 and LS2 is just boring for me. I wished they would have
continued with that concept, and i also wished we still would get new armor
sets in the gemshop, like we got in the time of LS1.

What has LS2 given to us beside Silverwastes ? Some boring instances that most
people never play twice even if ANet tries to force them via the achievements,
and even more boring outfits instead armor sets.

Only positive side of LS2 was, that because of the lack of content i had time to
farm a lot money and buy all armor sets and some legendarys .. but now there is
nothing left i want.

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

The entire point of living world season 1 was to make a true living world. A world where timed moved on, instead of being in a perpetual frozen state. It achieved this gallantly. It made the PvE world come alive. You cannot redo it because… well, its in the past. Was it harsh that people missed it if they couldnt attend? Well yes. That’s how time works.

GW2 definetly lost something unique when they stopped doing this.

Absolutely .. i loved LS1 and LS2 is just boring for me. I wished they would have
continued with that concept, and i also wished we still would get new armor
sets in the gemshop, like we got in the time of LS1.

What has LS2 given to us beside Silverwastes ? Some boring instances that most
people never play twice even if ANet tries to force them via the achievements,
and even more boring outfits instead armor sets.

Only positive side of LS2 was, that because of the lack of content i had time to
farm a lot money and buy all armor sets and some legendarys .. but now there is
nothing left i want.

Yeah, LS1 was great and if they had continued then no telling what LS2 would have brought us….

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

As an example, let’s say WoW has had living story. Would you want to buy the whole WoW package and then find out you can’t do any of the story lines but Warlords of Dreanor and not even any of that, except the current events.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

But that is what a “living” world is .. LS2 has not even earned the name, it should be
TFW2 (time frozen world) or whatever.

Its just like in the real world .. for example i saw the Grateful Dead 1982 .. but ofc
Jerry Garcia is dead, so people today can’t have that experience.
Oh .. or Frank Zappa .. also quite some time dead

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

But that is what a “living” world is .. LS2 has not even earned the name, it should be
TFW2 (time frozen world) or whatever.

Its just like in the real world .. for example i saw the Grateful Dead 1982 .. but ofc
Jerry Garcia is dead, so people today can’t have that experience.
Oh .. or Frank Zappa .. also quite some time dead

I added something after you posted so I’ll ask again.

Let’s say WoW has had the Living Story all these 10 years. If you were looking to buy an MMO would you buy WoW knowing you could not do any of the previous story lines from the old expansions for the last 10 years. That the only story line you could do was the current one and not even all of that, just what events were currently running when you started playing. Would you be happy with paying for an MMO and being cut off of all the previous content, never getting to see it or being able to learn the lore except by reading wiki or watching videos.

They could easily do it if the put the resources into making it happen, but history is showing us they won’t.

Honestly, it’s all one big giant fail.

Maybe we could have both? The first appearance is like ls1, then after a time, you can replay content in instances. Of course videos will have to replace some actual stuff, but it is possible.

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

But that is what a “living” world is .. LS2 has not even earned the name, it should be
TFW2 (time frozen world) or whatever.

Its just like in the real world .. for example i saw the Grateful Dead 1982 .. but ofc
Jerry Garcia is dead, so people today can’t have that experience.
Oh .. or Frank Zappa .. also quite some time dead

This concept doesn’t actually work in a story-driven video game. It was a bad idea from the get-go, which everyone besides Anet’s management realized.

A living, breathing, ever-changing world is an awesome concept for a game, but it’s ultimately a bit naive for a business. Sure, you make current players feel involved, but at what cost? Running your dev team ragged to hammer out content at a breakneck pace and alienating potential/returning players who missed old content?

I mean, really, if you want to grow your customer base the advertising slogan shouldn’t be “too bad, your fault for not joining earlier” or “too bad, you did join early enough but your RNG sucked and you’ll never get another chance again”.

There also becomes the problem of what to charge for the game after it’s been going along for a couple of years. Putting out regular frequent updates costs money. Yet how can you ask new buyers (who you desperately need to replace departing players) to pay for the cost of content they can’t play and will never be able to play and who will only get current content and the promise that there will be more, later.

People won’t want to pay full price for stuff they can’t have and the promise there will be more later. They’d have to drop the box price low enough to get people to buy, since they are only getting current content and promises and would have to depend more than they are on micro transactions.

And we all know how much the players love the gemstore focus as it is right now.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

But that is what a “living” world is .. LS2 has not even earned the name, it should be
TFW2 (time frozen world) or whatever.

Its just like in the real world .. for example i saw the Grateful Dead 1982 .. but ofc
Jerry Garcia is dead, so people today can’t have that experience.
Oh .. or Frank Zappa .. also quite some time dead

I added something after you posted so I’ll ask again.

Let’s say WoW has had the Living Story all these 10 years. If you were looking to buy an MMO would you buy WoW knowing you could not do any of the previous story lines from the old expansions for the last 10 years. That the only story line you could do was the current one and not even all of that, just what events were currently running when you started playing. Would you be happy with paying for an MMO and being cut off of all the previous content, never getting to see it or being able to learn the lore except by reading wiki or watching videos.

Its mostly maybe that i hate the instanced content in ANet. I just recently was sooo
surprised when i went to fight Dr. Doom on my second character in Marvel Heroes
and after his second phase the cutscene didn’t end .. and i thought kitten, now i
have to run the whole instance again.

But no … after i restarted the game i was directly before Dooms throne room and
the best, he was at also already in phase 3.

I have simply forgotten how instanced stuff is normally in other MMOs just because
its such a nightmare in GW2. Add to that features like no loot and unskippable
cutscenes … and thats why i haven’t got any single achievement point out of
LS2.

So personally i would at least also miss LS2 as a new player since i think it is not
worth the money to buy it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

People won’t want to pay full price for stuff they can’t have and the promise there will be more later.

Are you just talking about HoT here ? In the end i payed for that expansion full price
just to play dragonhunter.

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

People won’t want to pay full price for stuff they can’t have and the promise there will be more later.

Are you just talking about HoT here ? In the end i payed for that expansion full price
just to play dragonhunter.

Your comparison has nothing to do with the point of this discussion. Buying but refusing to do content is not the same as paying for story lines that the game has removed.

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

But that is what a “living” world is .. LS2 has not even earned the name, it should be
TFW2 (time frozen world) or whatever.

Its just like in the real world .. for example i saw the Grateful Dead 1982 .. but ofc
Jerry Garcia is dead, so people today can’t have that experience.
Oh .. or Frank Zappa .. also quite some time dead

I added something after you posted so I’ll ask again.

Let’s say WoW has had the Living Story all these 10 years. If you were looking to buy an MMO would you buy WoW knowing you could not do any of the previous story lines from the old expansions for the last 10 years. That the only story line you could do was the current one and not even all of that, just what events were currently running when you started playing. Would you be happy with paying for an MMO and being cut off of all the previous content, never getting to see it or being able to learn the lore except by reading wiki or watching videos.

Its mostly maybe that i hate the instanced content in ANet. I just recently was sooo
surprised when i went to fight Dr. Doom on my second character in Marvel Heroes
and after his second phase the cutscene didn’t end .. and i thought kitten, now i
have to run the whole instance again.

But no … after i restarted the game i was directly before Dooms throne room and
the best, he was at also already in phase 3.

I have simply forgotten how instanced stuff is normally in other MMOs just because
its such a nightmare in GW2. Add to that features like no loot and unskippable
cutscenes … and thats why i haven’t got any single achievement point out of
LS2.

So personally i would at least also miss LS2 as a new player since i think it is not
worth the money to buy it.

Here you completely avoided answering my question, which had nothing to do with how good or bad the way the instanced story is told in this game or other games.

So, would you buy a video game knowing that all previous story content is unavailable for you to play and all you are getting is current events and promises? And how much would you be willing to pay and have no access to past story for however many years, just current events and promises. Keeping in mind that regular, frequent updates cost the company money, how much of that cost are you willing to pay even if you’ll never see it?

Would you pay $100? $60? $50?

Some of the S1 events would be too difficult to do (breach, Lion’s Arch, etc), but the marionette could easily be done as a recurring world boss. It would not be tough to change the drop table and put in some achievements to make people want to do the event.

All they need to do is utilize a phasing-style system. It really wouldn’t be as difficult as everyone thinks.

Einlanzer.1627:

All they need to do is utilize a phasing-style system. It really wouldn’t be as difficult as everyone thinks.

For some reason that remindes me of the old line, “The job is always easy for those who don’t have to do it.”

Yah. It’s sounds easy enough. Just design a whole phasing type system from the ground up for a game that doesn’t currently have one and in addition fix all the bugs in the old story lines that have popped up since the game has been updated over the last 2 years, and while they are at it, make it so anywhere from a handful of people to one person can do all the map wide stories. And of course, we also expect them to continue with the work they are already doing for the next set of updates.

Easy peasy.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Einlanzer.1627:

All they need to do is utilize a phasing-style system. It really wouldn’t be as difficult as everyone thinks.

For some reason that remindes me of the old line, “The job is always easy for those who don’t have to do it.”

Yah. It’s sounds easy enough. Just design a whole phasing type system from the ground up for a game that doesn’t currently have one and in addition fix all the bugs in the old story lines that have popped up since the game has been updated over the last 2 years, and while they are at it, make it so anywhere from a handful of people to one person can do all the map wide stories. And of course, we also expect them to continue with the work they are already doing for the next set of updates.

Easy peasy.

No, sorry, it’s really not that hard. Not for a company with a AAA mmo. They just probably don’t consider it worth the effort. There are lots of things like that in the game. For goodness sake, they can’t even be bothered to release balance patches more than quarterly.

The game is just floundering under terrible management and has been more or less from day one.

season one had its problems(scarlet seemed to be too incredible) and it had some good points (marionette lions arch battle) im hoping they can bring it back in some form but this is one thing that might be too much to handle for the benefit it gives

Einlanzer.1627:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Einlanzer.1627:

All they need to do is utilize a phasing-style system. It really wouldn’t be as difficult as everyone thinks.

For some reason that remindes me of the old line, “The job is always easy for those who don’t have to do it.”

Yah. It’s sounds easy enough. Just design a whole phasing type system from the ground up for a game that doesn’t currently have one and in addition fix all the bugs in the old story lines that have popped up since the game has been updated over the last 2 years, and while they are at it, make it so anywhere from a handful of people to one person can do all the map wide stories. And of course, we also expect them to continue with the work they are already doing for the next set of updates.

Easy peasy.

No, sorry, it’s really not that hard. Not for a company with a AAA mmo. They just probably don’t consider it worth the effort. There are lots of things like that in the game. For goodness sake, they can’t even be bothered to release balance patches more than quarterly.

The game is just floundering under terrible management and has been more or less from day one.

Something like WoW huh? People ask for something in that game, that’s raking in way more cash than this game every year, and the Devs there say, we can do it but you’ll have to give up something else with the next update/expansion.

Makes one think it’s not as easy as people say it is or maybe there’s a budget and only so many Dev hours in a day.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I can’t imagine them converting S1 to anything. It had large scale, often map wide events. There’s no way they can make the fall of Lions Arch or the map invasions that required a full map of people to do them into a story that’s soloable by one person. How can even 5 people do the Marionette, much less one person. I’m afraid a summary from an NPC with a video highlighting the important parts is about as good as it going to get.

(Though I do wish they would bring the Marionette back as a meta event boss).

They have said before that they wanted to give LS1 the same “treatment” LS2 received. Furthermore, they’ve said they wanted to wait until HoT was released. Along those veins, we may receive more information about it after they return from their seasonal break.

S1 is doable if ANet allows time travel through story jounral and players don’t mind another taxi wars with lfg.

Doug Whisper.2465:

S1 is doable if ANet allows time travel through story jounral and players don’t mind another taxi wars with lfg.

There is no point really.

What they should do is recreate core parts of LS1 as fractal instances. Think about it. Fractals is the perfect tool and its already in the game. It would also give Anet time to focus on a living story from beginning to end, then after that they can create these “historical” fractals. Maybe not a 100% representation, but something that tells what happened during key parts of the story (designed kitten man instances of course).

Beldin.5498:

Dawdler.8521:

The entire point of living world season 1 was to make a true living world. A world where timed moved on, instead of being in a perpetual frozen state. It achieved this gallantly. It made the PvE world come alive. You cannot redo it because… well, its in the past. Was it harsh that people missed it if they couldnt attend? Well yes. That’s how time works.

GW2 definetly lost something unique when they stopped doing this.

Absolutely .. i loved LS1 and LS2 is just boring for me. I wished they would have
continued with that concept, and i also wished we still would get new armor
sets in the gemshop, like we got in the time of LS1.

*What has LS2 given to us beside Silverwastes ? *Some boring instances that most
people never play twice even if ANet tries to force them via the achievements,
and even more boring outfits instead armor sets.

Only positive side of LS2 was, that because of the lack of content i had time to
farm a lot money and buy all armor sets and some legendarys .. but now there is
nothing left i want.

Silverwastes AND dry top (two of the best lvl 80+ maps in the game), a ton of replayable content, new stat sets and ascended gear.
Now what did LS 1 give us (and be mindfull it lasted twice as long)?
As far as replayable content we have hand-me-downs of the awesome dungeons that were butchered into separate fractals.
The WORSE lvl 80 map in the game (southsun cove) even with a second coming.
The lamest story telling in the game (story was told via achievements, most of the time most people had no clue of what was going on, except on the few parts that were instanced and actually progressed the story).
A play-by-arena net’s schedule environment, instead of one where you did what you wanted, you had a limited time to complete a ton of achievements, if you wanted the rewards and to have any inkling of what the story was.
Impossible to complete story steps because of how old servers worked. (I.E: The Tequatl remake event, can’t remember the name).

Honestly, i don’t see your lack of content. All the content in LS 2 was permanent, in LS1 it wasn’t, so in terms of content, LS2 brought a ton more than LS1. simply because very little was left behind from LS1.

AND in LS2 you still had the same living world progression, the world DID change, but now, unlike on your family tv-show where at the end of the Episode everything goes back to what it was, you still have the marks of what happened. LS2 has more living in it than LS1 ever did… What is there to show the events of LS1?
Specially the first year of it? Only thing i can recall is the Queen’s Pavillion, and southsun. Everything else that passed before Tequatl Rising left virtually no mark.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beldin.5498:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except for one thing. People like the OP who came in late and missed it all or people who took time off and missed it and now they’ll never get to see these events and aren’t happy about missing all the previous story lines and being cut off from them. Those of us who didn’t miss can say, “Oh, well. That’s life.” but a company needs a continuous inflow of new people to replace those who are leaving. Sooner or later the new people outnumber the vets and having the majority of your customers unhappy with being unable to do previous story content means that they are likely to stop playing and go to an MMO that does allow them to do the story line.

It was a grand experiment and I’m glad I saw it but for an MMO it’s not sustainable to cut new people off from the core of your game.

But that is what a “living” world is .. LS2 has not even earned the name, it should be
TFW2 (time frozen world) or whatever.

Its just like in the real world .. for example i saw the Grateful Dead 1982 .. but ofc
Jerry Garcia is dead, so people today can’t have that experience.
Oh .. or Frank Zappa .. also quite some time dead

I added something after you posted so I’ll ask again.

Let’s say WoW has had the Living Story all these 10 years. If you were looking to buy an MMO would you buy WoW knowing you could not do any of the previous story lines from the old expansions for the last 10 years. That the only story line you could do was the current one and not even all of that, just what events were currently running when you started playing. Would you be happy with paying for an MMO and being cut off of all the previous content, never getting to see it or being able to learn the lore except by reading wiki or watching videos.

Its mostly maybe that i hate the instanced content in ANet. I just recently was sooo
surprised when i went to fight Dr. Doom on my second character in Marvel Heroes
and after his second phase the cutscene didn’t end .. and i thought kitten, now i
have to run the whole instance again.

But no … after i restarted the game i was directly before Dooms throne room and
the best, he was at also already in phase 3.

I have simply forgotten how instanced stuff is normally in other MMOs just because
its such a nightmare in GW2. Add to that features like no loot and unskippable
cutscenes … and thats why i haven’t got any single achievement point out of
LS2.

So personally i would at least also miss LS2 as a new player since i think it is not
worth the money to buy it.

Here you completely avoided answering my question, which had nothing to do with how good or bad the way the instanced story is told in this game or other games.

So, would you buy a video game knowing that all previous story content is unavailable for you to play and all you are getting is current events and promises? And how much would you be willing to pay and have no access to past story for however many years, just current events and promises. Keeping in mind that regular, frequent updates cost the company money, how much of that cost are you willing to pay even if you’ll never see it?

Would you pay $100? $60? $50?

When i bought the original game all the LS1 content hasn’t existed and i also
didn’t knew it would ever exist, so i bought the game without it and i would
buy it again without it.

LS1 was not THE content of the game, it was just additional content to give active
players something new every few weeks. It was also not something i would have
around all the time .. mostly i played it 3-4 days and then went back to normal
stuff and waited what will come next.

What they should have done in the long run in my opinion is of course bring in
new zones now and then, and for example at the beginning we have LS stuff
where we must free parts of the new zone to build outposts, and after a while
that event is done, we have save outposts, and then the next can happen.

Oh … and i would buy the original game again .. i would not buy HoT again or
buy LS2.

Season 1 radically altered entire zones throughout the world as the story went on. They could fractalize some of the major encounters but to have all the “original” zones during the story could be a lot of work for an hour or two of chapter gameplay.

I’d say best way to have S1 again available is add some timewarp type content where entire map is visitable of that time period of S1 where event is running (large scale instanced map separate from rest of world map, maybe similar special large map as pvp zones have could call it time rift of something), and anyone wanting to could join for it … could be that such maps are looped little to not allow all at once too and have some incentive for older players to return in em.

this way not only players who missed could learn what happened, but allows players who liked content to occasionally return to and replay these events

also this is very good method to add hundreds of hours to gameplay value as its basically recycling something that already existed (mind that all maps already are instances) well, assuming they still have original codes left from that time

When I purchase an MMO, I am purchasing the land, the enemies, the items, and the non-storyline quests, etc.

The Storyline should be a bonus, and that’s where Anet’s mind was. Living Story was basically a bonus. Everybody already got their personal storyline, the Living Story did what it was supposed to. I joined the game right at the end of Season 1, am I sad that I missed it? kitten right, but I’m okay with that. Because for $40 (at that time) I paid for a massive amount of content as it was.

Guild Wars 2 had something amazing going on and that’s what made me want to join the game, was because of the living story… now it’s just… like any other MMO it feels like.

ANet can’t just flip a switch and bring back LS1. Mechanics have changed, there are new specializations, and some of the environment is different. A lot of what made LS1 fun (for me) was the open-world, cooperative meta events.Those had more than a few issues, only some of which are addressed by megaservers; ANet has evolved how they do metas since then.

In short, bringing back LS1 would require a lot of the same work as creating LS3 (with fewer writing/acting requirements) and only bring new content to new players; it wouldn’t offer much for veterans.

So isn’t it better for the community and the game as a whole if ANet focuses on HoT/LS3 rather than trying to retrofit LS1?

Tower of Nightmare was an instance (but it wasn’t interesting), Twilight Arbor P3 is still there, Molten Facility and Aetherblades are Fractals, Karkas invasion wasn’t interesting, Lion’s Arch attack could be a fractal with the 3 knights and the boss would be the Hologram on the plane, and the Marionette could be a fractal boss.

So there’s pretty much only a portion of the Tower of Nightmare, Marionette fight and Lion’s Arch Attack that would need to be reworked (or adjusted) which shouldn’t be a huge work considering they did that kind of stuff 2 years ago for the Fractured update…

Guys… Living World is still around.

Lion’s Arch rebuild? Eh?

season 1 was the best thing in this game

And it is only season 1 players who can truly understand what an piece of overated junk HoT is compared to what launch has been.

It’s so dissapointing

Yes but there was a lot of uproar about Living Story 1. The two things that come to mind is the lack of replayability and the requirement to play while the content was live, which comes with the territory of near real time story telling, and the unevenness of the content but that was a learning process (fixing signs).

There was a lot of pushback on Living Story 1 which is why we have Living Story 2 the way it is, mostly contained in two new mini zones, fully replayable and obtainable, with gems if you weren’t there when it was originally rolled out.

I’m calling it that HoT was originally LS 3 when the decision was made to push it out as an expansion. And even then they didn’t have time to do the story justice as it was seriously uneven. It’s as if they filmed the action sequences and didn’t have time to tell a coherent story. LS 2 was fantastic compared to the story in HoT.

That said HoT isn’t just about story. It was also a feature pack and included some very nice core mechanic upgrades. But too many simply table flipped and stormed off when their favorite activities can altered. It also doesn’t help ANet’s rep when Fractals once again was incomplete upon HoT launch over what was promised.

Now if they can create an involving LS “3” built on HoT, then great otherwise a fair chunk of HoT was content that was either too hard for the average player or far too easy for the hardcore ones.

The concept of LS1 had some flaws.

First of all the fact that the content was temporarily means the game doesn’t get more content (less content for new players). After several season there would be so much “lost content”.

Secondly changing the maps makes old personaly story missions (and content) really weird. “Oh Lions Arch is destroyed by Scarlet Briar. But in my personal story my enemy is still Zhaitan?”. Not to mention old speech lines that don’t fit at all.

Also I think some people seem to think that the ‘lower’ quality and amount of content of LS2 is because it’s permanent content now. Has everybody already forgotten that they started developing HoT at the same time?

About bringing the content back: This should be done with a whole new “Looking For Squad”/taxi system. The new maps and some older world bosses (e.g. triple trouble) need that too anyway.

You should be able post your squad in the LFG/LFS tab and if you have a filled squad you should be able to create new “instances” of maps. With this in place the old maps and bosses from LS1 could be added as some sort of locations in the mists (similar to fractals) and be opened by having a filled squad too.

so how about we turn this thread from love/hate s1 into idea thread of how s1 should be delivered without breaking things on lore level (at least not too much) if ever there is possibility.

For my proposal is simple idea of time: azurans are tech ppl, chronomancers already dabble on field of time. So its not far fetch that asuran could re-engineer asura gate into portal of time.
Exit would best be separate nexus with access to old lions arch before scarlets invasion (for those who liked old even better than new for one). Events of S1 could easily delivered as maps itself (this assumes arenanet has versions backed up since release)and instead of flat adding entire world map, map of rift in time could be similar to pvp map. Maybe only show areas on it where events happen.
most counter arguments would be work vice, but if backups exists, then majority of graphical and coding work already exists (also audio and writing), What would be needed is only some tweaking in code like disabling renown vendors of said areas and generalize normal vendors, save for event currency vendor. Events itself should be ran on correct order and maybe at 2x speed of original length vice but so that there is no caps in between.
Ofc this also could hold few of timegated seasonal events that are not there now such as fourwind bazaar, maybe also super adventure box

Dawdler.8521:

The entire point of living world season 1 was to make a true living world. A world where timed moved on, instead of being in a perpetual frozen state. It achieved this gallantly. It made the PvE world come alive. You cannot redo it because… well, its in the past. Was it harsh that people missed it if they couldnt attend? Well yes. That’s how time works.

GW2 definetly lost something unique when they stopped doing this.

Problem is the game isn’t living. All we got were personal story content that occurred on the open world so that it could never be seen again without watching a youtube video of it. The world didn’t change except lions arch. Orr still acts like Zaitan hasn’t been defeated. I mean we defeated it aleady so the undead should have all fizzled out with some post defeat clearing and Orr retaken by the the people of Tyria with wild life slowly returning to it. Much can be said of every other open world zone. Perpetual unchanging back and forth of centaurs and humans in Kessex Hills despite the fact that a big tower exploded. And still hasn’t been attempted to be cleaned up. Why because for some reason the centaurs and humans can’t resolve their petty issues in face of the massive threat of a plethora of ancient immortal dragons are waking to obliterate civilization. Oh and the toxic alliance is dead because Scarlet is no more, so why do they continue as if their tower didn’t explode and the thing they were feeding is no more. I mean they would have been wiped out too with a post defeat clean up as well. I could go on and on even with the new zones related to the post scarlet pre heart of thorns zones too.

The dream of a truely living world is noble but the reality is the task of making it truely so is extremely daunting a tedious. They would need a team to analyze every little thing from NPC dialogs to their ambient chatter to the events that occur everywhere. For every change they make. And create new things for all of that. While again a noble dream but in reality would mean the need for way more staff including devs and simply unless everyone plans on spending twice or more than we do for this game in gems etc I don’t see this game ever truely being living. Far too much has to be changed all the time.

On the other hand encapsulating content in instances achieves that more freely because they all you need to do is design the instances and the rest of the game doesn’t need to be touched because that “rest of the game” is the specific moment in time. There is no reason Orr for example couldn’t be two different versions. The pre Zaitan defeat and a post defeat. After all it would be no different than adding a new zone as far as what players do and where they go. Mechanically all that would be needed is a player interaction to choose to visit pre or post defeat. Which could be in the form of the active story in the journal for example; and our personal story would be like the post scarlet story portions we would click to revisit X spot and that would determine the state of relevant zones. Then you have a more feasible living world. While allowing the player to see all of it for all time.

Temporary content only alienates new players. Because they feel like they are buying a game that isn’t giving them everything everyone else paid the same for. This is why TV shows have reruns. Because they otherwise don’t get as many customers (viewers) as they would if they didn’t and expected them to watch anyway despite the fact they missed everything to date. Again these shows are living and every changing despite the fact that you can watch all the old episodes of them. this is no different in a game. And the way it should be. The world can change and still have everything that is “past” still be available to play. That is the strength of encapsulating content. Something they are just beginning to understand they forgot about with the story journal system. And the impact their living changes had on the “past” of the game story.

As difficult as it would be to make what was S1 for us something worthwhile for newer players ~ I really feel they should. Seems weak, cheap even, to have all the other seasons available after the fact but the first.

so, upping this:) o really its serious matter that ought to worked soon …I missed a lot of S1 actually myself and for me both Taimi and Braham and gang are mere imaginary friends, figments of my mind ..cause that’s absolutely only way my character could have known them prior to S2 as far as it goes, there is extremely huge gap in story of character and what s/he could know without S1 being there

Fractals would be a simple solutions for this. Make it temporary once and then build a fractal from it if it worked with the players. Two flies with one swipe.

But no, Anet insisted on hunting us through the garbage they called ls2. It was a first time experiment, so everyone can make a mistake. The story of HoT is slightly better, although it is basically a rehash of the original story with an additional casualty.

At the present state, Tyria is not as frozen as many other MMO worlds, but it could be so much better than it actually is. They have proven that they can do it, so I am sad they don´t want to do it anymore.

I thought LWS2 was great, for casual players. They were quick and didn’t rely on needing days to complete a long list of achievements as LWS1 had to get some minor reward that they ended up selling much later.

LWS1 felt a lot like Wintersday feels this time around. You have to commit yourself to do this content exclusively with whatever playing time you have if you want a chance to get the reward. LWS2 chapters only took an hour, maybe two to complete. For me, that’s a single play session and I could go back and do my usual content instead of abandoning it completely because in two weeks there would be another pile of content to focus on to get it’s achievements.

You may have a metric kitten ton of time to play but a lot of us don’t and we would like the rewards to be obtainable without making the game our second job.

LWS1 would have been more fun if we had 4 weeks for each chapter but I’m guessing those who live in game thought even 2 weeks was too long.