Guild Wars 2

The more I keep watching how The “Living World” pans out the more I have to say that I don’t even see it as a living world and that “Tyria is constantly evolving.” Such statements to me seem like an extreme stretch and more marketing scheme than actual reality. If Tyria was evolving wouldn’t everything about the world dynamically shift so nothing is the same three months down the road. While I’d like to see this style of evolving content GuildWars2 isn’t designed for it.

As for what we are being provided in the “Living World.” It feels more like Episodic Content that highlights the events of the two week and nothing else. Sure some parts of the world change as a backdrop of the two week episode but has anyone noticed any actual changes to the word that has had lasting and world altering effects beyond the overall story of the episodic content?

Personally I’d honestly like to see the “Living World” title rebranded as something that accurately describes what we are actually playing. Clearly “Episodes” is what I’d call them.

Thoughts? I am absolutely misguided in this or does this phrasing all seem a little stretching of the truth?

Sadly your right on the money. Living world was a nice concept but execution is lacking. It does little to impact Tyria in any meaningful long term way. What good intentions there may have been behind it originally seem to have fallen by the wayside and become a gimmicky marketing ploy.

I still get miffed at GW2 adds that tout “new DLC added every two weeks” when they fail to mention it’s TEMPORARY content.

grumbles.5412:

Ah yes DLC… makes no sense to call a Content Update a DLC given that the “DLC” is a required automatic download as where DLC out there is downloadable if you want it. Its bad marketing and really a terrible term to coin towards PC gamers.

Thank you! You get it. You wouldn’t believe how many people I go back and forth with trying to explain that.

The term DLC is still relevant to PC gaming, there are plenty of single/multi player PC games that have optional DLC content.

It’s MMOs the term doesn’t apply. Any additions or alterations made to the game have to be applied to all players as a whole in order to maintain integrity . Expansion Packs can be likened to DLC with one crucial difference: DLC is generally stand alone content not required in order to run the game functionally. An expansion is similar in that they add new content to the game generally in the form of new areas, gear and quest players cannot normally access without actually installing the expansion. However included changes that effect the core game such as skills, interface, graphic or sound options, AI and general functions are applied to all user accounts across the board regardless of whether they have the expansion or not. These are mandatory updates and are required to play the game in order to prevent players from exploiting outdated features, such as altered drop rates, vendor prices or patched bugs. In a broad sense it is downloaded content in the fact that it is content that must be downloaded but that’s where the relationship ends.

Living world is neither an expansion or DLC It is a patch, in essence no different than a holiday event.