Guild Wars 2

Ehhh…

There are people who simply DON’T like change, of any sort. They like being able to sign in and not worry about, “Will this content be here tomorrow/next week/next month?” They take comfort knowing that every say “x” will be at “y” and I can do “z.”

So, yeah, they get disappointed when a company they supported changes the game, whether it’s dropping what they consider made GW1 so awesome for them to cater to an entirely different group of players, or lore that they loved from before getting pushed aside for lore they don’t.

Does it excuse the behavior from a very small subset of that disenfranchised player base? No. But it is a legitimate criticism that they can (and should) voice.

I was happy to see a year of stale LS episodes come to a climactic end like the destruction of LA. It’s makes it all worth while. Now if we could just finally weed out the annoying Silvari. Maybe she’ll get eaten by the Dragon slumbering under LA when she tries to awaken it.

If you can’t write a decent story, blow something up.

MisterElliott.2481:

If you can’t write a decent story, blow something up.

Hey it works for Michael Bay.

I want to Scarlet to explode pls

CureForLiving.5360:

MisterElliott.2481:

If you can’t write a decent story, blow something up.

Hey it works for Michael Bay.

And the funny part is people pay $15 a person to see his movies and all of his movies make millions.

I don’t think the lore has as much impact on bringing in new players as the gameplay, and the whole RP scene is entirely in the hands of the RPers. Head to the queensdale hunter’s lodge in TC and you’ll see just how little Anet gets involved in that. I will say this, however…If you are a roleplayer, and your character is involved in all sorts of wacky events in the game, and you just dismiss those as not being a part of your story…you’re kind of a crappy roleplayer.

Either way, there is a way to please both parties. You can create instanced “versions” of areas, using that overflow system, where say everyone that hasn’t completed the story is forced into the zombie nightmare Orr maps, while people that have can go into a less cluttered, hellish Orr reflecting the supposedly healing land and dwindling corruption. You could even allow post story characters to choose to go into Zhaitan’s Orr to help out other players or mess around with whatever content might be exclusive to that version.

But if that system is completely beyond Anet’s capabilities, then yes, let’s just start blowing more things up. If a game never changes, it becomes boring and stale. If RPers can’t adapt, then their stories are boring and stale too. They’ll interest and retain more players with exciting changes to the game than they will with a completely stable world, which is what just about every other MMO already offers and why a lot of us aren’t still playing them.

Yimiko.8524:

Either way, there is a way to please both parties. You can create instanced “versions” of areas, using that overflow system, where say everyone that hasn’t completed the story is forced into the zombie nightmare Orr maps, while people that have can go into a less cluttered, hellish Orr reflecting the supposedly healing land and dwindling corruption. You could even allow post story characters to choose to go into Zhaitan’s Orr to help out other players or mess around with whatever content might be exclusive to that version.

The problem with that is that even World of Warcraft (with its millions upon millions of players) discovered such phasing splintered their player base far too much, and made it extremely difficult to play together.

There’s a reason why developers that try phasing wind up dumping the mechanic quickly… it just doesn’t work the way players want it to. It’s a bad idea, plain and simple.

What is this Lore you people are talking about? There’s not much lore in GW2 at the moment. NPCs? You can kill em all for what I care, as long as there’s a reason behind it.

There’s lore in this game?

I must have missed it behind all the plushy backpacks, I guess.

I’m very certain that LA will be open for business again at the end of this Living Story. Change will come, but it won’t be as drastic as some might hope.

Zaxares.5419:

I’m very certain that LA will be open for business again at the end of this Living Story. Change will come, but it won’t be as drastic as some might hope.

i think you’re right about that. it would be pretty counter productive to remove a city they ended up building everything around. i can, however, imagine them redesigning that city to house even more. if you notice on the map, directly to the left of LA is a blank area. they could easily just expand LA out to fill that unusually placed gap.

You think it’s bad here? Check out the Elder Scrolls forums some time (actually don’t). People there routinely claim they understand the lore better than the writers who created it, and anything not given their stamp of approval is heresy committed by those greedy sellout developers who are just trying to to sell more copies to twelve year-old XBone-ers. Because they just don’t appreciate their own creation the way they do.

Any time a game endeavors to build a fictional world, it’s inevitable that people will start to get attached to it. The ones who are most attached will get possessive of it and forget that the lore exists for the sake of the game not the other way around. Of course, those people will never be happy with anything, be it fanfiction or the creators’ own additions, because it challenges their tenuous sense of control over this fiction that they don’t really have any claim to. They aren’t really worth listening to.

Yimiko.8524:

I don’t think the lore has as much impact on bringing in new players as the gameplay, and the whole RP scene is entirely in the hands of the RPers. Head to the queensdale hunter’s lodge in TC and you’ll see just how little Anet gets involved in that. I will say this, however…If you are a roleplayer, and your character is involved in all sorts of wacky events in the game, and you just dismiss those as not being a part of your story…you’re kind of a crappy roleplayer.

I made a similar argument recently to 3 majorly influential Rpers on the Tarnished Coast server.

According to these people, I had also committed the heinous taboo of using an NPC when writing a background scenario for a fan-made event that I was planning. The event in question was going to be related to the Escape from Lion’s Arch update. I wanted a SWAT team / Undercop RP scenario (involving both the meta and RP) , and I did an interest check in the unofficial roleplaying forums to see if anyone would be interested. I’ve done an unplanned version of this event before with the Marionette event and WvW. This time, I wanted this event to be planned. Anyways. I was confronted by 3 RPers who are pretty influential and their scolding / trolling scarred off the other RPers who would of been interested. The sad part is that these people didn’t even know the details of my plan before they bashed it.

These RPers also had a problem with me using NPCs as writing prompt for my characters’ profile and I was shunned for doing this. I play 2 young Sylvari (who woke up shortly before the GW2 storyline began). I argued that Sylvari NPCs are a huge part in many sylvari PC’s lives in this game, and each PC has some sort of connection to the major players in their storylines (including connections to the infamous Scarlet Briar). Unlike the other races’, there is no way to get around that fact.

I’ve played many RPGs, and this is the first time that I have ever heard that a player can’t use an NPC as a writing prompt for background scenarios and character profile.

A fine example of the problem with RP, is it full of roleplayers who take themselves far too seriously.

There is always a certain few who declare themselves the RP police. Then they wonder why RP numbers decline.

And as to the OP.. there are certain types of “lore”, historical and cultural.. that should never be retconned or ignored.

In GW the Searing happened. Shiro happened. Glint was benevolent. Varesh Ossa tried to bring Nightfall. Khibron happened. A few examples of things that should not be changed, rewritten, or ignored. There are many others.

You can impose a different viewpoint on history, as the Sons of Svanir have re Svanir and Jora. Someone could admire Varesh Ossa. I still can’t stand Charr, regardless of the evolution of Tyria. But none of that changes the base lore.

Phantom.8130:

Zaxares.5419:

I’m very certain that LA will be open for business again at the end of this Living Story. Change will come, but it won’t be as drastic as some might hope.

i think you’re right about that. it would be pretty counter productive to remove a city they ended up building everything around. i can, however, imagine them redesigning that city to house even more. if you notice on the map, directly to the left of LA is a blank area. they could easily just expand LA out to fill that unusually placed gap.

It would be great if they added open world player housing too. But I don’t know if that’s feasible.

Oh well, one can only hope.

^ Yeah, this is why most companies don’t bother with having official RP servers. It would mean having dedicated “lore police”, which basically stifles creativity. It’s easier just to leave it in the hands of the players themselves (and among players, I adopt the approach of “tailor your RP background and story to match the group/guild you’re playing with, and ignore anybody else’s RP”.