Guild Wars 2

Jski.6180:

Maz.8604:

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Maz.8604:

Fluff. Words. Empty words.

Although very pessimistic you do have a point. Like alot of the messages we get from anet, too much emotive language and not enough fact.

If people would go back and read half the fluff published while they tried to polish this kitten over the last four months, it’s been a constant hype machine and little substance. How often can you wow people with hype until they become immune to it?

And we as a community has not been using emotive languages? What would you want from him to post every thing they are working on now? What facts would make you happy to know? Or are you just trying to mud sling?

For people to know when fluff and hype are merely that. For them to act as customers with demands and expectations and not a battered housewife on a Lifetime special. To remember that we’ve heard this before and allowing him to tell us “baby, it’ll only get better, I can change” every time he jilts us and forgetting that he’s said it before.

Maz.8604:

Jski.6180:

Maz.8604:

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Maz.8604:

Fluff. Words. Empty words.

Although very pessimistic you do have a point. Like alot of the messages we get from anet, too much emotive language and not enough fact.

If people would go back and read half the fluff published while they tried to polish this kitten over the last four months, it’s been a constant hype machine and little substance. How often can you wow people with hype until they become immune to it?

And we as a community has not been using emotive languages? What would you want from him to post every thing they are working on now? What facts would make you happy to know? Or are you just trying to mud sling?

For people to know when fluff and hype are merely that. For them to act as customers with demands and expectations and not a battered housewife on a Lifetime special.

Yes your making that claim (in fact saying things are fluff and hype is an means of emotively charged language) but what info could appease you? Do you think that your asking for too much maybe info that they cant give you.

Maz.8604:

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Maz.8604:

Fluff. Words. Empty words.

Although very pessimistic you do have a point. Like alot of the messages we get from anet, too much emotive language and not enough fact.

If people would go back and read half the fluff published while they tried to polish this kitten over the last four months, it’s been a constant hype machine and little substance. How often can you wow people with hype until they become immune to it?

Better yet, watch the manifesto video or many of the interviews with colin years before release. Everything that was promised has been half baked. EVERYTHING.

I recognise the fluff every time i read a new blog entry or comment about upcoming releases.
Up until now iv been able to shake it off as classic dev hype (obviously you want to sound as overenthusiastic about your own game as possible and you can argue the foundation for these great concepts will path the way for future releases), however its come to a point where the game is coming on 1 year old and as to the living story a whole arc has been released, and i feel the same about it as the prelude. Way too little and definately lackluster.

My optimism is beginning to turn sour. Its getting too a point where Im dreading each and every release for the fallout it will probably create and while reading colins comments I wonder whether anet truly know the problem they face and if there actually prepared to work towards correcting the mistakes they have made over the past 9ish months.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Living world absolutely does not mean nothing but content that comes in and leaves again a few weeks later, and though so far that’s primarily what you’ve seen, it’s not all we will do in the future. The intent is living world provides us with a story and narrative experience, sort of like your favorite TV show, to constantly update and change the world and provide unique and exciting rewards on a regular basis.

I watch my favourite TV shows where and when i want. I do not have to do it on a specific date and time that fits the cable company. Yes i still have to wait for that content to be released but it is the age of on demand content. TV is moving away from this “follow a schedule” outdated concept with services like netflix and you are going back in time.
I have time for this content but many people with families or certain jobs and obligations do not. Not to mention the latecomers who get less of a product.

But what my real problem with the way you decided to do things is that you failed to deliver a truly polished and content complete product. Not a big deal since those things should get fixed (most MMOs function that way) but to me it seems you are prioritizing narration and distractions over fixing the existing content in your game.

There are so many things in this game in dire need of attention that would require very few developers to fix that it boggles my mind why you with all your manpower have not done so. From imbalanced dungeons, pathetic world boss events to things like wasted potential like Divinitys reach that see virtually no player attention. Orr was supposed to be a PVE battleground spanning several maps. WvW feels stagnant with 3 identical maps and certain servers always facing the same opponents. PvP has seen a resurgence with the basic observer mode but if you do not continue to support and expand this game mode the people who left will not come back (if they ever even consider coming back in the first place considering your lack of support).

And finally there s the matter of communication from you the developers. Ever since this game was released me and i bet many others wonder where this ride is going. The game had such crystal clear concepts written in dozens of blog posts (that have miraculously disappeared) but with every month less and less of that vision remains.

Not only are you moving away from your vision but you are not communicating a new one clearly. There is no roadmap, nothing really for players to look forward to besides the next months update. We want to know what your plans are for this year and the next one, we want to know what we can expect in terms of content like expansions or the actual story of the dragons of Tyria. We want to know.
I understand your iterative process and the idea of trying to keep things under wraps till you are sure of them but letting your players just wander in the dark is a bad idea. The whole thing goes from “oh wow i cant wait to get to that awesome thing in the distance” to “i wonder what i ll trip over next”.

So in TLDR: let us enjoy the ride but first fix the existing content and let us know where we are heading. And dont forget to listen to us as well.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Our goal is to get to a point where on a regular basis, the world around you is not only changing in the short term through our normal event system, it’s changing and evolving permanently through our living world releases as well. What you’ve seen so far is primarily some tests and warmup stuff while we in the background organize the company to support this exciting future for our game, the future for living world is filled with endless possibilities.

Enjoy the ride!

Colin and the GW2 ANet team -

Being a long-term GW1&2 player, I have to say I am liking your ideas for the direction of this particular game. It’s one thing to sit and play a game with a very fine story line/graphics/mechanics that continually repeats. It is completely another for the game with a very fine story line/graphics/mechanics to shift and move it’s story as the story is occurring. The game then becomes a living, breathing (albeit virtual) entity. Much like real life. We live through what will become history. round of applause As games go, you have something unique here. It’s a concept I’d been hoping for since the third year of GW1.

I have one request in this – PLEASE, allow us, the players, the ability to completely (after a short period of time completely deleteing on your part) annihilate an elder dragon or two before dumping another major something-or-other on top of our heads?

Jski.6180:

And we as a community has not been using emotive languages? What would you want from him to post every thing they are working on now? What facts would make you happy to know? Or are you just trying to mud sling?

SonicTHI.3217:

ColinJohanson.2394:

snip.

I watch my favourite TV shows where and when i want. I do not have to do it on a specific date and time that fits the cable company. Yes i still have to wait for that content to be released but it is the age of on demand content. TV is moving away from this “follow a schedule” outdated concept with services like netflix and you are going back in time.
I have time for this content but many people with families or certain jobs and obligations do not. Not to mention the latecomers who get less of a product.

But what my real problem with the way you decided to do things is that you failed to deliver a truly polished and content complete product. Not a big deal since those things should get fixed (most MMOs function that way) but to me it seems you are prioritizing narration and distractions over fixing the existing content in your game.

There are so many things in this game in dire need of attention that would require very few developers to fix that it boggles my mind why you with all your manpower have not done so. From imbalanced dungeons, pathetic world boss events to things like wasted potential like Divinitys reach that see virtually no player attention. Orr was supposed to be a PVE battleground spanning several maps. WvW feels stagnant with 3 identical maps and certain servers always facing the same opponents. PvP has seen a resurgence with the basic observer mode but if you do not continue to support and expand this game mode the people who left will not come back (if they ever even consider coming back in the first place considering your lack of support).

And finally there s the matter of communication from you the developers. Ever since this game was released me and i bet many others wonder where this ride is going. The game had such crystal clear concepts written in dozens of blog posts (that have miraculously disappeared) but with every month less and less of that vision remains.

Not only are you moving away from your vision but you are not communicating a new one clearly. There is no roadmap, nothing really for players to look forward to besides the next months update. We want to know what your plans are for this year and the next one, we want to know what we can expect in terms of content like expansions or the actual story of the dragons of Tyria. We want to know.
I understand your iterative process and the idea of trying to keep things under wraps till you are sure of them but letting your players just wander in the dark is a bad idea. The whole thing goes from “oh wow i cant wait to get to that awesome thing in the distance” to “i wonder what i ll trip over next”.

So in TLDR: let us enjoy the ride but first fix the existing content and let us know where we are heading. And dont forget to listen to us as well.

This is pretty much what i was just writing in response to a few other comments. Well, the second half at least (was going to snip but the devs really need to pay attention that first part aswell).

I dont want story spoilers. Or even super secret new system/feature spoilers either. I want to see an actual development roadmap (naming systems and features that players expected to be in already or are in such high demand that its inevitable). You compare anet blogs to the blogs of eve online or most other MMOs. I want to see data, graphs to back up statements (player population within certain zones etc etc). Its really easy to write a wall of text that inspires a playerbase into supporting the company. Its definately not impossible (and alot more PR friendly) to write a wall of text with factual information about the state of the game and evidence how this new system is improving the core games health. Even quote me a percentage of the increase of players in wayfarer foothills since adding a living story… Even that would reinstate some faith that actually, the communication between developer and player isnt the same old ‘this game is different and amazing please tell all your friends to go buy it’ routine.

Hello, This post is directed at Colin

i’m a very new player to guild wars and guild wars 2. I play casually (maybe 2-3 hours a night during the week and some on weekends) i just recently purchased the game and are level 23.

I just wanted to say, THANKYOU ANET

I love playing mmorpgs. its a great way to spend time and relax.

Other mmos = a second job. How is spending 6 hours a night HOPING something will appear but the likelyhood is 1/50, fun?

I love everything about this game. The community is friendly, the events are amazing to keep you feel like youre apart of something. Thankyou! for the fact i dont have to worry TOO much about what gear i have just to play the game and experience the content.

I havent seen any of the living content (no idea how im ment to and not sure if i can until levle 80) but what i have heard is ideal.

The very fact you pay $40 OUTRIGHT for the game and not have to subscribe just says what kind of game you have made. In saying that i would pay another $40 for a expansion any day of the week for a game like this.

Keep up the good work Colin & Anet.

Love it. Keep up the good work with.

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

I dont want story spoilers. Or even super secret new system/feature spoilers either. I want to see an actual development roadmap (naming systems and features that players expected to be in already or are in such high demand that its inevitable). You compare anet blogs to the blogs of eve online or most other MMOs. I want to see data, graphs to back up statements (player population within certain zones etc etc). Its really easy to write a wall of text that inspires a playerbase into supporting the company. Its definately not impossible (and alot more PR friendly) to write a wall of text with factual information about the state of the game and evidence how this new system is improving the core games health. Even quote me a percentage of the increase of players in wayfarer foothills since adding a living story… Even that would reinstate some faith that actually, the communication between developer and player isnt the same old ‘this game is different and amazing please tell all your friends to go buy it’ routine.

The big thing GW2 is not a game by the numbers there a reason why we do not have have a gear look at system or a dps meteor. EVE is a comply different game. I am not sure if you want info to prove your point of view or do you want info to build your point of view arone? That the major thing if you want the game to die any type of decline in log ins becomes your evidences if you want to game to keep going then any type when logs ins go up that becomes your evidences too. Its very hard to get ppl to changes there point of views even with data they will still chose to look at only one set or one day week month where your view was right and others where not.

1) GW2 releases as B2P game after years of deserved fanfare from their first incarnation.

2) ANet monetizes cosmetic items and quality of life boosts.

3) ANet devises “Living Story” concept, and uses key phrase (which by the way Colin says over and over and over, in interviews and here on the forums – like a tag line.): “will make you return every month to follow it like your favorite TV show”.*

3a) This is clearly clever marketing, game with decent well monetized cash shop releases monthly content with the catch that it is potentially temporary to cause old and new players to log back in, play the game but most importantly fork over cash to get the limited time minis, skins, and other doodads that cause sales to go up.

Clap, clap, clap. I really applaud you.

4) Furthermore, with a relatively small team, permanent meaningful content is reserved for Q3/Q4 to ensure that holiday sales are at their peak to cash in. Minis, skins, and doodads are also packed in to this huge release so as to capitalize on the influx of “christmas players.”

5) Lastly, and most importantly, Anet does not seem to realize that word of mouth cannot be used to sell friends on the game because you talk about events that they potentially will never get to see, but rather have to resort to saying "You may or may not see something cool this month if you buy the game, or else you have small chance of seeing something underwhelming until this “Living Story” phase reaches its climax."

All in all, Anet seems to have setup the perfect cycle of recycling players every month while potentially gaining new ones. Without a subscription, Anet still looks forward to the last day of the month because they know that week they are making a kitten ton of cash from their gem store selling temporary stuff.

NOTE: Love the game. Spend money on the cash shop. This is just my observation. I applaud your clever marketing. But I do with that we could see more zones instead of a portion of your team spending time on temporary content that you remove. When you remove it, you cause me to wonder why you spent the man hours developing it at all really.

Tachenon.5270:

tolunart.2095:

They are trying to be DIFFERENT from every other MMO out there, complaining because the game doesn’t work the way every other MMO does is kind of missing the point…

Putting square wheels on an automobile would make it different from every other automobile out there, too. Still doesn’t make it a good idea.

There is no excuse for temporary (non-seasonal) content.

You’re welcome to your opinion. I like the idea, although I’d prefer it goes a lot farther. But I realize it’s not practical in this kind of game to change the environment on a server-by-server basis. According to the Official Word in this very thread, they are pleased with how it’s going, too, and will use the experience to adjust future efforts, but there is no sign they will abandon them.

So I suppose you’d better get used to it.

tolunart.2095:

Tachenon.5270:

tolunart.2095:

They are trying to be DIFFERENT from every other MMO out there, complaining because the game doesn’t work the way every other MMO does is kind of missing the point…

Putting square wheels on an automobile would make it different from every other automobile out there, too. Still doesn’t make it a good idea.

There is no excuse for temporary (non-seasonal) content.

You’re welcome to your opinion. I like the idea, although I’d prefer it goes a lot farther. But I realize it’s not practical in this kind of game to change the environment on a server-by-server basis. According to the Official Word in this very thread, they are pleased with how it’s going, too, and will use the experience to adjust future efforts, but there is no sign they will abandon them.

So I suppose you’d better get used to it.

Well, they don’t have to get used to it

Anet’s release schedule is too slow to pull something like this off. The new dungeon is fun (the rewards need to be less random but that’s another issue entirely), but it took 3 months of boring filler content to get to it and now the only real content they added will be gone in 2 weeks…

The molten facility should be left in the game until anet has something new ready, and it should be content with actual substance and not another 3 months of hammering signs before we get the bits that are actually fun to do.

Even better would be if rather than removing content it was expanded upon, for example by leaving the molten facility in but with unlocked explorable paths to show the aftermath of the living story.

soboard.6974:

1) GW2 releases as B2P game after years of deserved fanfare from their first incarnation.

2) ANet monetizes cosmetic items and quality of life boosts.

3) ANet devises “Living Story” concept, and uses key phrase (which by the way Colin says over and over and over, in interviews and here on the forums – like a tag line.): “will make you return every month to follow it like your favorite TV show”.*

3a) This is clearly clever marketing, game with decent well monetized cash shop releases monthly content with the catch that it is potentially temporary to cause old and new players to log back in, play the game but most importantly fork over cash to get the limited time minis, skins, and other doodads that cause sales to go up.

Clap, clap, clap. I really applaud you.

4) Furthermore, with a relatively small team, permanent meaningful content is reserved for Q3/Q4 to ensure that holiday sales are at their peak to cash in. Minis, skins, and doodads are also packed in to this huge release so as to capitalize on the influx of “christmas players.”

5) Lastly, and most importantly, Anet does not seem to realize that word of mouth cannot be used to sell friends on the game because you talk about events that they potentially will never get to see, but rather have to resort to saying "You may or may not see something cool this month if you buy the game, or else you have small chance of seeing something underwhelming until this “Living Story” phase reaches its climax."

All in all, Anet seems to have setup the perfect cycle of recycling players every month while potentially gaining new ones. Without a subscription, Anet still looks forward to the last day of the month because they know that week they are making a kitten ton of cash from their gem store selling temporary stuff.

NOTE: Love the game. Spend money on the cash shop. This is just my observation. I applaud your clever marketing. But I do with that we could see more zones instead of a portion of your team spending time on temporary content that you remove. When you remove it, you cause me to wonder why you spent the man hours developing it at all really.

So i see your opinion has all the answers for YOU but what about the people behind the “marketing strategy”?

Take away the “smart marketing” how do they make money to employ people to keep YOU entertained?

Personally i would rather DLC, take away a subscription… im happy to pay $20 every 3 months or so for a butload more content then say $40 every year or so for a expansion.

Hamfast.8719:

Colin,

How about something to appease those of us who don’t like dungeons? The Karka invasion… ends in a dungeon. Halloween… ends in a dungeon. Wintersday… ends in a dungeon. The Super Adventure Box… is a dungeon. Flame and Frost… ends in a dungeon. Even my personal story, which I soloed most the way through… ends in a dungeon.

Dungeons are just plain HARD for many people, myself included, but I have struggled through several. The reward has NEVER covered my expense, and they are a huge time commitment. And I have a small guild of real-life friends who mostly feel the same way. (We can only rarely get 5 of us together online at the same time, all with the gumption to make a dungeon attempt). So most of my experience has been with strangers, which is no fun (for a soloer like me).

My personal dislike of dungeons aside though, can you see that pretty much all the “keep you interested” stuff is dungeons? My guild is always excited to see the new content and play it through, and then when it invariably winds up with a dungeon we don’t get to enjoy how it comes out.

(A “blast-from-the-past” suggestion you’ve probably seen many times before… what about scaling dungeons for the number of participants 1-5?)

I always wondered this too, for a company that want to be innovative and new they really stick to the tired and old methods of content, i personally would love some more open world areas and content with similar rewards to Fotm and the newer dungeons, less hard and frustrating dungeons..

I miss those instanced areas of Guildwars 1 where you had to work as a team to get through safely which were kinda like dungeons but never ever felt like you were playing a dungeon..

soboard.6974:

1) GW2 releases as B2P game after years of deserved fanfare from their first incarnation.

2) ANet monetizes cosmetic items and quality of life boosts.

3) ANet devises “Living Story” concept, and uses key phrase (which by the way Colin says over and over and over, in interviews and here on the forums – like a tag line.): “will make you return every month to follow it like your favorite TV show”.*

3a) This is clearly clever marketing, game with decent well monetized cash shop releases monthly content with the catch that it is potentially temporary to cause old and new players to log back in, play the game but most importantly fork over cash to get the limited time minis, skins, and other doodads that cause sales to go up.

Clap, clap, clap. I really applaud you.

4) Furthermore, with a relatively small team, permanent meaningful content is reserved for Q3/Q4 to ensure that holiday sales are at their peak to cash in. Minis, skins, and doodads are also packed in to this huge release so as to capitalize on the influx of “christmas players.”

5) Lastly, and most importantly, Anet does not seem to realize that word of mouth cannot be used to sell friends on the game because you talk about events that they potentially will never get to see, but rather have to resort to saying "You may or may not see something cool this month if you buy the game, or else you have small chance of seeing something underwhelming until this “Living Story” phase reaches its climax."

All in all, Anet seems to have setup the perfect cycle of recycling players every month while potentially gaining new ones. Without a subscription, Anet still looks forward to the last day of the month because they know that week they are making a kitten ton of cash from their gem store selling temporary stuff.

NOTE: Love the game. Spend money on the cash shop. This is just my observation. I applaud your clever marketing. But I do with that we could see more zones instead of a portion of your team spending time on temporary content that you remove. When you remove it, you cause me to wonder why you spent the man hours developing it at all really.

There is one flaw in this:
If you tell a friend, how awesome the game is and they try it, they get to experience the whole world for the first time with all the events, the personal story etc.
It’s not like they will be disappointed by anything.
The living World aims at getting players who played the game back to playing it frequently. All of you guys are hatin on anet, but you should maybe overthink your stance toward this game. Play another mmo or whatever as “srsbsns” and play GW2 casually from time to time(there are no sub fees, remember?) and you will probably be able to enjoy it way more.
Power play and grinding just doesn’t work out well in GW2 and because theres no sub fees, they can’t just release new content every 2 days to keep you satisfied, you’d be doing good to learn that.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re trying something very unique and different with Gw2, and a lot of it plays back on the original ideas and concepts we had for the game all these years we’re trying to build towards and accomplish.

Our goal is to get to a point where on a regular basis, the world around you is not only changing in the short term through our normal event system, it’s changing and evolving permanently through our living world releases as well. What you’ve seen so far is primarily some tests and warmup stuff while we in the background organize the company to support this exciting future for our game, the future for living world is filled with endless possibilities.

The “fear” a lot of players have I think stems from just how good the design of this new dungeon is.

Its the kind of dungeon a lot of people want:

- Energetic and paced.
- NPCs don’t feel pointless.
- Feels plot connected to what it relates to.
- Not too hard to learn, not so easy it can be farmed.
- Gated nature of the steps works to block farming, but without being artificial.
- The boss fights are NOT health soaks, but have mechanics to them that take advantage of GW2 unique combat system

People fear losing something this good, and never seeing it again because, sadly, the existing dungeons don’t come up to the level of this one.

When GW2 launched, the first dungeons were exciting. But only because we were still learning some basics. Many of them do have a dynamic boos or two (lovers in AC Story, or the ghostly graveling from AC explorable come to mind). But most are just “tank and spank” fights minus the tank.

And the paths of explorables – have all the plotline of a cereal box. The Story modes had plot, but in a skippable manner, and the NPCs in both were usually best left ‘dead’ off to the side somewhere.

Fractals are a bit more engaging, but this new thing is just amazing.

More of this please. And maybe go back and take another look at the old dungeons.

If you were to log in today after having taken a break, you could easily play all of Flame & Frost’s content in 90 minutes. A few random events, two short missions, one story mode dungeon.

If you were to read the marketing materials of Flame & Frost only, you would think it was an expansion the size of the original game.

I do not really subscribe to the world being alive. Everything is still very much bound by the limitation of its script. GW2 is not a 4X game with a setting where one AI might attack another and cause a shift on the map. ArenaNet is using all those words such as “dynamic events” and “living world”. But everything is a scripted event in a scripted world. There is no random dynamic element originating from the interaction of two scripts. It is not like minions of Zhaitan fight minions of Primordus in a semi-controlled Dota style balance, with human players in the middle.

I also do not get the TV show argument. It is 2013, who still allows a TV series to dictate your calender? Give me on demand, or give me death. Catch up Game of Thrones, watch online. Catch up on Flame & Frost, guest on this server. Anarchy, I know.

Toolip.8436:

I havent seen any of the living content (no idea how im ment to and not sure if i can until levle 80) but what i have heard is ideal.

You don’t have to be level 80 to play the story. Everything is put into 1-15 zones and even current dungeon will up scale players to 80 upon entering and it’s more about positioning and evading than pure DPS so gear should not matter much.

Try it

I’m loving the idea of the Living Story — real one time events breaths real history into the world and add “real” paths for introducing new content.

Pacing may be slow but just look at the amount of QQing on forums about temporary content, if they make it faster forums will probably be filled with tears from the same players.

Give us more temporary content, as some already said, when I get back to some other MMOs, yeah, content is there but no one is playing it because they all moved on to the next new shiny thing, so what’s the point having it permanently.

Anyways, great start for this concept, dungeon is very fun to play and (IMHO) first one made so that every profession and build is viable instead of making plain boring HP bags for DPS heavy classes to hit.

More content like this please!

Rising Dusk.2408:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We may have bosses from a storyline that continue on forever as guild bounty hunts when a story completes.

Oh. My. God. Please make the Dredge Engineer mini-boss from the Molten Facility who shoots all the weapons at us (and who we never kill) be a Bounty Hunt target with all of his crazy weapons! That would be so incredible!

In the meantime, please don’t forget about your old and permanent content. Fractals, for instance, has been left abandoned and worthless for so long it’s painful.

I killed him, it changes up. Sometimes you kill him, sometimes you don’t. He’s got the same stats as a critter which makes him amazing because you one shot him for 10k+ damage.

I like the idea that old DE content based around stories that have completed would be replaced with new DE content added through Living Story. For instance, why are we still fighting Tequatl when Zhaitan is dead? We should be fighting a Karka boss instead! Then perhaps after the next living story that takes place in Southsun Cove eliminates the Karka, that Karka boss may be replaced. Just an example of story progression through permanent DE’s. I’m not saying I want the Karka to be eliminated or anything.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What you’ve seen so far is primarily some tests and warmup stuff while we in the background organize the company to support this exciting future for our game, the future for living world is filled with endless possibilities.

Enjoy the ride!

I really want to believe you, but you’ve been saying the same things for months now. You guys are always talking about how much awesome you are going to create in the future, but I’ve still haven’t seen much proof of that in the game. You keep saying that the next couple of updates will be amazing, but it’s only a couple of hours worth of content each time. Maybe a handful of events, hammering a couple of signpost and so on…

Through development you talked about how easy it was to create new events in the world. How many new events have you added to the world since launch? Not many, and not what I expected from how easy you guys said such content supposedly are to create and how awesome the tools you have for creating it. If they really are, why not use them more? I would really appreciate if there popped up some new content in the zones when I’m leveling alts or revisit them. That’s what a true living story/world is imho.

Sensei.7420:

Through development you talked about how easy it was to create new events in the world. How many new events have you added to the world since launch? Not many, and not what I expected from how easy you guys said such content supposedly are to create and how awesome the tools you have for creating it. If they really are, why not use them more? I would really appreciate if there popped up some new content in the zones when I’m leveling alts or revisit them. That’s what a true living story/world is imho.

I do agree that it’s awesome to see something changed in an area you regularly visit. It’s a nice surprise. However may I make you a personal suggestion if you want to find new events? There are over 1000 events in the game, and you’re sure to find something that interests you if you go somewhere that you don’t go often. I’m pretty sure that 99% of the people that complain about not having enough new content have not actually explored all the existing content yet.

The idea is good. But I rather have a new continent to explore, really. I want Cantha and Elona. Loved them in GW1. Or at least open one of the zones like Crystal Desert or Ring of Fire.

Curo.2483:

Sensei.7420:

Through development you talked about how easy it was to create new events in the world. How many new events have you added to the world since launch? Not many, and not what I expected from how easy you guys said such content supposedly are to create and how awesome the tools you have for creating it. If they really are, why not use them more? I would really appreciate if there popped up some new content in the zones when I’m leveling alts or revisit them. That’s what a true living story/world is imho.

I do agree that it’s awesome to see something changed in an area you regularly visit. It’s a nice surprise. However may I make you a personal suggestion if you want to find new events? There are over 1000 events in the game, and you’re sure to find something that interests you if you go somewhere that you don’t go often. I’m pretty sure that 99% of the people that complain about not having enough new content have not actually explored all the existing content yet.

Of course. I probably haven’t seen all of them, but I’m getting close to a thousand hours in game, and I have seen a lot of the same events pop up every time I visit a zone and not much new content. There are some zones I frequent more than others, sure, but that partly because I have no real reason to visit a lot of the zones anymore. Maybe I would’ve done more re-exploring if I knew I could expect to encounter something new in the zones from time to time.

Sensei.7420:

There are some zones I frequent more than others, sure, but that partly because I have no real reason to visit a lot of the zones anymore.

I have about 700 hours in the game, and my first major task was world completion. I zoomed through a lot of areas and got my 100%, then didn’t go back to them because I ‘had no real reason to’. But then we have to think: well, what is the reason we go to explorable areas in the first place? Farm bosses, run to dungeons, farm rare materials. We don’t ever actually think about the DE’s. The ‘real reason’ to visit those areas is in fact the DE’s.

The problem is we don’t know what we are looking for or where to look, and we don’t want to spend hours aimlessly walking around in fear of being disappointed. Well guess what, that’s the way the game is designed. You don’t know what you want until you find it, and you won’t find it until you look. And if you look online for a guide or wiki that tells you what to look for, you won’t be surprised and your experience of the game will be lackluster. THAT is the problem the majority of players have. People don’t want to find things themselves, and either stick to what someone else has shown them, or stick to the regular routine of farming bosses, dungeons, and ori nodes.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret: if content is your desire, you will be pleasantly surprised if you follow the flow of the game and explore new places. I mean actually explore and investigate. The game is very well designed in that content is very intuitive. Things happen where you’d want them to happen, but you think “nah that would be too cool, they wouldn’t think of adding that”. Forget about the rewards and the map completion. Go to some corner of a random zone and find something happening. There is always something happening somewhere, and I bet you’ve never seen it before!

Most seem to be missing some important information about
The History of Guild Wars 2

October 2012 – Holiday team releases Mad King ‘event’
Lots of bugs, problems and issues. mostly fixed within the first few days, and mostly ignored because the content was awesome. There was tons of stuff to do, the game was barely even on its feet and ALREADY we were getting awesome new stuff to do.
It was a holiday event, we all KNEW it was going away.

November – Living World Karka ‘event’
All kinds of lead up and promises about a whole new area, major one time events, drastic changes to lions arch (some of us still remember the old lighthouse) great rewards, all a great and amazingly awesome…… idea.
Basically FAILED miserably. They tried to rush as much content as the current F&F in THREE DAYS. All based on one time (literally, once at noon pst) events.
This was a horrendous, pie-in-the-face, blunder of a server-crashing, skill-lagging, qq-fest of an event. Did I mention half the npc’s broke, making the one-time-only lead up events unplayable? They had to be retooled into the game on demand, so some places had two versions of an npc to give todays, and yesterdays, required interaction.

December – holiday team comes back again with Wintersday
Amazing event. Even better than the Mad King stuff, even more content, far fewer bugs, just all around a much better event. Things didn’t happen only once at noon, even the “one time” events were repeatable for days after. So much better.

2013
I was really, REALLY, worried about what the “Living World” team would bring us this time. Now rebranded as the “Living Story” for the above mentioned marketing sales pitch.
They gave us…. the refugees and broken sign posts.
I laughed.

At least they were taking it slow. And that is exactly what they were doing, taking it very slow, trying not to let it blow up in their face, watching player feedback (not for this event, but for future events) and playing off the successes of the holiday events.

The Karka events, southson, it was all too much too soon. Before they were really ready to see the vision that is the Living World come into play.

Yes, they backed off the throttle. But I highly doubt this is what every living story is going to be like. They have said repeatedly that this is a “Test” to make sure their new ideas work. I think they have done a pretty good job.

In January I was afraid to see what would happen after the Karka event.
Now I am really excited to see what is gonna come next.

And one further point.
Yes the new dungeon is a lot of fun. But I sure as kitten don’t want them to just “leave it lying around.” Just because it is only two weeks now does not mean it can’t come back in a few months WITH three XP paths, a new currency and full set of armor. Or, as mentioned, retooled into a much shorter version for the fractals.

Flame and Frost is a TEST.
Holiday content is temporary.
Living World stuff is permanent. (Its been the stated intention since before launch.)

Living Story is a marketing catch all that lets them figure out how they are going to make Living World work. Because it didn’t work the first time, and rather than waste a lot of effort trying to salvage Southson (which one can reasonably expect had a much grander future in play) they took a whole different direction.
They left themselves play to do something more with southson in the future, but once the whole Karka event has faded from the memory of those of us who still suffer from the ptsd.

And all that means that the major content is temporary… for now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re trying something very unique and different with Gw2, and a lot of it plays back on the original ideas and concepts we had for the game all these years we’re trying to build towards and accomplish. It’s important to us to continue to try new things, looking at ways of evolving and innovating what a live game can be. In many cases, we’re learning right along with you guys how all of this is going to work for a live game, and constantly adjusting as we see the outcomes and find ways to innovate on what a true online world experience can be.

Living World is above all, the attempt to really give the sense the world is constantly changing and evolving. That there is events and content that change the world in the short term (like our current events) and events that can occur or change for the long term, which is what we’re slowly building towards in the future with Living World content.

Living world absolutely does not mean nothing but content that comes in and leaves again a few weeks later, and though so far that’s primarily what you’ve seen, it’s not all we will do in the future. The intent is living world provides us with a story and narrative experience, sort of like your favorite TV show, to constantly update and change the world and provide unique and exciting rewards on a regular basis.

We might have events that occur and came back again with a few modifications in the future. We may have events that occur and then find new homes permanently down the road. We may have bosses from a storyline that continue on forever as guild bounty hunts when a story completes. Living world also allows us the opportunity to upgrade and make parts of our existing game better permanently, a living world narrative could allow us to rebuild and change an existing zone or dungeon, or could destroy one entirely.

Our goal is to get to a point where on a regular basis, the world around you is not only changing in the short term through our normal event system, it’s changing and evolving permanently through our living world releases as well. What you’ve seen so far is primarily some tests and warmup stuff while we in the background organize the company to support this exciting future for our game, the future for living world is filled with endless possibilities.

Enjoy the ride!

Thanks for responding to us Colin.
Thats all fine and good, buy why the hell do you put extremely rare rewards in an RNG chest and only give us 12 days to try and get them. There’s at least 3 million accounts (last number I remember), and if even half of those still play and have tried the new temp ‘dungeon’ and there’s not even 100 (of either the mini or the jetpack) available on the TP, there’s something wrong with you’re rewards team (I believe I’ve seen it called that by a red post in the SAB forum). Temp content should not have exclusive content that is based on RNG (or if it is, it needs a lot better chance of dropping), and if you must put it in that way, you need to give us a lot longer to play the content to try to get those rewards. I think that’s my biggest hate right now, exclusive rare rewards based on RNG. Why weren’t the jetpack (and the fused gauntlet ticket) once per character on completion of the dungeon, and the mini the once per account reward? Hell, why couldn’t be like the reward structure like the SAB, that way we could choose what we want? At my rate I’ll never be able to buy either from the TP and based on my luck so far, I’ll never get them to drop either, which just makes me have really bad memories of the LS and not really look forward to new LS content.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Lyssa’s Eyes people! “We’re getting something awesome and new and we can’t handle it, waaaah!” Maybe you should enjoy the fact that the developers are giving you some extra content on a regular basis and take advantage of it while it lasts. How is this making the game less fun for you? In a year’s time this stuff won’t be here for you – sure – but other stuff will. I completely missed out on the Winters Day events because I was taking a break from the game for a month, tough luck on me, I knew it was there and I’d probably not get the exact same thing again, but am I whining about it? No, because I know it won’t be the last awesome thing they do, (enter F&F).

Except that makes us play by their schedule. To get the rewards we have to farm the content while its available, instead of taking at our own pace, such as if we want to go complete a map, do a diff dungeon, etc. We have to focus only on the new content and abandon the old stuff till the temporary content is gone, which (at least in my case) is making me not look forward to more LS content, especially if its only gonna be temporary.

First of all, I recognize that we all have different preferences. Second, I don’t think that my preference is the right one or wrong one, it’s just mine.

I liked the fact that the events for this one lasted a longer time. I do not like the “here for a week or two type content”. To me this converts a fun game into a frustrating game. I didn’t buy Defiance because it goes by that premise. I have a friend who stopped playing Secret World because it had too many one time items and events, etc and he just found it frustrating and quit playing. I realize some people thrive on that and that they will love those games. I recognize that it only serves to frustrate me so I avoid the frustration by not buying/playing them.

I don’t mind seasonal events because I will have a chance at them once a year. I do mind them not adding to seasonal events. As in, the reward list gets longer and you have a chance at past items in some way.

I’d like for nice fun things to remain in some form, such as new dungeons.

I do like the living world content and the idea of introducing the changes into the world. But I am concerned that the focus could be on temporary this, that, and the other dungeon, instance, quest, etc. that is here today, gone tomorrow, and quickly forgotten. In gw1 there were many many activities around that I enjoyed doing and that my friends and I would participate in. I’d like gw2 to become more varied in fun activities but I wonder how that can happen when they are temporary?

Perhaps my concern is unwarranted, but I would like for new, permanent activities to be added to the game. I think fractals was a good addition, in that it is permanent and can be easily added to.

I’d like for something to be developed to save armor and weapon skins. Each of these temporary or seasonal events is adding weapon skins and armor skins. I am ignoring most of them because they will only clutter up storage. If I had a way to store the skins and change easily and often, I would be interested in acquiring them. As is, I’m not going to bother unless I see something that I think will be of permanent interest.

Edit: New looks in armor and weapons are less appealing when I don’t have a way to save them without using precious space in inventory.

raiden.9024:

Vayne.8563:

raiden.9024:

problem is new players joining will see no content had been added, how do u explain to ppl picking up the game 1year from launch o u missed all this content sorry your out of luck and they are stuck with the basic content the game launched with 1year ago by then…

How do you explain to someone who starts watching a 25 year old soap opera that it’s 25 years old.

If the game is good and the content is good, then it doesn’t matter. Because there’ll be cool stuff to do.

And really aside from the dungeon, what are you really missing from F&F? lol

ah good u know Anet wont do any more temp content in the next 4 months, this isn’t TV, its a MMO were content gets added to show how long its been going. Yes new players playing a 1year old game but with the same content as when it launched u don’t see a issue here ? please. As for the soap thing they can go back and watch it lol can u go back and redo content Anet remove ?

It’s not really that simple. A new guy starting the game right at this moment first has to get through all the content that was here originally. That’s ALL new to that person. All 8 dungeons, fractals, WvW, SPvP, Orr, Frost Gorge, jumping puzzles, every bit of that is new content.

If they’re also getting other new content every single month, how long do you think it will be before they look around and say they don’t have stuff to do.

The only people that are possibly in danger of boredom are the people who have already done everything the game has to offer, or those who are limited in how much of the game they’re willing to participate in.

New players won’t be the problem here. They have plenty to do, at least for a few months.

ColinJohanson.2394:

….

Enjoy the ride!

My only complaint is not being able to go back and play content I like later on (i.e. 2 or 3 alts later). It’s probably smarter, though; as it will ensure I keep a positive nostalgic memory of “the world that was” instead of letting the content get stale due to repetition.

If it was a TV show and only one episode a month came out, nobody would watch it… Love the content patches, there should be a way to go back and play the previous parts of the story.

My problem is that you’re pushing the living story so hard despite it’s not very interesting or memorable. Obviously you’re decided now that this is the way you want to go, despite the game still lacking meaningful endgame content you should IMO add before spending your time pushing the living story.

But if we want to fix the living story, it needs to actually be living instead of stagnant “once a month something that lasts for 5 minutes happens”. The events need to happen on a much tighter time frame, this way the feel of drama and urgency would be much greater. Obviously, people would complain if they miss out, but it would add a fresh feeling in the game where anything can happen without you telling beforehand what or when.

I’m not a fan of the storyline so I wish content updates weren’t tied to some NPC and their problems. You guys have done some good things with the GW2 story (Tybalt) but mostly it’s very forgettable and downright stupid (Trahearne).

the thing that sucks about this is that if your new or you weren’t able to play during the temp playtime, you just miss out on everything.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Trying something new only pays off if it’s better than another option. So far this has not been better and actually detracted from the game. I hope for Anet’s sake as well as the players the next living story is more engaging.

Thank you guys for your work and the response.

you miss out on the event sure, but there’s more and others and to be had, in all honesty its very intuitive and very good in my opinion and what i will say is the gear / achieves give you no advantages except fun and a new skin or two, so not the end of the world by a long shot.

Traveller.7496:

My problem is that you’re pushing the living story so hard despite it’s not very interesting or memorable. Obviously you’re decided now that this is the way you want to go, despite the game still lacking meaningful endgame content you should IMO add before spending your time pushing the living story.

the living story is effectively end game stuff and GW2 has fractals, the’ll be all sorts to come and ‘’end game’’ the whole of guild wars 2 was built around experiencing the whole world, so leveling and adventuring / exploring is your end game, currently.

about it not being very interesting, Colin has just confirmed what everyone had been saying for months ‘’there testing out different event types in the living story for the future, currently were guinea pigs ’’ – which is true, granted in the next installment if its the same stuff then sure, complain away but i don’t think we should be giving anything except constructive critism about where to go, how to do it etc.

Don’t let them give you some stupid story, it’s temporary cause they make money that way, they add in a temporary dungeon like SAB and the new one and the add items from it to the gem store, they think everyone in game is stupid and dont get it, but some do, they have stuff in game that they can add to and build on but they just ignore it cause it wont make them money. But it will lose them players doing what they are doing, keep it up please, by all means, keep it up, I like not having overflow in LA anymore, doubt it will ever be that way again.

Jski.6180:

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

I dont want story spoilers. Or even super secret new system/feature spoilers either. I want to see an actual development roadmap (naming systems and features that players expected to be in already or are in such high demand that its inevitable). You compare anet blogs to the blogs of eve online or most other MMOs. I want to see data, graphs to back up statements (player population within certain zones etc etc). Its really easy to write a wall of text that inspires a playerbase into supporting the company. Its definately not impossible (and alot more PR friendly) to write a wall of text with factual information about the state of the game and evidence how this new system is improving the core games health. Even quote me a percentage of the increase of players in wayfarer foothills since adding a living story… Even that would reinstate some faith that actually, the communication between developer and player isnt the same old ‘this game is different and amazing please tell all your friends to go buy it’ routine.

The big thing GW2 is not a game by the numbers there a reason why we do not have have a gear look at system or a dps meteor. EVE is a comply different game. I am not sure if you want info to prove your point of view or do you want info to build your point of view arone? That the major thing if you want the game to die any type of decline in log ins becomes your evidences if you want to game to keep going then any type when logs ins go up that becomes your evidences too. Its very hard to get ppl to changes there point of views even with data they will still chose to look at only one set or one day week month where your view was right and others where not.

Without being rude… What are you on about?

I want data to prove anets point of view, not my own. I want evidence that backs their reasoning behind design. Yes i realise Eve and gw2 are completely different games, i am merely comparing the quality of communication from the eve devs compared to the fluff we get from colin and co.

Sinned.8419:

I really enjoy the idea of the living story. I am tired of MMOs that add content constantly, but all the old stuff stays the same. The world evolving and changing is exactly what a MMO needs. Breathing new life into old content is going to make the game much more enjoyable. Having tons of content means nothing because everyone wants to play with the new stuff. Old content is stale content. Keep evolving the world because that is what will make this game amazing.

yeah when they add cool content that you loved doing only to remove it, I wonder will u think the same thing. soon as the flame story is over nothing will have changed to the world, its like it never happened, ppl will farm maw then move on. besides the 1-20 area and the 70-80 area or the maps with a chest event the “old content” is stale now, a "living " story of bland wont save it for long (flame story should have been over in a month maybe 2 its just dragged out 2 long for a lame ending).

Since my thread got closed, didn’t see this one =P im gonna post my feeling about the
temporary content.

I was one of those guys who was really hyped about gw2, really hyped, played all the beta tests minus one.

Love the game until the ascended gear introduction that i really dislike… So after a while i took a break and i decided to return now.

I ask some of my friends, whats new and exciting now.

Friend: "Oh dude there’s this really awesome dungeon, SUPER ADVENTURE BOX " it even got a trailer so awesome".

Me: “Oh man cool ,where can i find it?”

Friend: “Oh its gone now, they remove it.”

Me: “What? Really?”

Friend: “But there’s a brand new dungeon, lets do it!”

After a while we finish the dungeon

Friend: “That was awesome, and you are lucky that dungeon is gonna get removed soon too!”

Me: “WHAT? WHY?”

Really, why remove cool stuff, i get the Halloween and Christmas only content.

But why remove those 2? Because of the limited drops? Then keep the dungeon and remove those drops…

I really wanna play and enjoy this game, please Anet, don’t remove the cool and fun stuff.

And one of my replies:

Now after some months i have returned and one new dungeon got removed, and the other got a few days left… So the game is in the same state as before. No reason to keep playing.

So, after the new dungeon get removed im guess im going away again. No new content pve wise.

I don’t get how this will keep it fresh, its not fresh its gone. Now we won’t do it because we don’t wanna. We won’t do it because we can’t. And that’s bad.

More and more stuff building up is good. You can choose what to do.

This is my feedback, i really enjoy your game and i loved the new dungeon, awesome mechanics. Please keep them =P

Thunderscape.3859:

Since my thread got closed, didn’t see this one =P im gonna post my feeling about the
temporary content.

---

I was one of those guys who was really hyped about gw2, really hyped, played all the beta tests minus one.

Love the game until the ascended gear introduction that i really dislike… So after a while i took a break and i decided to return now.

I ask some of my friends, whats new and exciting now.

Friend: "Oh dude there’s this really awesome dungeon, SUPER ADVENTURE BOX " it even got a trailer so awesome".

Me: “Oh man cool ,where can i find it?”

Friend: “Oh its gone now, they remove it.”

Me: “What? Really?”

Friend: “But there’s a brand new dungeon, lets do it!”

After a while we finish the dungeon

Friend: “That was awesome, and you are lucky that dungeon is gonna get removed soon too!”

Me: “WHAT? WHY?”

Really, why remove cool stuff, i get the Halloween and Christmas only content.

But why remove those 2? Because of the limited drops? Then keep the dungeon and remove those drops…

I really wanna play and enjoy this game, please Anet, don’t remove the cool and fun stuff.

And one of my replies:

---

Now after some months i have returned and one new dungeon got removed, and the other got a few days left… So the game is in the same state as before. No reason to keep playing.

So, after the new dungeon get removed im guess im going away again. No new content pve wise.

I don’t get how this will keep it fresh, its not fresh its gone. Now we won’t do it because we don’t wanna. We won’t do it because we can’t. And that’s bad.

More and more stuff building up is good. You can choose what to do.

---

This is my feedback, i really enjoy your game and i loved the new dungeon, awesome mechanics. Please keep them =P

Thank you good sir.

You just proved what we have been saying since the annoucment of the temp dungeon.
While this type of implementation might work for people who play the game every day it is very detrimental to new players or people like yourself, returning to play to new content.
If anet cannot see this as a major problem, especially when their payment model actually promotes players to do what you have, then my faith in the intelligence of this company was heavily misplaced.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Flame and Frost is a TEST.
Holiday content is temporary.
Living World stuff is permanent. (Its been the stated intention since before launch.)

Except that the Living World stuff is NOT permanent. Its temporary, just like the holiday stuff. Events will be going away, so will dungeon. About the only thing that might be ‘permanent’, as you say, will be the characters, if they are even used again.

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Jski.6180:

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

I dont want story spoilers. Or even super secret new system/feature spoilers either. I want to see an actual development roadmap (naming systems and features that players expected to be in already or are in such high demand that its inevitable). You compare anet blogs to the blogs of eve online or most other MMOs. I want to see data, graphs to back up statements (player population within certain zones etc etc). Its really easy to write a wall of text that inspires a playerbase into supporting the company. Its definately not impossible (and alot more PR friendly) to write a wall of text with factual information about the state of the game and evidence how this new system is improving the core games health. Even quote me a percentage of the increase of players in wayfarer foothills since adding a living story… Even that would reinstate some faith that actually, the communication between developer and player isnt the same old ‘this game is different and amazing please tell all your friends to go buy it’ routine.

The big thing GW2 is not a game by the numbers there a reason why we do not have have a gear look at system or a dps meteor. EVE is a comply different game. I am not sure if you want info to prove your point of view or do you want info to build your point of view arone? That the major thing if you want the game to die any type of decline in log ins becomes your evidences if you want to game to keep going then any type when logs ins go up that becomes your evidences too. Its very hard to get ppl to changes there point of views even with data they will still chose to look at only one set or one day week month where your view was right and others where not.

Without being rude… What are you on about?

I want data to prove anets point of view, not my own. I want evidence that backs their reasoning behind design. Yes i realise Eve and gw2 are completely different games, i am merely comparing the quality of communication from the eve devs compared to the fluff we get from colin and co.

Nothing rude with what i was saying to you. It had nothing to do with you and my talk on ppl view on data its just how ppl tend to work out. We have data on evolution but we still have ppl who try to twist the data or just comply ignore it to say evolution did not happen.
What is Anets point that trying out new events called live events are good? I am not sure if you can tell from mainly 2 live events first being more of a beta level event seeing how many ppl can be packed during an event and the other this one we have now is not over. The data is just not there yet.

As it is, the current “living world” doesn’t do all that great of a job. The devs are basically doing up a story one chapter at a time and presenting each chapter to us with enough time to;

1. Develop the next chapter, and
2. To ensure everyone has the chance to participate.

Then once that is done, the current chapter is replaced with the next one and the story continues toward its conclusion.

What are the player’s choices?

To either participate or not.

What impact does a player’s actions have?

None at all.

What happens if you fail (ie. party gets wiped) in an attempt to complete this content?

You get to try again and again at no consequence because there is only one outcome to reach. You either reach it, or you don’t in the time that the content is available. The story continues linearly regardless.

For it to be a living world, first and foremost, the npc’s must give the illusion of being living people. Thus they need to have daily lives. They should eat, sleep, and talk to each other with dialog that evolves. Shop keepers should have shop hours. Guards are shift workers and don’t just stand post 24/7. There is a day/night cycle in the game, use it. A weekly routine would be prefered but a daily routine would do the trick.

Player freedom, choice and lasting impact. There will always be a limitation on the choices we have when it comes to being involved in what happens in the game, but there are steps that can be taken that would open things up a fair bit.

Sandboxing and player content. Right now we are just playing characters that can run about and do scripted events. They have no more than two outcomes. Pass or fail. If you fail, you get to try the exact same thing again. You can also do it over and over.

If players were given the mechanics to construct content in game, it would go a long way. Especially if we could interact with each others content in certain ways and under certain conditions. It would make the in game world feel more tangible.

Alternatively to building content, is to purchase or otherwise take control of existing content.

As it is, animals dot the landscape like apples dot an apple tree and so it’s no wonder that people “farm”. When it comes to wild animals (ie. deer) think hunting sims. It should take you hours to track down and shoot that deer to get the particular meet as needed by the cooking profession (just an example, I’m not familiar with the cooking profession). However, when you finally do, you’ll be thankfull that it should provide you with more than what you need. You shouldn’t have to shoot 10 deer to get the 5 steaks you need (50% drop rate).

This should also mean that the land should actually have forested areas. Tall grass, bushes and trees. The current game world is too ‘open field’. Even the “wooded” areas.

As for quests..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_AI

It can do more than just send you to somewhere you haven’t been. After clearing a cave of vampires (which it then stays clear and they don’t respawn in 2 minutes), you may find yourself back there an, in game, week later clearing it of bandits. It can recycle cleared areas.

So how does that fit in a MMO? When you complete a quest, another is triggered and not necessarily with the same npc or even in the same zone. This way a minimum number of quests are available and this minimum number can be based on various factors including the number of people currently playing.

Well, that’s my rant for the day. lol.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Atlas.9704:

Colin will there ever be a part of Fractals that allow us to play a recap of old content?
Stuff like that would be a win-win for those who want Fractals and others who long to play older stuff as well.

When I said we could update or change an existing dungeon, updating fractals in the future is one of the options that’s fully possible yes. And of course since fractals lets us experience moments trapped in time….it’s entirely possible some content may make its way there as part of a living world update.

This would be fantastic. Returning to the new dungeon in a fractal in a shortened/modified version would be incredible.

The final boss fight in the new dungeon stands as one of the best in the game, imho.

skullmount.1758:

Its temporary, just like the holiday stuff.

At least the holiday events can be experienced every year, because I doubt they will design brand new ones for every Christmas, Halloween and whatever else they decide to celebrate.

ASB.4295:

skullmount.1758:

Its temporary, just like the holiday stuff.

At least the holiday events can be experienced every year, because I doubt they will design brand new ones for every Christmas, Halloween and whatever else they decide to celebrate.

Yeah, at least with holiday events we know they will be back in some form (probably close to previous year, but with additional stuff) for x amount of time every year.

Great response from Colin. It makes me eager to see what’s to come for Tyria. As Anet learns what works, what doesn’t, what’s well received, what isn’t…they’ll be able to create better and better content. Players had issues with the F&F story, and Anet will learn from that and make the next arc even better.

People complaining about various aspects of Orr? Anet can (thru a living story arc) rebuild it, regrow it, permanently push back the Risen and take back the land for the humans (or whatever race). Players getting tired of karka? Suddenly aspects of other dragons show up & destroy the karkas, making way for a new combat feel to all of Southsun Cove.

I’m excited that possibilities like these could come about.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re trying something very unique and different with Gw2, and a lot of it plays back on the original ideas and concepts we had for the game all these years we’re trying to build towards and accomplish. It’s important to us to continue to try new things, looking at ways of evolving and innovating what a live game can be. In many cases, we’re learning right along with you guys how all of this is going to work for a live game, and constantly adjusting as we see the outcomes and find ways to innovate on what a true online world experience can be.

Living World is above all, the attempt to really give the sense the world is constantly changing and evolving. That there is events and content that change the world in the short term (like our current events) and events that can occur or change for the long term, which is what we’re slowly building towards in the future with Living World content.

Living world absolutely does not mean nothing but content that comes in and leaves again a few weeks later, and though so far that’s primarily what you’ve seen, it’s not all we will do in the future. The intent is living world provides us with a story and narrative experience, sort of like your favorite TV show, to constantly update and change the world and provide unique and exciting rewards on a regular basis.

We might have events that occur and came back again with a few modifications in the future. We may have events that occur and then find new homes permanently down the road. We may have bosses from a storyline that continue on forever as guild bounty hunts when a story completes. Living world also allows us the opportunity to upgrade and make parts of our existing game better permanently, a living world narrative could allow us to rebuild and change an existing zone or dungeon, or could destroy one entirely.

Our goal is to get to a point where on a regular basis, the world around you is not only changing in the short term through our normal event system, it’s changing and evolving permanently through our living world releases as well. What you’ve seen so far is primarily some tests and warmup stuff while we in the background organize the company to support this exciting future for our game, the future for living world is filled with endless possibilities.

Enjoy the ride!

As it should be, thank you! Static worlds are boring! Now, Colin….Cantha…:) lol (CLICK MY SIGNATURE!@!!!)