Guild Wars 2

I’m running around part of old Lion’s Arch in the personal instance on one of my characters. I really wish they would give us a way to go into old map in the game. Maybe through a remembrance portal stone that takes us into a shared map of it maybe with access to Claw Island via a NPC in OLA also. I’d pay 1000 gems for it. Would anyone else?

I would, but apparently the way the engine works, it can only be implemented as a story instance as the space on the map is already taken by the new LA. It would need a new location if you wanted it as an outpost or home instance, also it would have to be reworked if you wanted to have all the current NPCs in it.

They wouldn’t have to put all the current NPCs in it. They could just put the basic LA NPCs back as it was before. After all it would be a remembrance of the past It would give new players a chance to look at the former LA also rather than the glimpses from the personal story. They could overlay it with the old film effect from the Aviator’s Memory Box.

I would love that. To me, old LA is a thousand times better than the new one.
However, I guess it would take a considerable development process to implement that kind of feature.

But, if they do implement that kind of thing, it would unlock new possibilities to make the story concretely progress and actually influence landscapes. For example, we could have two versions of Orr : The first being before the personal story, and the second one with a healed and flourishing Orr after Trahearn cleansed it (The old one being accessible through that said portal stone).

It always felt weird that we would go through all that process to eradicate the undead army and in the end, nothing changes.

That is such a fantastic idea. I love the use of aviator’s memory effect too.

Now it’s got me thinking about the game’s story touching upon existential stuff. And just as an aside, my favourite video game moment was in Dragon’s Dogma during the reveal of the true Everfall. Mind explosion!!!

Spoilers for dragon’s dogma!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaXCsgk8HCk&=&t=7m40s

OLA would have to be fixed in the world but rather more like the PvP lobby.

It would be easy for them to update Orr. All they would have to do is adjust some of the events so they can accommodate players looking at different graphics and dialog. Anyone with an active story beyond the personal story could see a brighter Orr with lush plants, a mix of risen (driven by the few remaining lieutenants of Zhaitan) and destroyers. They could replace the risen chickens gfx with pocket raptors since they behave somewhat alike. Maybe some Karka on the Cursed Shore on both views. It’s just a matter of indexing the gfx and dialog based on the active story plus matching up which creatures behave the same so their gfx could be replaced. They wouldn’t need to copies of the map at all just the change in perspective.

The closest I think they could get is to recreate it as a sort of personal home instance, so that it doesn’t have to include all the service NPCs and keep getting updated over time. Even that would require a lot of work that could be devoted into newer instances or even updating the current LA. Nostalgia isn’t cheap.