Guild Wars 2

I’ve wondered this for a long while and don’t recall seeing an official response on the subject. Why can’t portions of Living World Season 1 be reformatted into custom instances like GW1’s Bonus Mission Pack? The Molten Facility was adapted into a fractal which also works (still unhappy about the lack of azurite orbs in the fractal tho). Other key battles can be instanced with old map structures just like the story mission, Setting the Stage, which uses the old original Lion’s Arch map. Parties could be formed through a large scale fractal or raid party search which could accommodate very large groups for events like the marionette fight and the battle for Lion’s Arch.

I’m sure many will say that Anet has bigger things on their plate to work on, and that’s probably true, but how long have we been asking to replay some of those old, world-changing events? Not having these instances also requires new players to merely read about the events on the wiki instead of experiencing them for themselves. What do y’all think?

Mike O’Brien recently stated that bringing back Season 1 was unlikely to happen, as the resources required would be better spent creating new content.

(Statement made in the latest AMA on reddit, I believe.)

Good luck.

There have been other statements from ANet as well which pretty much echo the above. Think one dev said it would be a minimum of 6 months work for a large team, with very little if any new content being produced as a result and that was being optimistic

I would love to see an LS1 redux though

The thing is, I know it’s not technically new content, but it was content that was played briefly, then moved beyond. And still, new players have a gap in their story going from the personal story to LW Season 2. The story summary in the Hero panel just isn’t enough, in my opinion.

Yeah, I’m not really satisfied with their official response. I think it needs to be done, and they can bridge it with improvements to the personal story and overall narrative structure.

It’s a jarring gap in the story that’s becoming more awkward and absurd the more in the past it gets, and it results in the game feeling very unpolished.

Also, I fail to see how it would take so long, since there were very few new maps, and a lot of it was already instanced. They could just cut out some of the more complex stuff, and separate out the bits of it that tied into the first year’s festivals.

This is even getting more true now that we’re approaching having a healthy amount of new content. The game suffered tremendously from the incredibly slow pace of new content for the first 2.5 years, but we’re getting past that at this point.

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

The thing is, I know it’s not technically new content, but it was content that was played briefly, then moved beyond. And still, new players have a gap in their story going from the personal story to LW Season 2. The story summary in the Hero panel just isn’t enough, in my opinion.

We’re not going to disagree with you. The gap in the narrative I think is a barrier and an issue, although the devs will be better informed of how much a barrier it is. The video recap barely covers enough of LS1 to be relevant at all.

But, if they don’t have the time/resources, it’s all moot. They want to bring back some of the LS1 festivals, but they are struggling because of it being based on old code/tools/tech, so if a festival is a struggle to be brought back, imagine how tough a whole 18 month season would be.

It’s also content that for the most part wouldn’t fit in the “5 players max story format”

Most of the memorable fights were open world (marrionette, breachmaker, the tower…) and what could be brought back was already brought back (molten, molten boss, aetherblade, tower fractal, and now the skins)

If they ever bring back some other content it could be just marrionette/breachmaker but it will be really diminished. The reason it was so kitten good is because there was a lot of player hyped for it and there was a lot of players hyped for it because it was short.

Not saying I like it being gone forever, and it’s even worse that some AP are gone forever, but it’s a real dilemna to bring this content back. And I do agree with them that they should keep producing content, as it finally reached a pace that makes everyone comfortable.

They could also bring back the jubilee (they better cause kitten sovereign skins) but it’d be a seasonal event separated from story too.

Deihnyx.6318:

It’s also content that for the most part wouldn’t fit in the “5 players max story format”

True. Let’s remember the very first part of LS1, Flame and Frost: Prelude. What we were doing is open world events in Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills that involved elementals and fixing sign posts. The whole thing wouldn’t work very well if they added it to the game again. Same goes with most additions to the open world.

However, something that they could add to the game, that -shouldn’t- take so much development time, is add some of the instances. For example the introductions for both Rox and Braham (where they talk with Rytlock Brimstone) shouldn’t be so hard to re-add to the game because they only contain dialogue. Then the small combat instances that followed, the Nolan Hatchery (where Rox found Frostbite) and Kragstead do not have any complex mechanics and are solo instances.

Right now new players are introduced to these npcs and do not know anything about them. Who is Rox? Who is Braham? Why do we care about them? Why do they care about us? All these questions could be answered by re-introducing the small story instances back to the game, after all you never encounter those npcs out in the world, they are only found in instances so any open-world changes can be ignored.

There is an NPC in LA that goes over the events of S1 as it were. That should help bridge the gap.

Since I started playing GW2 again the whole one shot LWS1 thing has been a sore point with me. It was seriously flawed in the way it was done.

One way they could sort of bring it back is as a remembrance quest event chain. The player is given a sequence of missions to cover the map in all the places of significance in LWS1 to retrieve items, salvage energy probes, etc. They get a flash back cinematic at each point and fight enemies that are trying to get the items before them. It could end in a mist recreation of Lion’s Arch where they have to examine events and figure out something puzzling about the events or even if Scarlet is really dead. It would give players a sense of having participated in it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Mike O’Brien recently stated that bringing back Season 1 was unlikely to happen, as the resources required would be better spent creating new content.

Yes, the ever same excuse for everything they don’t want to do. Is ANet that poor that they can’t afford additional resources? I know for a fact that I alone have invested hundreds of bucks into this game these past 18 months, and I am certainly not the only one.

Well done – you’ve managed to keep one developer in coffee for a few months

costepj.5120:

Well done – you’ve managed to keep one developer in coffee for a few months

Funny.

I think many people have stated they would gladly sacrifice quantity of content for quality, and getting a whole season like LWS1 back, and reworked for everyone to enjoy, certainly falls into the category of quality content.

Someone pieced together a great like 3 hour video with narrative as well as some game play footage from a ‘lot’ of different sources and it’s worth watching that if you are curious about it and never got to experience it and are just curious as to the story.

Found it .

Mike O’Brien responding to the comment, Will season 1 ever be playable? There are players like me who would love to play it and even pay for it.

It’s a question that comes up a lot. I have favorite moments I’d love to play again too. But we researched it a while back and realized that restoring and updating Season 1 content, and putting it into episode format, isn’t particularly easier than making new episodes. And we think the community is better served with new episodes.

I don’t think people recognize just how much effort it is going to be to make a repeatable version of LS1. Of course it’s possible; it would just take an enormous amount of resources. And that seems like an unnecessary distraction, given that people are already jealous of ANet diverting any resources to anything that doesn’t fit their idea of a better game.

Out-of-Game, Historical Context

LS1 was designed and implemented as temporary content. It was part of a (since-discarded) plan by ANet to constantly introduce new content and gradually evolve the game, so that many existing maps would be unrecognizable (in terms of challenges, foes, etc). The idea was: much better use of resources to re-use the same zones and so much more exciting to keep adding new life to the existing world. Hence: the term Living World.

It was a great, epic idea and I wish it would have worked. I think part of the issue was ANet’s implementation (they bit off more than they could chew and there were lots of scaling, technical, and reward issues to start with, leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths about the concept). Part of the issue is also what we’re used to: we like repeatable content. We like being able to be absent from a game, without feeling that we missed something important (reward and lore both). We like having the chance do ALL THE THINGS in the game.

LS1 disrupted all our expectations and its implementation was rough (whether flawed or just slow to get going no longer matters). And ANet, sensibly, dropped the idea and turned LS2 into repeatable content.

Background, In Game Experience

There are three aspects that made LS1 epic:

• It was not repeatable. You had to be there at the right time. (Notice this is exactly one of the primary issues that got ANet to drop the original concept: it was both a great idea and a fatal flaw.)
• The open-world battles were epic. Unlike Auric Basin (which has an achievement for defending the city one hundred times), getting in a single victory was a combination of great mapwide teamwork, individual skill, and a bit of luck. It felt amazing each time (compared to DS, which feels disappointing if it’s not over quickly enough).
• The instanced content was extremely challenging for nearly everyone. People scrambled like crazy to find ways to beat it. Depending on who you talk to (and how good their memories are), many would say it’s comparable to today’s fractals (perhaps T3-4 or less).

Final Background: To Make it Repeatable

To make it repeatable, we’d have to drop all three of the things that made it epic: it won’t be dynamic, it won’t include open world mega battles, and it won’t be super challenging for five people. So let’s presume that the only thing we can get is a facsimile of the story, told in chapters.

The original instances were designed for the mechanics of the day. They were designed to be temporary, so little thought was given to making them last. That means: they’d have to be redone, nearly from the ground up.

There were dialogues that took place in the open world, in areas that don’t exist anymore (or have different NPCs, foes now). Those would have to be turned into instanced content.

The open word battles would have to be included somehow, so that’s new cinematics or entirely new encounters meant to model the idea, with shorter cinematics to show the impact on Tyria.

To do all of the above requires rewriting parts of the story, rewriting the instances, redesigning encounters, adding new cinematics. All of that would need to be translated into French, Spanish, German, and Chinese. Some of the voice actors are no longer available, so ANet would have to hire substitutes (and decide whether to redo old dialogue or not — probably not).

In short, it’s an enormous amount of work to get us … another Living Story, which some people have already seen (and can’t possible meet expectations for epic-ness).
———————————————
So, sure, it’s possible. It’s just not practical given the pressures on ANet at this time.

Previous Quotes by Developers on Bringing Back LS1:
ANnet Ben

It would [take] longer than 6 months.

ANet Ben

If things went smoothly, with the entire living world team plus extra veteran developers working on it, maybe 6 months is theoretically possible. But with old content, things rarely go smoothly. Issues pop up that you weren’t expecting that increase the amount of time required. And even if it was feasible in 6 months, taking all those developers off of new content just isn’t worth it IMO. We have way cooler things that we can work on.

ANet Ben

one of the problems is much of the content is not instanced, and theres also a TON of bugs in that content that would need to be fixed, since our game code and tools have changed so much since then.

ANet Ben:

Question: If it had been even a minor priority when this was first requested back at the start of Season 2 — nearly three years ago! — it’d have been done by now, surely?

Answer from ANet Ben: That would have pushed back everything a lot. Season 3 would be behind, the expansions would have been behind, new content is a better use of developer time. I wish Season 1 had been built differently, but alas it was not.

ANet Ben

Question: Any chance that we as players (and surely lot of us are programmers, 3D modelers and coders) could help?

ANet Ben’s Answer: As cool as that sounds, there’s a lot of logistical issues with something like that, and it would still require a lot of dev time to coordinate. Plus, more leak potential.

Even though I’d love to see LWS1 return, I know it isn’t going to happen. But I do think that some parts of it could make returns. The marionette fight for instance would be a good one to bring back. Its a single fight, so much easier to reimplement than then entirety of S1.

Battle on the breachmaker/defend lions arch/whatever that was called could make a neat fractal, and allow players who missed that content the ability to experience it. Again, much easier than reimplementing the entire season.

So on and so forth. Just the biggest parts coming back would be pretty great, the epic fights and what not.

What they need to do, really, is recreate living world season 1 from scratch, heavily streamlining the content and only including important pieces such as the introduction of the Dragon’s Watch NPCs and some of the dungeons & boss fights as new instances. Much of it can just be left out or mentioned in passing, including most of the tie-ins to festivals and a lot of the open world content.

They could even reconceptualize it as a “prologue” to the living world, and adjust Living world seasons 2 & 3 to become seasons 1 & 2, which is what they should have done to begin with.

I just don’t really buy the “it’s all but impossible” argument. They just clearly decided it wasn’t a priority and therefore aren’t being innovative or assertive enough in trying to address it, which I will continue to argue to anyone, including Mike O’brien, is the wrong move – immersion is extremely important in an MMO, and you cannot become fully immersed in an incomplete story with huge gaps in-between significant events that leave out extremely basic/important things like the introduction of NPCs that are very important to the current story.

No one is saying “it’s impossible”.

What they are saying is that to do as you suggest (“recreate …season 1 from scratch”) is at least as much work (and probably more) as creating an entirely new LS4 or LS5. So it’s not about being innovative or assertive.

It’s about choosing between:

• Attempting to recreate an old story, which can’t possibly meet the diverse expectations of a huge number of players, versus
• Introducing new stories, like those which have historically met or exceeded diverse player expectations.

Or if you’re an automobile fan, it would be like asking Ford why they don’t still make a Mustang II King Cobra, but only new models with new designs.

I agree with everyone who says that the gap between the Personal Story and LS2 is glaring. And I agree that ANet should do something more than a 30-60 second video. But there’s all sorts of other ideas that fall short of insisting that they stop forward progress and rebuild LS1 from scratch… regardless of how streamlined they try to be.

tl;dr no one says it’s nearly impossible; what ANet is telling us is that they have to choose between attempting to retell the old story and telling new ones.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

No one is saying “it’s impossible”.

What they are saying is that to do as you suggest they really need to so (“recreate …season 1 from scratch”) is at least as much work (and probably more) as creating an entirely new LS4 or LS5. So it’s not about being innovative or assertive.

It’s about choosing between:

• Attempting to recreate an old story, which can’t possibly meet the diverse expectations of a huge number of players, versus
• Introducing new stories, like those which have historically met or exceeded diverse player expectations.

Or if you’re an automobile fan, it would be like asking Ford why they don’t still make a Mustang II King Cobra, but only new models with new designs.

I agree with everyone who says that the gap between the Personal Story and LS2 is glaring. And I agree that ANet should do something more than a 30-60 second video. But there’s all sorts of other ideas that fall short of insisting that they stop forward progress and rebuild LS1 from scratch… regardless of how streamlined they try to be.

tl;dr no one says it’s nearly impossible; what ANet is telling us is that they have to choose between attempting to retell the old story and telling new ones.

That’s why I said “all but impossible” and not “impossible”. And I still think they can and should find a way to do it that doesn’t require the same amount of work as doing a new season of LW.

To summarize and put in scope: it would be the time, cost and effort making an expansion, whilst no new content could be made in the meantime.
In short: reviving ls1 would kill ls4 and slow down exp.3