I think for the sake of semantics, let’s call campaigns from GW1 expansions, because that is ultimately what they boil down to, the standaloneness of them was rarely exercised by anybody in the player base.
Let’s also make a distinction between temporary and seasonal. People make the idiotic bluster of “We should keep the halloween and wintersday stuff around year round so the lazy kittens can do that too” which isn’t the point. Seasonal stuff comes back every year. If I don’t complete all of the achievements this year, then it’s ok, they’ll be around again (and this better be the case). So on to the discussion of Living Story:
1) It is an IV drip of content. People often manage to complete all of “goals” as they come out in the same day. Sure, making things like a difficult dungeon slow it down, but it’s not exactly a lot of stuff, and making people grind enemy slaying titles for longer doesn’t exactly constitute content or fun for that matter.
2) Fun on someone else’s schedule is not fun, it’s work. I shouldn’t have to plan my life around a game. They got better about this since the first couple months where there was some 1 time event. And it’s not even that an occasional special thing is so bad, but this is continual. If I am not playing on a daily basis, I am missing out on stuff that never comes back. I work a job, have a wife, and would like to play other games and more importantly do other things. A steady stream of permanent content would add up. I could do it at my own pace, and get to enjoy all that content when I would actually enjoy it.
3) Temporary content is throw away content. There is a psychology to people making things, especially when it isn’t intended to be permanent. No matter how much people may pride themselves on their work, if it is temporary, they will be more willing to cut corners and lower standards to make the constant deadlines. Even if it isn’t visible yet, it will start to happen more and more as time goes by. Making things permanent means people will continue to take it seriously. If every player from now to the future does it only once, that’s still a more worthwhile return on investment for the developers than what they get now.
4) At some point, a vast majority of the stuff in the game will be gone and inaccessible. Look at your achievement pane and tell me how many of those are tied to things that cannot be completed anymore. Not most of them, but a new set of achievements is added to that screen every month, so how long until there are more temp achievements than permanent ones?
5) Screw people and their fragile egos that need to bar other people from having something to feel good about themselves. Seriously, why does their own sense of accomplishment rely so heavily on other people’s failure? People should be rewarded for skill, cleverness, and/or persistence, not merely having bought the game earlier than other people. If Anet is using this to justify creating temporary content, they should be ashamed. I didn’t realize when I bought the game I was buying a freaking commitment.
