Guild Wars 2

Did it seriously just end like that?? When we killed zhaitan it was fun and everyone celebrated. Instead we kill traherne, have never actually saw the dragon so no confirmation if it’s even dead. Then it just kinda ended.

For buying an expansion the story was very very short and did not feel the slightest bit complete at all in my opinion.

I do agree that the story felt pretty short and rushed. But I felt that the ending of the HoT story was more satisfying than the end of the main GW2 story.

Sylent, the story of HoT isn’t just in instances. The instances are half the story. Some of the meta events figure heavily into the story too.

Without counting the Dragon Stand meta as part of the story, you’re missing out part of the story.

And I won’t say more, because if you don’t know, I’m not going to spoil it for you.

Sylent.3165:

When we killed zhaitan it was fun and everyone celebrated.

Not my recollection of it at all..
I’d agree that the personal story was a bit abrupt if I wasn’t having so much fun with the rest of the expansion. Absolutely love the Dragon’s Stand meta.

This complaint has been brought up many times. I think the problem is a) the big bad died so fast, compared to the Zhaitan build up, and b) there is clearly more story but we just haven’t had LS3 for too long. Hopefully when LS3 comes (soon soon soon) the story will pick up with aftermath, and people that begin the story now won’t have the 9 month gap many of us have dealt with.

Rip dragon bash

I definitely think Vayne has it right in that the Meta Events are half the story about what is going on. During the last story mission, one of the characters makes a comment along the lines of “We need to do this while the dragon’s focus is distracted outside”- I didn’t really understand what that meant until I got the chance to do the Meta for Dragon’s Stand.

I’d also like to point out that, comparatively, the aftermath of killing Moldy is not “fun”.

Zhaitan’s campaign was all about systematically pushing our way into his territory, cutting off his sources of power and then culminating in an all out aerial battle with our combined forces. A celebration is then in order to celebrate all the hard work put into getting to that point and the success of the mission.

Moldy’s campaign starts with the utter destruction of those combined forces, continues into desperately trying to bring together the scattered survivors of the pact, attempting to rally support from the locals and then try and finish the mission anyway. The whole campaign is one desperate push to another, fueled by mistrust for your own comrades, the grief for your lost allies and the knowledge that your big invincible fleet, which has already killed one dragon, was just destroyed in two seconds and you’re now trapped there.

The feeling is less of one of celebration and more of “Holy carp we just got through that by the skin of our teeth”

What the story lacked was a proper epilogue.
1. No ending cinematic where our victory was celebrated and everyone we lost was mourned.
2. We have no idea how Zojja or Logan is doing or if they are even still alive (depending on who you picked).
3. We have no idea how the Pale Tree is doing now that Mordremoth is death.
4. We have no idea how the Pact is doing now that the Marshall is death.

The list goes on. It’s one loose end after another.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

What the story lacked was a proper epilogue.
1. No ending cinematic where our victory was celebrated and everyone we lost was mourned.
2. We have no idea how Zojja or Logan is doing or if they are even still alive (depending on who you picked).
3. We have no idea how the Pale Tree is doing now that Mordremoth is death.
4. We have no idea how the Pact is doing now that the Marshall is death.

The list goes on. It’s one loose end after another.

This.

The franchise has, up until this point, been really good about having a solid “epilogue” instance where you get to catch up with all the major players of the story, have a quick chat with them if you want, and get a basic idea of what they plan to do next. In GW1 and release GW2 that’s also where they roll the credits and tell you how awesome you are.

I think they overestimated the time table for the LS release and thought that episode 1 of LS3 would serve that purpose (and it probably will) and that makes HoT’s ending feel overly clifferhangeryand without a proper sense of closure.

All it really needed was a short instance for Traherne’s funeral after the ending cinematic. You could have sad music in the grove, catch up with all the major characters, roll credits, heck, even play fear not this night over the credits again if you wanted etc. etc.

You could even press f to pay respects, hehe.

Yeah I think Windu is right- it was not so much the ending wasn’t fun as that there was no epilogue to follow up the ending to resolve hanging plot threads.

As I said above, I think it’s the tremendous delay in getting the next installment that has made it feel like the ending was so unsatisfying and sudden. Because it’s not the ending. Possibly Mordy isn’t even dead and was playing a mind game on us to make us think he is so he can stealthily set up more resources now that he’s had a reciprocal look inside our minds. Not that I expect that sort of depth from the story, but it is at least a plausible interpretation. There are funerals and celebrations to have, there’s the egg’s situation, and now we are seeing all the rising White Mantle and ley surge issues that tell us this thing ain’t over yet.

If that really was Mordy’s final defeat in our lifetimes, yes, it was far too sudden, it was like Frodo getting the ring in the Shire and just hopping an eagle ride to fling the ring into the lava, home in time for sevenses. Which is why I keep hoping something a lot more intricate is next.

This has been a problem in book series too. Most notable for me, Stephen Boyett’s The Architect of Sleep which is the first half of the story. Literally. It just ends on a chapter break mid story, because it was getting published in two parts and then he had a falling out with the publisher and refused to ever publish part two, leaving the readers forever hanging. And more recently I’ve just finished reading the first 17 books in CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series and until book 18 comes out (it is “awaiting publication”) I’m stuck on a cliffhanger.

But books are like that, and readers can go to many other novels while waiting for the next installment in a series they’re enjoying. Game stories need a little more constancy of pressure, or at least the feeling that more will be coming. Hearts and Minds leaves us feeling like they crushed the whole Zhaitan saga down into the 1-20 PS, primarily because it does purport to have defeated the end boss at around the time we’d just begun to invest in the narrative.

I have my fingers crossed for LS3 to debut if not this coming Tuesday then the one after, and for it to deliver at least as much story as HoT launch did if not more. We’ll see.

Clearly we needed that dude with the dancing moas.