Guild Wars 2

I have completed the story twice now and second time round it felt the story is way to short for an expansion. With the mastery poison nerf it only takes a few hours to go through the whole thing.

I understand the Living story will follow but if past living story are anything to go by they won’t take long to complete either.

Don’t get me wrong I liked the dream fight but the rest was a bit of a let down. There was no build up I felt.

No, it’s not.

You need to remember that someone playing through from the start will play through the core story, living world season 2, the HoT story, and any living world and future expansion pack stories in the future.

The game, unlike other MMOs, will have today’s content still playable 2 expansions from now.

You should check out the lore forum. There is near universal agreement there about the story being very short indeed, with some interesting and constructive discussion about how it could have been improved and the long list of things felt to be missing.

If you’re rushing through the story, also consider that every zone and event also tells a story. The living story may be short, but it’s far more than what the average MMO offers – a new raid every 6 months or so.

While I enjoy the expansion and do not regret purchasing, it does feel a bit short. If all of the Living Story elements were put together into this expansion instead of them being spaced out then it would feel more like a real expansion than DLC. Whether or not all of the content was there with the LS + HoT isn’t the point, it’s the player experience that determines whether or not there was enough for it to be considered a real expansion.

I greatly enjoy games that I can play start to finish. Then I’ll go back and play the fun parts over again. Having the LS stretched out like it was and then BOOM! it finishes was a bit anti-climatic. I did really enjoy the expansion’s content so far though. I thought the Dragon Stand fight was more exciting than the storyline to be honest. But I really enjoyed the DS fight, being on a TS with a guild who’d never done it before so it was all new to everyone.

There’s still more to come, though, with the raids and LS3 etc.

The whole expansion is on the short side (only 1 pvp map, bad WvW implementation, rushed Tempest spec). The Guild Halls kinda make up for that. It seems to me that the Living Story 2 may have initially been planned as part of the expansion (Silverwaste and Dry Top).

I’m unsure about the delayed stuff. So far with this expansion reviews are going out and there is not a single new dungeon or raid, so that’s a big and important aspect in a MMO where HoT is completely lacking.

Yeah it felt a little short to me.

Xillllix.3485:

The whole expansion is on the short side (only 1 pvp map, bad WvW implementation, rushed Tempest spec). The Guild Halls kinda make up for that. It seems to me that the Living Story 2 may have initially been planned as part of the expansion (Silverwaste and Dry Top).

I’m unsure about the delayed stuff. So far with this expansion reviews are going out and there is not a single new dungeon or raid, so that’s a big and important aspect in a MMO where HoT is completely lacking.

We should technically be getting the first raid wing in 1 or 2 weeks, but yeah it’s been pretty underwhelming. I suppose more content HoT related will come with Living Story 3?

Yeah it felt a little short. I wasn’t expecting to push into the dragon’s home ground and he be defeated a few days later. I thought this was like the middle section of the story with the first section being Season 2.

Lome.8239:

No, it’s not.

You need to remember that someone playing through from the start will play through the core story, living world season 2, the HoT story, and any living world and future expansion pack stories in the future.

The game, unlike other MMOs, will have today’s content still playable 2 expansions from now.

Core story, Living story 2, and HoT are seperate lore entities. HoT has a price, and you have to pay for Living story 2 (or at least I had to back when I missed it first time around) When we are talking about Heart of thorns, it is purely those 4 maps and living story that I think we should be discussing. You don’t need HoT to play Living story 2, and vice versa.

Now here’s the thing. Core story was really expansive and had a lot of potential, but it fell short on delivery. Living story season 2 was a great improvement on delivery. HoT story, was delivered FANTASTICALLY. The cutscenes, dialouge, everything about it was great. However, it felt rushed and short yes. It is almost the same amount of story (if not less) compared to Living story 2. I always bought GW for the story, starting at prophecies, and I was really digging the personal story for HoT. I didn’t even rush it, it took a week for me to complete while exploring and enjoying Halloween as well. But it was short, and just kind of ended.

Was the story bad? No not at all. Was it short and rushed? To me, a player that has been with ANET since Prophecies, yes it felt completely short. Eye of the north had more story than HoT did and costed less when it was released.

As an old school gamer who still remembers the Shadows of Luclin, in overall volume, HoT felt very impressive to me. This is the issue when you add so many things in small areas. If you just look at the personal story, it is short. But HoT, and the lead up to it, was a lot more than that. It added so many elements that I won’t get to them all such as new legendaries and their quests, fractal changes, guild halls, new zones, masteries, new ways to get ascended gear, specializations, a new class, PVP, new skins, new Commander UI, gliding, and I’m sure there is more. In total, it is massive. Some areas I’m not even interested in, which I think is great as that something else to get into. I think that is why I appreciated it. It opens up so much for different people and different play styles of the game that I think they handled really well.

If they had a singular focus, think of it this way; How would the WvW/PvP people feel if they released a long, well designed story with nothing in those zones? You would have had nothing but complaints about how ANet no longer cares about them and they would likely leave. the same for PVE if the entire expansion was focused on WvW. And entire guild expansion would likely alienate a lot of single players.

Story wise, we just need time. The Living Story will get updated and every few months we’ll get a new part.

Again if the Living Story is to be included in the price of the expansion, then it should never appear in the gem store as a separate purchase!

If I dont log in one week I aint going to be paying twice for it!

The story part felt short and rushed to me There was a lot they could have done with it and yet nothing really happened at all .

Absolutely yes.

As a comparison.

HoT consts out of 14 Gameplay Segments, from which just a smaller portion are actually “Missions” where you actually have to do something in instances.
Some segments are just filler segments that lead you to the next instanced part.

Consists of 4 Chapters practically. The personal Story of the Main game going against Zhaitan consisted out of 8 Chapters, so was practically twice as long and people rightfully expected to battle against Modremoth to be at least same as long and upbuilding, as like it was against Zhaitan, which in fact was much weaker, than Mordremoth…

its also super linear, while the mainm game offered multiple different outcomes of how you could end up agaisnt Mordremoth,. giving that story part at least some replayability and reason to play the story with multiple times to see the different paths and experience different missions..

This time its basically for every character you have just the same boring short deal. it feals not like being practically personal Story part too, but I think personal story is already a kind of game concept, that Anet already secretly threw into the garbage bin as they concentrate themself only on living world/expansions now I guess …

The story telling is super preditanble in certain cases again as usual, builds up not really good tension and ends up in a ridiculous end boss fight thats at least better than Zhaitan, but thill super underwhelming and nothing of what I would expect as an epic final against an elder dragon.

However, I kind of have the impression, that Anet willingly kept the story around Hot so short, so that they still have something in the backline left over in regard of lore and story for the Raids and for the restarting of the Living Story to continue from the point on where we get left behind after killing that ugly dragon newt of a modremoth wannabe elder dragon somethign fat lizard creature that we had to kill to get somethign evil rid of Tyriathat is after this fight just undefineable and makes you thing you just had an nightmare and want to desperately just wake up to realize, all of this was just a bad dream >.>

LS1, LS2, and HOT are all the story of mordremoth, LS1 however cant be played right now, so it seems shorter than it is, if we could play LS1, wed have a fair bit more to do before fighting mordremoth.

To me it was the perfect length, maybe to long, im hoping we dont have to wait 3 years for the next expansion pack! xD

I was expecting the new specializations to be story unlocks. For instance, twitch.tv streamer AuroraPeachy also thought of a backstory for the Scrapper, where Taimi’s Scruffy is destroyed or damaged, so Taimi had to make something that would help her navigate the jungle, which would be an upgraded Scruffy, ie. gyro Scruffy. If you are an engineer, then Taimi will teach you to become a scrapper or inspire you to be one. My addition to this, maybe the Scrappers of the Black Citadel came to help the Pact and the Pact Commander/s. Maybe they found Taimi in the jungle injured and helped her build Scruffy version 2. This would highlight the Scrappers and their relentlessness. One great mage once said, you can build a perfect machine from imperfect parts. ^^;;;

GW2 ended with Zhatian

Season 1 while containing some bits I feel was filler also was only there for half since season one was all temp content.

HoT I feel started with Season 2

A new player would have to buy Season 2 anyway so SW, DT, and map changes might as well be included with HoT.

You bought HoT yes but this game lacks a sub and the deal set by season 2 and even season 1 means that if you play the game you’ll be getting free content till the next expansion. Those who were logged in during Seasons 1 and 2 got to play it for free and I see no reason why Season 3 will be no different. Season 3 will probably start the intro for the next expansion anyway and they might do season 1 also I doubt it will take three years for the next expac either more like 1.5-2 years seems rather normal.

Not only is it incredibly short (they had to pad out the story with mastery points, should say allot about the length of content) it also appears to have been written in 5 minutes on the back of a napkin.
For example we have a mission to go to an ancient asura city, who were investigating the elder dragons … and what did we learn? That everything has a weakness, that was a deep and helpful piece of information. I think a fortune teller conning people out of gold could have told us that or common sense.

I felt it was a tad too short aswell. They could have slowed down the pace a little to flesh things out a bit more.
But atleast the story was more focused and coherent than the core story to me which was more a rollercoaster as far as quality is concerned.
I actually cared more in HoT.

It felt too short to me as well. Having purchased the core game ages ago I feel that $49.99 warrants a story at least the length of the original or at least the length of the Guild Wars 1 expansions. Maybe it could have been longer if what we got were regular maps instead of these multi layered maps. But on the other hand I do feel that the team decided to make a expansion last minute in the middle of living story season 2 because the rest of the expansion just does not feel right. The WVW map for example seems like it would be great for gliders but instead I find myself running around a empty map… or perhaps the enemy left by the time I walked up and down stairs.

It also does not help that some of the plot thrown in for the map events never completes as there has been (at least for me) not enough players in the new maps to begin with… maybe that will change now that people got their Halloween event fix out of the way.

It all depends where you start from.

If starting from HoT, yes the story is really short. Especially for an expansion. With an expansion, we should of got a full length long story like we did with Zhaitan. But what we got was about the length of a Living World episode. If you don’t count the Mastery leveling we had to do, the story is very short. You’ll see this when you play through the story on an alt who already has all the Mastery requirements unlocked.

If starting from the beginning though, it is LONG. Longer than your Personal Story. Because, it all started with Living World Season One. That was the beginning that lead all the way up to HoT. If it wasn’t for Scarlet, none of this would of happened in the first place. Well, eventually it probably would of, but it wouldn’t of been till way way in the future when we are all gone and dead.

So it’s all a matter of perspective. If starting from the beginning, it is a long story. But if starting from HoT, it is extremely short.

IMHO, yes it is way to short. I completed the entire HoT story in a couple hours, it was really underwhelming tbh.

The answer to this is really dependent on the next season of the LS. It would have been nice to see the location of the other pale tree and deal with the issue of an entire tree of corrupted sylvari. However, with the dragon dead, we now have a chance to explore deeper into maguuma. If the LS takes advantage of this, then I wouldn’t say the story is too short.