Guild Wars 2

This is basically a Copy-Paste from my reddit post on the matter found here: http://redd.it/1o4yoa

I was watching WoodenPotatoe’s latest Q&A (link) and one of the questions was about the way Anet dishes out the lore to the player base (at 13:10 mark).
Now a bit about my experience with lore (and I think many will relate): I’m not the type that goes out of his way to get to nice little lore bits and pieces and then speculate on them but I do enjoy how WP does it and it got me hooked. Brings a smile to my face whenever I see a new GW2 related video on his channel.
Back to my Idea. Because we have all kind of players, some interested in lore, some interested in farming, some interested in accumulating Achievement Points, it’s hard to focus on just one so why not have a myriad of activities for all of them at the same time?
Let me expand on this idea. Knowing that Scarlet will play a big role as a main villain for a long time, it’s gonna get stale really fast if we go after her month after month and she gets away every time. It would look like we’re not gaining any ground. So Anet release some Living World updates that have nothing to do with her and that’s great! (Teq, SAB, the one coming soon etc)
So here’s how I would implement a non-Scarlet LW update that would cater to 99% of the player base (lets call it “Stories around the bonfire”):
Around Tyria we will have spots (similar to Queen’s Jubilee balloons) where you would have to defeat a bunch of enemies in order to unlock it. This will cater to the farmy players.
Once the site is unlocked you sit around a bonfire and an NPC starts telling you a story (could use those already written ones that WP said that exist). This will appease to the lore-oriented players.
After clearing each site you get some AP and at the end of all of them you’ll be finished with the LW meta and maybe get a model of a bonfire (something like the Zephyr Sanctum model) that will allow you to re-read all the stories on interact. This will make the achievement hunters happy.
That’s basically it, in a nutshell. But now you are thinking what types of foes would you have to fend off in order to unlock each bonfire. Here is where I need your help. Any ideas? I was thinking that it would be enemies that are part of the story you’re unlocking (so for example if the story is about the inquest you will have to fight off inquest that are trying to stop you from finding out about them).
A nifty addition will be a title like “Avid Historian” so players that like to speculate and learn more about the GW2 universe would be easy to identify. Imagine sitting in LA with the title and another players walk up to you and says “Hey, what did you think about the story about the Tengu? Do you think we will hear more about them?”. And bam! you, potentially, made a new friend that shares the same love of lore as you do.
That’s if for now. I will update this post as ideas keep flowing in and I can’t wait to hear your feedback.

I like this idea. It could work as a permanent content addition that gets updated as needed via the subsequent living world releases.

I would suggest, instead of a bonfire, why not just protect the actual historian at each location? Enemies attack a fire is a little lacking. Enemies attacking an NPC, on the other hand… And the storyline for them is s/he’s visiting the various spots around the world to study the local lore. That can be sufficiently dangerous business depending on the area. When s/he’s safe, you can talk to him and get those lore stories. And you get an achieve tick for every location you protect him at.

No timers are needed like the balloons and others b/c, if every location is sufficiently far enough apart, the NPC can be in all of them at once and not really break any immersion/suspension of disbelief.

And the meta reward is the NPC historian in your home instance, rather than a bonfire item, which will take up a bank slot/inventory space. Having a bonfire they gather round in the home instance would still be cool, though. (Dreamer’s terrace could learn to accommodate. lol)

And interacting with the historian would do as you said: show all the stories you’ve learned. Heck, maybe even make the list update as new areas are added to the game and you visit his new spots there and protect him again.

(Should this be in this forum, though? Or suggestions? Mods?)

Thanks for the feedback. When I said a bonfire I had the NPC there as well. Having it in the home instance would be amazing, considering you can bring a party with you there.

I posted here and not in suggestions because it’s a marginal improvement to only a niche group of people therefore it won’t get priority. So here at least I get feedback from people interested in the lore aspect of the game.