Guild Wars 2

I highly doubt anyone from Anet will see/respond to this but, two things kinda confuse me about Halloween this year.

1; In the first instance with the Bloody Prince, a few of Tassi’s lines were altered/added, for one, during the fight she says “He has a weakness, but I can’t remember what it it. Keep him busy while I figure this out!” now, if this were a different fight/instance from last year, that line would make sense, however, she says herself she’s never heard of him (never met him before/didn’t know the Mad King had a son) so I’m finding this kinda confusing :x

2; Secondly, on the wiki it says that Mad King Thorn is able to return to Tyria for one day a year, now, I assume this year Anet have him in Lion’s arch for the whole two weeks to give more people the chance to play Mad King says and get the Achievement/mask. But, since this doesn’t really add up with previous story/lore, a little explanation would have been nice, or idk.
Also, I don’t remember if he was doing this last year or not, but I’ve been told he’s also in other areas of Tyria, bothering the impersonators of him in the starting areas and telling his jokes, is there any story/lore reason why he’s moving to different areas now, was he doing it last year/2012 too?

Can’t help with most of these, but there is at least some small precedent for the last bit- in GW1 times (and maybe even today, for all we know, just to peeve Palawa) he went to Kamadan in Elona as well as LA. He isn’t limited to any particular place in Tyria, he just (disclaimer: my impression) goes to the places where he can make the most of his very brief window of time. Well, brief in years past, anyway.

Events that are lorewise a one time occasion are handled that way by the lore community if it is explicit stated that way. Example: Marrionete fight

For gameplay purposes these Events are longer ingame, so more people are able to experience them.

As for this Halloween : The whole event is an exact copy of the event last year. They did not change anything storywise. No new line was added. They even refer to Dragon Bash, an event that happened over a year ago and is not part of recent events.
Susequently every lore defining thing is simply based on the fact that the whole festival is just a big rehash nobody put much thought into.
They had the assets and just put them back in, with some minor changes here and there (rewards mostly, as I believe LA decoration is a given)

I get that he can go anywhere he wants, it the fact that he doesn’t seem to be under his can-only-get-out-one-day-a-year-on-Mad-Kings-Day seal that is the lore breaker for me.

And yes I get that they may have bent that non cannonly to allow more opportunity for people to participate in Mad King Says in LA, but there’s no reward for seeing him in the starter zones so why did they feel the need to break the lore there?

Is it forshadowing that the seals are weakening under his constant pressure? Or just sloppy writing?

It’s not breaking the lore. For the whole time that Halloween is operating in GW2 you should assume that the period of one day is being covered. It’s extended to cover a week or two so that people can actually play the content.

It is odd that there was this big deal about trying to align Tyria’s calender to fit our own, defaulting back on “ASURA SCIENCE” to plug any holes in the lore… then events such as this are now supposed to only be a day (when they are clearly much longer than a single day).

Honestly I don’t really accept much “new lore” as actually meaning anything, due to the whole “the lore is malleable” thing. If new lore is a hackjob requiring retcons, and is very messily/lazily handled, than this this new lore does not exist and is written off as “Misguided Devs introducing lore that will be retconed away soon”.

@FlamingFoxx: It was actually canon lore in previous years that the holiday is celebrated in the days to come before Halloween (aka Mad King’s Day) itself. 2012’s plot was centered around this, with Thorn threatening to break out of the Mad Realm days before he was supposed to be able to (the destruction of Lion’s Court). This is the reason why, for the past 8 years (2005-2013), Thorn was only around on Halloween day itself (in Tyria, that is; excluding his threatening to break out in 2012).

There is no lore for this, however, though one can certainly take it to mean that Thorn has managed to extend his ‘vacation in Tyria’ for longer than a single day.

Perhaps all the deaths in Lion’s Arch from Scarlet’s attack has created pain and suffering on a massive enough scale that it weakened the barrier’s of Thorn’s prison so he can spend more time in Tyria?

I’m guessing it went something like this:

ANet Middle Management: Hey so we are not doing a new Halloween event this year. Just cappy-pasta that skritt and get back to making LS2.
Some Overworked ANet Dev: But sir, Halloween is a favorite with the players! Shouldn’t we at least work /something/ new in?
Manager: Whatever. Add some items or something.
Dev: Not really what I meant.. like, a new story?
Manager: Nope. Use the one from last year.
Dev: And about that.. it seems like 2012 was reviewed a lot better than last year, shouldn’t we repeat Halloween 2012 instead?
Manager: What? I thought that one gave too much stuff and messed with the economy.
Dev: I mean kinda but we could just re-bala-
Manager: Listen don’t waste my time with this. Just copy-paste last year and done.
Dev: -sigh- Can we at least do a website story blog or something?
Manager: No. Also, we got a lot of complaints about Mad King Says being a one-day thing. Make that happen the whole event.
Dev: But sir, that has all sorts of lore-breaking implica-
Manager: I swear to god if I hear the word ‘lore’ one more time you’re all fired. Get out of my office!

@DaMunky they already stated why the content is the same, do a little of research before you make fun of them especially since they do such an amazing job.

There is no excuse for having tons of perfectly good Halloween content ready to go from previous years and not reusing it. They could have easily put in “Ascent to Madness” and “Reaper Rumble” for no extra effort.

The fact that this year is a literal copy paste with a couple of bare-bones little item rewards just comes across as remarkably lazy. One programmer spending one hour in one afternoon could have flipped a few switches and repositioned a few NPCs to get that content back in.

Also: For someone telling me to “do a little of research” (nice grammar by the way), you want to cite some sources there? Or are you just being intentionally vague in hopes I won’t turn your own reasoning against you?