Guild Wars 2

With the ability to replay old Episodes, it measn that we are not bound to the “temporary” factor of Season 1.

With that in mind, there are certain things that could “easily” be rectified, by just adding an additional line, a certain step or even a piece to find to the gameworld that would resolve uncertaintys (and would also show that the devs care, reduces the need to find explanations/ excuses, etc. )

I am talking about suggestions obviously

So, to start this little thought experiment off, let`s take a look at: Mordremoths namedrop
For all unaware, all information here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Naming-Mordremoth

Mordremoth was never explained ingame and up to this day, that did not change.
The only explanation so far was “The Pact knew it”, which is by all means not a satisfying explanation and from what I have read, no one really likes it.

To amend that I thought of some fixes, that could help explaining it i retrospect:

Put a book in Scarlets room
At the end of Episode 1, we search through Scarlets old stuff. It was a collection of things from Caera and later Scarlet.
Putting a book on eldar Dragon, with marked pages for the jungle dragon and some scribbles of “Mordremoth” (which Scarlet could provide thanks to her connection/Insanity) and we could have the PC put together the idea that “jungle dragon” = “Mordremoth”

He could ask Taimi to scan it, or even send a copy to Trahearn (getting the pact involved, and maintaining the “investigation setting” the Episode started with), to inform him.

Episode 2, could be extended with a letter from Trahearn, who confirms your suspicion and everything could play out as before.

Hello PC
Thanks for the notes you send me. I got them to my researchers and we can confirm that Mordremoth might be the jungle dragons name. While we are not entirely sure about that, since we are still going through Data from the Inquests Crucible of Eternity, which Zojja provided, we decided to go with that name for now.
We also informed the others that there might be something going on with the roar and that they should be prepared.
I will contact you later as soon as I set things in motion here.

Greetings Trahearn

This is ideally what agile development is about, but although ANet states they follow an agile methodology… well in the agile methodology you have constant customer feedback to ensure you meet the customers needs. Well ANet doesn’t have an open beta so the first time most players see the content is on release, in which feedback is given. now in agile this feedback is intended to guide the development and refinement.

However I think ANet perceives a release not in terms of a service but in terms of a product. What do I mean? Well lets take a book for example. You write a book and then you sell the book, the product is no longer under your control. You can still make changes but these changes will only appear future product versions. Maybe a movie is a better example, think of it as the difference between the cinema edition and the directors cut edition. Changes can be made but there still conceptually a difference between the one and the other.
Classically software and video games were treated less like tangible products but there was still a line drawn. For example things like service packs or updates could allow for changes but since the software ran independently on people computers (because it was sold as a stand alone product) the creators didn’t have the ability to ensure all versions of their product was at the same version.
There’s also the nature of projects to consider, each episode is probably considered a project in and of itself. They might follow and agile approach but once the product (episode) has been releases it’s on to the next project and only bug fixes are made (in line with the stand-alone software product idea).

For something to work like OP suggestions will require ANet to change their mindset regarding episodes and content as being products (once delivered only bug fixes are allowed) and rather as a service, something that’s continuously being provided which they have full control over what the player can or can’t see. In such a mindset none of the episodes will ever be officially completed, they’d always be open for refinement, tuning and expansion. When an episode is released feedback is gathered (on more than just the bugs) and plans are made to change the already released episodes. However this does make thing difficult to manage, so usually change and expansion is treated like a separate project with a start and an end, and when comparing what needs to be done (new episodes) with what could be done (adding a few lines of dialog, or some text or a new section to existing episodes) the new content will always win out.