So there has been a lot of discussion and confusion about the Living Story and when it takes place in relation to the Personal Story and the chronology of the rest of the world. In a recent interview with Wartower (link: ) I think this was cleared up. Here’s a transcript of the relevant part (it starts at the 40 minute mark). This is a repost from another thread, but I figure it’s probably worth its own thread.
Angel McCoy: So I think that the timelines are not actually broken apart. Can you explain why you think that is?
Wartower: Maybe because it’s just the way I, because I started from the first day on playing Guild Wars 2 so it’s my personal experience of the timeline, so I defeated the dragon first and now I have this Scarlet problem as a player. So that’s why I was asking whether you consider that as to be simultaneous time lines or not?
Scott McGough: Scarlet is definitely contemporary with the player. Zhaitan has been defeated. And I think that this was part of the structure both, I mean outside the game we have releases scheduled for every couple of years, but also the structure inside the game, we want to have a story that progresses, that doesn’t stay still. So we didn’t want to fight Zhaitan for 5 years. The overall threat, the world story is that of the dragons, the dragons are a threat to the entire world, the world needs to respond to that. The first dragon to rise was Zhaitan and Zhaitan was dealt with by the Pact. The threat of the dragons isn’t ended, but there is sort of this lull. Defeating Zhaitan took a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of people died. Before the Pact is ready to move onto the next dragon they need to regroup, they need to reorganise and they need to staff back up so they have a full contingent of troops. Like anything you can’t have a major war battle every week. You can’t fight a dragon every month of the story so we tried to find ways you can explore things related to the dragons, like Dragon Bash for an example, that would allow us to explore some of the smaller and more personal stories that we get to see with Marjory and Kasmeer or with Lord Faren and that’s where Scarlet falls. I would say Scarlet, she’s got a personality and the dragons to not. We see minions, we see dragon champions, but they’re all tied to the dragons and the dragons are themselves are this monolithic force of nature. Scarlet is very chatty, Scarlet has personality, Scarlet likes to interact with the people she’s attacking. So for the smaller scale more personal stories we are telling in the Living World that are tangentially connected to the dragons, Scarlet was a much better fit. But yeah, this is all happening at the same time the dragons are still out there, the world is still preparing for the next dragon to rise and how they are going to deal with it. But in the mean time there are other threats, there is the Molten Alliance, there is Scarlet, there’s all sorts of stuff.
It seems clear to me that the Living Story all takes place after the Personal Story. They intend it literally as filler between the major expansion-like content which will deal with the dragons (every two years apparently). The Living Story is a collection of side stories like the filler arcs from an anime.