Guild Wars 2

(tl; dr below)

Hello! I didn’t know exactly where to post this, but I guess this place will do. Otherwise, feel free to move this thread, mods .

So to get to the actual question, I’ve been out of GW2 for quite some time now (last logged in around november 2014 I think), and while I’ve tried to keep up with the living world story, my studies simply haven’t allowed for it anymore. I plan on playing Heart of Thorns during my winter break after college, but my problem is that I just haven’t been able to keep up with the living world story anymore, I only know fragments of what happened. So I was wondering if Heart of Thorns gave a summary (preferably in the form of some sort of cinematic, but not required) of the living world story leading up to the expansion? And how much or what exactly would this cover? Everything that’s happened since Zhaitan, or only the directly related stuff to HoT? Or will I have to look up everything that’s happened on the wiki?

TL;DR: Is there a short summary at the start of Heart of Thorns explaining what has happened in Tyria leading up to the expansion?

Shinal Dragon.9625:

Thank you both for the quick replies! So from this I can assume that there has been no official word on this from the developers?

While they haven’t said anything about a recap being included with HoT, there have been a few official news articles summarizing Living Story content. This is the most recent, covering the broad strokes of S2, although it’s not near as good as buying and playing through for yourself if you can. If you’re on a time crunch, though, this and the S1 cutscene in-game should cover all your basics.

Naturally, we’d be happy to answer any further questions you might have afterwards!

Talk to Ela Makkay in Lion’s Arch near the Durmand Priory Research Site for a recap.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magister_Ela_Makkay

Vesuvius.9874:

Talk to Ela Makkay in Lion’s Arch near the Durmand Priory Research Site for a recap.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magister_Ela_Makkay

That’s only season 1 though and it’s quite limited at that.

A complete account can be found on the wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_2

I know there are also fan videos on youtube.

Thank you both for the quick replies! So from this I can assume that there has been no official word on this from the developers?

Also, Diovid:

Diovid.9506:

I know there are also fan videos on youtube.

Could you recommend a couple of these, perhaps?

Keep in mind that the entire living world season 2 is open for purchase, so if you’d prefer to play through it all, it’s entirely possible. Not terribly expensive, either, if I recall right.

Actually after the nice work that ANet did with summarizing S1 I wouldn’t mind seeing a S2 summary.

Anet only did that S1 summary because there has been a year+ long outcry for something in-game to explain the sudden story jump of killing Zhaitan to going into Dry Top and talking about this ‘Scarlet’ figure not everyone knew. With more new players due to HoT’s advertisements, the outcry became louder.

The summary was intentionally limited, to only give the needed facts for going into S2 and in turn HoT. Thus it doesn’t include non-Scarlet/Mordremoth stuff.

There’s no need for an in-game summary of Season 2, since it’s all permanent content. And since they intend to make Season 1 permanent content in S2’s format, it’s plausible that they’ll remove the S1 summary whenever they get to doing so.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Anet only did that S1 summary because there has been a year+ long outcry for something in-game to explain the sudden story jump of killing Zhaitan to going into Dry Top and talking about this ‘Scarlet’ figure not everyone knew. With more new players due to HoT’s advertisements, the outcry became louder.

The summary was intentionally limited, to only give the needed facts for going into S2 and in turn HoT. Thus it doesn’t include non-Scarlet/Mordremoth stuff.

There’s no need for an in-game summary of Season 2, since it’s all permanent content. And since they intend to make Season 1 permanent content in S2’s format, it’s plausible that they’ll remove the S1 summary whenever they get to doing so.

Probably when they figure out how to make it work.

Thank you all for taking your time and replying to me! I’ll definitely check out the S1 cinematic and, if I have the time to spare, play through the S2 content in-game.