Guild Wars 2

INTRODUCTION: We’ve probably been over this a hundred times, but I just went back to GW1 for a brief login for some nostalgia. It made me realize why the plot in GW2 has been so unsatisfying from launch, and why GW2 needs an expansion so badly (living story isn’t cutting it, more on that below).

1. GW1 focused on one group of adventurers per campaign. Humans only, from Ascalon, Cantha, then Elona. Each story is mostly self-contained, has a definitive goal, some decent twists and turns along the way, and each campaign ends with a giant, satisfying mission/boss-battle. GW1 also had good villains that re-appear to keep the plot moving (lich and Varesh come to mind). GW2 has five races, different permutations of “personal story” and three “orders” to choose from. However, you realize halfway through, that no matter which race you choose, no matter which order, no matter which little racial personal story items you select, you always end up in the same Pact. This would be fine if the Pact plotline was somewhat stimulating. But instead of getting one decent plot, you get five watered-down half-plots with weak villains and meaningless choices (Mass Effect syndrome, anyone?) and another watered-down half-plot with the Pact (following a milquetoast leader Trahearne), fighting a faceless dragon that only communicates through lackeys. Not a very strong villain.

My opinion: better to experience one well-developed story with no choice than a weak story with a ton of meaningless choices.

2. In GW1 you are always the hero. You killed the undead lich, you killed Shiro, you killed Abaddon, you killed the Great Destroyer. In GW2, you play lackey to extremely unlikeable fools known as Destiny’s Edge, who take credit for everything significant in the game. In each dungeon, you play lackey to Destiny’s Edge and you help them sort out their high-school drama while they cry and mope over some dead asuran that you’re magically supposed to care about. In GW1 you starred in all the cutscenes. In GW2 you’re in the cutscenes, but you just play lackey to whichever Destiny’s Edge kittenant stars for that dungeon.

The only interesting characters in the story with decent development (the mentor from each order) get killed at the battle of claw island.

3. In GW1, the enemies were clear cut and evil, and the lore was well developed. Sure you had no choice in the matter, but you hated the Charr because they were portrayed so well: ruthless, vicious, and unrelenting attackers who destroyed the beautiful, idyllic Ascalon. A conniving undead lich who manipulated you the whole time. An ancient megalomaniac assassin bringing a proud nation to its knees. A fallen god reaching out from his prison to manipulate the world.

In GW2 you fight with “villain factions” or “splinter groups” or whatever you want to call them, which actually have a richer and more interesting lore than the “modern” races themselves, have a logical perspective depending on your interpretation, and could invite players to make a slew of interesting choices. BUT instead you just get to slaughter them mindlessly and spew moralistic one-liners. Why not let the player join the “rebel” factions? Why even bother to have an illusion of a personal story if you’re going to force them down one path anyway? At least write one good story with no deviations, like GW1.

And then of course, you have the dragons, the “big” evils, with hordes of faceless zombie minions with no personality, and the dragons themselves that are just omnipotent forces of nature, again with no personality.

CONCLUSION: The living story is a weak solution to this problem. It just replaces the lame, weak, boring Pact and Trahearne with more canned characters (those two lesbian gals, that annoying little asuran, a couple other nobodies). Instead of making you the star of one coherent, well-written story, you get to play lackey again to generic, unlikeable characters. This game desperately needs new writing, a new expansion, a good villain (you thoughts on Scarlet may vary… at least she had a little bit of personality), some semblance of a motivating plot. It looks like all we’re going to get with the living story, if we’re lucky, is a quick segue to the next dragon fight.

My thoughts on your points:

1. I’d dispute the “definitive goal” bit. In Prophecies the goal was constantly jumping around, with every other mission changing what you were working towards, and in Factions, you never even complete your original goal of ending the affliction. I’d also call into question how good the villains actually were- but what’s important there wasn’t their writing, but their faces. They were people that you could identify as such, even identify with to a degree. The Elder Dragons… all of ANet’s hype over them was to the tone of “beyond mortal comprehension” which has an inevitable subtext of “don’t bother trying”. Add to that that there’s all of ten minutes between Zhaitan’s introduction and his death at the end of a debacle of a boss fight, and the difference in personification really stands out. The rest of this point I fully agree with. The Personal Story felt more like eight different self-contained stories, and each time one started it’d be a coin flip rather it was any good.

2. Disagree, disagree, disagree. One of the things I liked best about the beginning of the personal story was how I could feel my standing with Caithe, and later Logan and Rytlock, changing. They flow from your sponsor to your mentor to your peer, and it felt rewarding to feel that progression in their regard. The dungeons are the opposite issue. You aren’t treated as a lackey; for all the attention they pay you, you’re just part of the scenery. Your character is there to spout just about one line of advice per dungeon, and that almost always common sense that they ought to have arrived at themselves. Other than that, you’re part of the wall.

As far as interesting characters go, I repeat my earlier point about self-containment. There are plenty that have potential, but don’t have enough screen time to realize it. Of the ones that do recur, DE feel like entirely different people after level 30 and Trahearne, while a generally alright bloke, doesn’t have what it takes in characterization to carry such a major part of the plot. That leaves the mentors you mentioned, and it’s no accident that they’re the only consistently liked characters.

3. With you on this one. The lack of opportunities for me to interact with enemies mouth to mouth as opposed to bow to nerf weaponry is another case of wasted potential, the story not living up to the worldbuilding provided to it. And the faceless minions? Totally with you on that.

CONCLUSION: I like the biconics. I think I might venture that I even love a couple of them. But as far as treating your character as part of the scenery, the living story was a long-time offender. I did get a major GW1 vibe in a Study in Scarlet- it was a return to the days when your character was active, but a blank slate whose only set trait was competence. But that feeling only lasted as long as the instance.

I’m with you on your call to action. I want to see agency returned to my characters, and not simply to tow them from watching thing A to watching thing B. I want a villain I can engage with; Scarlet was a step in the right direction, but as others have pointed out she talked to herself too much and spent the rest of her dialogue talking at us, not to us. These things alone could be enough to drive the plot, and an expansion would be perfect to deliver it in a large enough chunk to be meaningful. “New writing” is more nebulous, but for my part, I’d be content to see the writers see what doesn’t work from Season 1 and not do it again, a process I believe they’ve already started.

You seem to have forgotten that you spent most of GW1 playing second fiddle to someone or other (Togo, Mhenlo, Kormir).

I think the diffrence is that GW2 is really trying to create a whole wider world. GW1 only hinted at a wider world by focusing on the small of small groups with one single perspective. But we didn’t get any look into the wider world that those groups didn’t specifically encounter themselves. The only way we got any specifics into that world is with expansions that put a small group with a small perspective into a new area. Imagine how many expansions we would have had to have just to get the informations we’ve already gotten in GW2.

after a year and a half few things changed story wise..we are stuck in limbo..with a home instance that is useless and the same npcs there..what of the orders?pact?npcs from personal story?racila missions,we dont need expansions per say..we need story content!

I do appreciate the wider world, but it’s at the expense of depth. Yes, maybe we have gotten to the point of interacting with quite a few new races, but only the playable ones match the amount of detail we were accustomed to find in each new human sub-race. Combine that with two thirds of the GW1 world being shut off from us, and it just feels smaller and shallower, not wider. It is a problem of focus. I know that kind of direct comparison isn’t fair, and GW2 would certainly stand on its own merits… but on the other hand, it’s GW_2_. The whole point of a sequel is to appropriate hype for the original, and like it or not, from that point the fans will expect the company to keep the things they like, or felt were better. Direct comparisons are the price of sequels.

I stopped reading the original post as soon as he claimed DE and Traehearne take credit from the player.

They NEVER DO. Pay attention to the story. Arah storymode, Caithe turns to the player and goes “Without YOU this would have never happened.” In the end cutscene, you walk out infront of them, and then later stand besides them as an equal.

Trahearne heaps praise on you, and at one point in Orr my norn ranger received the line about “How Charr, Norn, and Sylvari are ALL singing songs about you.” Eir sent her a mail saying how people claim she wrestled plaguebringer down and destroyed him single handedly…

Trahearne took credit for… the forging of the pact mission which was about him proving himself. Other times? he gave credit to the player openly.

Living story actually has (if you did the living story content) the player introduced to the Master of Peace as the LEADER of the biconics (Braham, kasmeer, etc). Not some weird person who follows them, not a minion, the LEADER.

edit: I’ll actually read the rest later and reply to it.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

My thoughts on your points:

CONCLUSION: I like the biconics. I think I might venture that I even love a couple of them. But as far as treating your character as part of the scenery, the living story was a long-time offender. I did get a major GW1 vibe in a Study in Scarlet- it was a return to the days when your character was active, but a blank slate whose only set trait was competence. But that feeling only lasted as long as the instance.

I’m with you on your call to action. I want to see agency returned to my characters, and not simply to tow them from watching thing A to watching thing B. I want a villain I can engage with; Scarlet was a step in the right direction, but as others have pointed out she talked to herself too much and spent the rest of her dialogue talking at us, not to us. These things alone could be enough to drive the plot, and an expansion would be perfect to deliver it in a large enough chunk to be meaningful. “New writing” is more nebulous, but for my part, I’d be content to see the writers see what doesn’t work from Season 1 and not do it again, a process I believe they’ve already started.

You make good points. Especially, I admit that Scarlet was a step in the right direction. It’s a shame that the writers killed her off so soon. If we just got her as a villain and dispensed with the NPC “companions,” or give the NPC companions non-speaking (non-annoying) roles like the henchmen from GW1, that would be much better.

This is all my opinion of course.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

You seem to have forgotten that you spent most of GW1 playing second fiddle to someone or other (Togo, Mhenlo, Kormir).

I didn’t see the player acting as second-fiddle in GW1 to those NPCs (except maybe Kormir). Togo and Mhenlo provided a lot of a helpful nudging but they didn’t drive the entire plot… It seemed more to me that in GW1, the players were the stars, and the NPCs were the helpful advisors sending you in the right direction. In GW2 it seems to me that the NPCs are the stars and leaders and the players are the window dressing/lackeys.

My opinion on a good NPC from GW1: Rurik. He led the player by the hand in the beginning, but later the players stepped their game up to a larger role after the Searing and then broke free and became the stars of the show, taking over his role after his mishap with Dagnar. First Rurik tried to lead the refugees to Kryta, but after that, you took control.

Yes, of course Mhenlo played a role, but it was more of an advisory role than these Destiny Edge fools. Caithe/Eir just mope around about past failures, then they pay some lip service to each other, then in the Zhaitan fight suddenly reappear and they become stars. Zoijja (my special hatred for this one) is abrasive, obnoxious, not useful, and takes most of the credit, and blames everyone else. Rytlock/Logan, the player has to mediate their little spat for the entire plot, until they kiss and make up, then take a prominent role in the final battle (that you and Trahearne did all the legwork).

There’s nothing “wrong” with Trahearne in that he’s not obnoxious and uses common sense and reason. But in terms of personality he is milquetoast and probably the least charismatic leader for the “Pact.” Also, he goes from being bookworm scholar to general in a preposterous series of events where a tree hallucination gives him a magic sword.

A good group of NPCs from GW2: the order mentors. They function much more like the GW1 characters: they play an advisory role and help you do legwork, and they don’t take credit away from the player. They are generally helpful and display likeable personalities. And then of course they get killed off, and you have to play lackey doing grunt work for the Pact, and then Destiny Edge rides in and magically reunites to defeat the big bad.

This is all my opinion, of course…

My problem with GW2 is the bad balance between presenting you as a Lackey yet declaring you a Leader. Not as bad as GW1’s Kormir, though.

Trahearne being leader of the pact is fine. My problem is that he calls me Commander, yet I never get to exercise any real command. Our characters are already decided for us and voiced, with a few tweaks – Let them be the one to work out/declare the details of what needs to be done. It’s somewhat weird when there are times they call you a leader, but treat you as a lackey, or call you a lackey, but treat you as a leader.

Of course… I was all for saying “Screw Destiny’s Edge – Let’s make our own guild”, integrating the dungeons more into the personal story.

As it was, I went from awe, to respect, to contempt for most of the Destiny’s Edge group. Also, as a Charr, I wish my starting situation was better referenced throughout. I am a Centurion, which means I should have several Warbands under my command, including my former one that I rebuilt, and is now commanded by the other original warband survivor. I was Iron Legion, so not really in a position to do much about Rytlock (Aside from maybe dismiss him) – but had I been Blood Legion, I wanted to issue a “Shape up or stand down” ultimatum to him, willing to take his place as Blood Legion Tribune in the same way he got there (And same way I became Legionnaire of my Warband) – His disrespect for his commanding officer (Eir, in the case of Destiny’s Edge) was infuriating – If she was so incompetent as a leader, it was his responsibility to relieve her of that command.

And for Zojja – I wanted to tell her to get over herself and get back in line before I reunited her with Snaff myself.

Why wasn’t there an option to replace Destiny’s Edge with competent people, or look elsewhere for support (Such as other player characters) until they got their kitten together?

Sartharina.3542:

Why wasn’t there an option to replace Destiny’s Edge with competent people, or look elsewhere for support (Such as other player characters) until they got their kitten together?

Dungeons are 5 man instances.

Thuggernaut.1250:

Yes, of course Mhenlo played a role, but it was more of an advisory role than these Destiny Edge fools. Caithe/Eir just mope around about past failures, then they pay some lip service to each other, then in the Zhaitan fight suddenly reappear and they become stars. Zoijja (my special hatred for this one) is abrasive, obnoxious, not useful, and takes most of the credit, and blames everyone else. Rytlock/Logan, the player has to mediate their little spat for the entire plot, until they kiss and make up, then take a prominent role in the final battle (that you and Trahearne did all the legwork).

There’s nothing “wrong” with Trahearne in that he’s not obnoxious and uses common sense and reason. But in terms of personality he is milquetoast and probably the least charismatic leader for the “Pact.” Also, he goes from being bookworm scholar to general in a preposterous series of events where a tree hallucination gives him a magic sword.

A good group of NPCs from GW2: the order mentors. They function much more like the GW1 characters: they play an advisory role and help you do legwork, and they don’t take credit away from the player. They are generally helpful and display likeable personalities. And then of course they get killed off, and you have to play lackey doing grunt work for the Pact, and then Destiny Edge rides in and magically reunites to defeat the big bad.

This is all my opinion, of course…

A: Zoijja is an Asura. A solid chunk of them at the higher end of intellict tend to be that way. Also, she only takes credit for the tech aspects she physically did. Otherwise, DE gives the player credit.
B: Eir mopes, but then later ‘gets over it’. Caithe (in Arah I believe she mentions this) was trying to get the gang back together, but by forcing them to work together instead of letting their issues work out and resolve. She credits the player with getting them together again.
C: Rytlock Logan perhaps had the worst spat, but once they got past the anger (in CoF), they started working past it. They didn’t take up the spotlight, that was the player (Bar Logan’s arrival on the new airship). Again, DE gives credit for the player.
D: The events of the personal story take place over an entire year. I’d wager much of the Pact storyline took up the majority of the timeframe. We see him get slowly more sure of himself, and he frequently asks for advice in things. He isn’t the best general, but he gets used to the role. Introverts can become good leaders when within their area of expertise. Orr and the Risen was Trahearnes.
E: If you’d actually pay attention, the player character gets a LOT of credit throughout the pact storyline. Nobody ever steals credit from you.

Reading the rest of main post and the followups now.

Addressing points A-C: The problem with the DE storyline is that I came away feeling like I didn’t deserve any credit. It felt like running a daycare, and at the end of the shift you’re going to tell me that just by not joining their angst trip I somehow saved the world or something? Whatever you say… it also doesn’t help that after all that build up, their contribution to the Zhaitan fight was getting a single ship back in the air and then standing around killing the occasional risen to fall on the deck. It was not nearly what I would have expected after slewing through seven dungeons to get them all to make up, and it honestly did not feel like it was worth it. Doubly so since they seem to have immediately went their separate ways afterwords, nevermind their big talk in the final instance.

As for D, I agree, there was no reason that Trahearne couldn’t have grown into that role. The problem is how jerky that growth is portrayed. Claw Island to Claw Island, he feels happy just helping from the background, then there’s one story step devoted wholly to showing him he can lead, then he fades out for a bit, and then, from the Battle for Fort Trinity onward, he is portrayed as clearly being your boss and the head of the Pact- no sign of difficulty adjusting to the role, no sign of hesitation or indecision, not even a desire to consult you, his second in command, on his tactics. (All the choices you make in that arc are simply a matter of where you’ll be deployed and how you’ll approach your targets.) His entire character is wiped away. He isn’t ‘Trahearne’ from that point, he’s ‘Pact Marshal’. Trahearne doesn’t come back until after he finishes his Wyld Hunt.

E. No argument on that point.

Dustfinger.9510:

I think the diffrence is that GW2 is really trying to create a whole wider world. GW1 only hinted at a wider world by focusing on the small of small groups with one single perspective. But we didn’t get any look into the wider world that those groups didn’t specifically encounter themselves. The only way we got any specifics into that world is with expansions that put a small group with a small perspective into a new area. Imagine how many expansions we would have had to have just to get the informations we’ve already gotten in GW2.

Maybe outside of the Living Story, but the Living Story is making Tyria seem so small. Look at this release.

We have the return of one of the most interesting factions in Tyria today, the Zephyrites, and how much dialogue was given to them? There is a whole (boring imo) monologue and mundane conversation between three of the biconics about stuff that has nothing to do with the Zephyrites and then Taimi told us things that, as players with access to the map, we should have been able to explore and see for ourselves. You learn more information about the Zephyrites by sitting idle next to Taimi thant you do exploring the ship.The Living Story is blowing this chance to satisfy my desire as a player to explore the world of Tyria and through my character, engage with this world. I wanted to see traders from different parts of Tyria at the bazaar. I wanted to see the Zephyrites loading up their ship and drop hints of whatever their story is themselves. Taimi and the biconics keep being used as an exposition dump when they aren’t making the story all about themselves.

Compare this to Winds of Change (I’m a broken record I know) where we have numerous “encounters” (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Winds_of_Change_encounters) that were used to deliver story and lore about Cantha and how the consequences of our actions were changing the world. We see this a little bit with the two Lionguard patrolling and one is corrupt while the other is somewhat noble, but the volume of biconic banter far outweighs the voices given to the entire rest of Tyria. Sure there are a handful of Zephyrites with new dialogue and there is some dialogue left over from the last visit (Parker Cole and the other thief) that add flavour to this part of Tyria, but by choosing to put the Biconics in this and put the focus on them I feel like once again the story is overplaying them at the expense of a chance for players to more thoroughly immerse themselves in Tyria. It constantly feels like the game is about the biconics, even when they “include” the player as a “leader”, it’s an unconvincing illusion to distract that you aren’t engaging with and exploring the world on your own, you are being herded. When we did hear from Miku (the biconic equivalent) it was because her and her family were a core part of the story, it wasn’t fan service banter.

Anyone else tired of almost exclusively hearing from Kiel, Magnus and Evon? Why have a Captain’s Council with eight members when all we are going to hear about is two of them (with the occasional detail given to the others). The finale for season one actually deals with the council making a decision the players disagree with, when there is lore that states the council is half of the decision making process, the Commodore is the other half. This never even comes up in the game, which is strange because the foolishness of that particular decision was highly criticised by many players. Do we even know how Lawson voted?

Sometimes the Living Story feels like a PoV book. It comes off with a very narrow focus on a handful of non-essential characters and seems to lose the ability to be involved in the bigger picture. I think that’s the wrong way to write an MMO story.

I also agree with the morality point. I think GW2’s stance on morality is really hurting the ability to tell fresh and interesting stories. The bad guys are bad and we never engage with them beyond that initial judgement. The good guys are good and do the good thing. We see slight departures from this with the corrupt Lionguard and very minor characters exhibiting racism, but it’s a world of difference from a show like Game of Thrones where the bad guys can be just as sympathetic as the ones that do the right thing.

Well, Shud takes a kinda main point with this last update. She’s in the new gate hub area (Anybody wonder if it was always planned to end up like this story wise at least? o_O I do sometimes :P) and mentions once the gates are up and running smoothly that she can have a vacation (Magnus said she could). But she doesn’t want it because she was forced to leave the city before, and leaving again (after gates are active) would feel like abandoning it the moment it needed a steady had the most.

So it’s a nice little added character to her at least.

To Aaron, I won’t argue about the DE storyline… because I can agree it was kinda more like background helper then actually doing anything. It perhaps would’ve been better if they had the player character (host of instance) have some dialogue between cutscenes, or appeared in the cutscene to chat more…

It seems most of the hate toward GW2 storyline is based off the idea of stolen credit, which doesn’t happen. I don’t get how people miss that… Also, GW1 (proph mainly) is similar to GW2 storyline.

For example, once you get into kryta and the Ascalon settlement is set up (talking purely missions for this part), Ascalon basically is left out of the story entirely. The player acts almost like a roaming merc then a hero of Ascalon, and bar a few npcs showing up again later on… it’s not really mentioned at all.

Gw2, once you join an order, the early parts aren’t mentioned much (besides some stuff like the lost sister appearing in Orr, or the Ash and blood legion reps from the Iron legion storyline coming in)

Kalavier.1097:

Gw2, once you join an order, the early parts aren’t mentioned much (besides some stuff like the lost sister appearing in Orr, or the Ash and blood legion reps from the Iron legion storyline coming in)

A surprising number of characters from the early arcs reappear in the Orr missions (and most of them remember you if you’d met them previously).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Kalavier.1097:

Gw2, once you join an order, the early parts aren’t mentioned much (besides some stuff like the lost sister appearing in Orr, or the Ash and blood legion reps from the Iron legion storyline coming in)

A surprising number of characters from the early arcs reappear in the Orr missions (and most of them remember you if you’d met them previously).

But it’s a complete crapshoot whether you had met them previously.

Kalavier.1097:

For example, once you get into kryta and the Ascalon settlement is set up (talking purely missions for this part), Ascalon basically is left out of the story entirely. The player acts almost like a roaming merc then a hero of Ascalon, and bar a few npcs showing up again later on… it’s not really mentioned at all.

That’s because nothing changes in Ascalon while you’re in Kryta. Made sense to me. Remember, it was two years after the searing when Rurik left for Kryta.

Shiren.9532:

Maybe outside of the Living Story, but the Living Story is making Tyria seem so small. Look at this release.

We have the return of one of the most interesting factions in Tyria today, the Zephyrites, and how much dialogue was given to them? There is a whole (boring imo) monologue and mundane conversation between three of the biconics about stuff that has nothing to do with the Zephyrites and then Taimi told us things that, as players with access to the map, we should have been able to explore and see for ourselves. You learn more information about the Zephyrites by sitting idle next to Taimi thant you do exploring the ship.The Living Story is blowing this chance to satisfy my desire as a player to explore the world of Tyria and through my character, engage with this world. I wanted to see traders from different parts of Tyria at the bazaar. I wanted to see the Zephyrites loading up their ship and drop hints of whatever their story is themselves. Taimi and the biconics keep being used as an exposition dump when they aren’t making the story all about themselves.

Compare this to Winds of Change (I’m a broken record I know) where we have numerous “encounters” (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Winds_of_Change_encounters) that were used to deliver story and lore about Cantha and how the consequences of our actions were changing the world. We see this a little bit with the two Lionguard patrolling and one is corrupt while the other is somewhat noble, but the volume of biconic banter far outweighs the voices given to the entire rest of Tyria. Sure there are a handful of Zephyrites with new dialogue and there is some dialogue left over from the last visit (Parker Cole and the other thief) that add flavour to this part of Tyria, but by choosing to put the Biconics in this and put the focus on them I feel like once again the story is overplaying them at the expense of a chance for players to more thoroughly immerse themselves in Tyria. It constantly feels like the game is about the biconics, even when they “include” the player as a “leader”, it’s an unconvincing illusion to distract that you aren’t engaging with and exploring the world on your own, you are being herded. When we did hear from Miku (the biconic equivalent) it was because her and her family were a core part of the story, it wasn’t fan service banter.

Anyone else tired of almost exclusively hearing from Kiel, Magnus and Evon? Why have a Captain’s Council with eight members when all we are going to hear about is two of them (with the occasional detail given to the others). The finale for season one actually deals with the council making a decision the players disagree with, when there is lore that states the council is half of the decision making process, the Commodore is the other half. This never even comes up in the game, which is strange because the foolishness of that particular decision was highly criticised by many players. Do we even know how Lawson voted?

Sometimes the Living Story feels like a PoV book. It comes off with a very narrow focus on a handful of non-essential characters and seems to lose the ability to be involved in the bigger picture. I think that’s the wrong way to write an MMO story.

I also agree with the morality point. I think GW2’s stance on morality is really hurting the ability to tell fresh and interesting stories. The bad guys are bad and we never engage with them beyond that initial judgement. The good guys are good and do the good thing. We see slight departures from this with the corrupt Lionguard and very minor characters exhibiting racism, but it’s a world of difference from a show like Game of Thrones where the bad guys can be just as sympathetic as the ones that do the right thing.

You’re comparing one Living Story release to a story line that took 7 months to come out.

Thuggernaut.1250:

INTRODUCTION: We’ve probably been over this a hundred times, but I just went back to GW1 for a brief login for some nostalgia. It made me realize why the plot in GW2 has been so unsatisfying from launch, and why GW2 needs an expansion so badly (living story isn’t cutting it, more on that below).

1. GW1 focused on one group of adventurers per campaign. Humans only, from Ascalon, Cantha, then Elona. Each story is mostly self-contained, has a definitive goal, some decent twists and turns along the way, and each campaign ends with a giant, satisfying mission/boss-battle. GW1 also had good villains that re-appear to keep the plot moving (lich and Varesh come to mind). GW2 has five races, different permutations of “personal story” and three “orders” to choose from. However, you realize halfway through, that no matter which race you choose, no matter which order, no matter which little racial personal story items you select, you always end up in the same Pact. This would be fine if the Pact plotline was somewhat stimulating. But instead of getting one decent plot, you get five watered-down half-plots with weak villains and meaningless choices (Mass Effect syndrome, anyone?) and another watered-down half-plot with the Pact (following a milquetoast leader Trahearne), fighting a faceless dragon that only communicates through lackeys. Not a very strong villain.

My opinion: better to experience one well-developed story with no choice than a weak story with a ton of meaningless choices.

You had choices in Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North. They all ended up in the same place, just like GW2.

IMO, Prophecies had the strongest plot. It was not obvious how it all tied together. You had to talk to different NPCs, read town descriptions, read mission descriptions and read the companion book to get the full revealed stories, and it still left intriguing mysteries. Also, its bad guys were less clearly bad than other parts of the stories. The White Mantle was both good and evil. The Mursaat may have been evil, but they had a common purpose with the rest of the world and their “evil” was self-preservation rather than increasing their personal power or malice*. They also saved Kryta. The Stone Summit were described as xenophobic, but were they not just fighting against Deldrimore’s allies? The undead, Charr and Glint were all seeking a similar goal: the fulfillment of the Flameseeker Prophecies. They were all trying to have them fulfilled in different ways.

The plots of Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North were mind-numbingly simple** and the foes were shallow and mostly just pure evil. I called the main villain of Factions early on (the Fortune Teller), but her later reveal as the big villain in Nightfall might have been an afterthought.

*Bring back the Mursaat! Tell us how the Margonites, Mursaat, Titans, Forgotten and Menzies tied together. Let us visit the homeland of the Margonites.

**I suspect this was from the complaints the plot of Prophecies did not make sense by the people who never read the quest and mission descriptions. The objections at Nolani Academy of “why would rain make a difference” were particularly egregious examples of people not putting in any effort to follow a plot.

Thuggernaut.1250:

Also, [Trahearne] goes from being bookworm scholar to general in a preposterous series of events where a tree hallucination gives him a magic sword.

The Pact could not form unless there was a leader not affiliated with an Order, but respected by all 3 Orders. As far as anyone knew, Trahearne was the only one who could play that role.

The Pale Tree is an immensely powerful being with access to a vast pool of knowledge of unknown origin who created an entire race imbued with that knowledge. Caladbolg was built from the Pale Tree in order to destroy a lich (the last two liches in GW lore were unkillable: one was trapped inside an item that could warp all magic in the world, and one has personally conquered a continent). Calling what she did a “tree hallucination gives him a magic sword” is kind of like calling the accomplishments of scientists at Los Alamos in the 1940’s “putting a hunk of metal inside a pack of dynamite.”

Personally, I thought Nightfall had the best plot. Prophecies suffered from lack of focus- the variety was nice, but within just a couple missions of an enemy’s introduction they would always be left behind and very rarely returned to. When the main bad did emerge, right at the very end, even something as simple as what he was trying to accomplish was left unaddressed. I thought it as a whole was an excellent example of the distinction between good worldbuilding and good storytelling. Nightfall, on the other hand, picked its main villain early, and even developed her a little as it went. While character development wasn’t really occuring, the frequent addition of new characters with their own (at least fairly) developed personalities and motives filled the same role. The plot twist, while predictable, was still enjoyable, the tone and the stakes were not only urgent but also consistent, and it remains to date the only instance of Guild Wars addressing the moral gray of allying with a lesser villain. (EotN, I think, tried the same thing with the Fierce warband, but failed on account of the steps taken to make them feel like the good guys.)

Factions was somewhere in-between, but to be honest, the horrendous voice acting was hard to get past. Still, Shiro was the first villain they really tried to flesh out, and you can still hear the appreciation for that effort today. EotN’s story was an exposition dump detailing the change in direction for GW2, and it never felt like anything else.

Yeah, prophecies made the character seem like a roaming merc in a sense, as once you left Ascalon and crossed the shiverpeaks, you don’t care/mention Ascalon or it’s people at all.

Once you hit the southern shiverpeaks, you pretty much ignore the white mantle, but deal with them a tiny bit.

It’s why I shake my head at people saying EOTN/GW2 “Took away the prophecies story of ending the charr war or saving Ascalon” because… prophecies was never about that.

Tell me again how awesome the Nightfall storyline is!

Hey, for my part, I was fine with Kormir. She kept us from getting arrested, then hung around in the background until we needed a sacrifice. Considerate of her, really.

Dustfinger.9510:

You’re comparing one Living Story release to a story line that took 7 months to come out.

I’m comfortable with comparison being held against the entirety of the Living Story (and I’ve made it a few times – hence the broken record). The story of Tryia, the events going on, they seem to take a back seat to the prominence given to the biconics. When Lion’s Arch is about to be destroyed, the story was told from the perspectives of the nobody biconics instead of having the players directly interact with the Captain’s Council and really put Lion’s Arch and its people at the front of things.

I think one of the things that made the story of GW1 more satisfying for me than Living Story is that while GW1 has truly iconic characters (some people would argue the Ascalon five- Mhenlo, Devonna, Cynn, Eve and Aiden, but henchemen and protagonist NPCs like Nika, Togo, Kormir, and the heroes, were all strong story characters) they were very appropriate to the story. GW1 didn’t deliver as much fan service dialogue (we never knew where Cynn and Mhenlo lived, their sleeping arrangements etc, we know about Marjory and Kasmeer’s first kiss, house, holiday bungalow, even their curtains) but all its story NPCs were important to the plot (most of the time the biconics are only important to themselves, they aren’t iconic of Lion’s Arch). I usually knew who a character was and why I was dealing with them and not someone else. When the Ebon Vanguard turned up in Kryta, their motivations and purpose was explained. When we took on Abaddon, the Ascalon five were present but Koss, Melonni and the crew took centre stage. We still had stories about people, their history, their relationships and all that, but they had a time and place.

I think the Personal Story of GW2 tried to do this, but there were a bunch of problems with the execution. One is the unique choices. Not only does that vastly increase the work load to account for all options, it massively limits what you can do with these characters. Recently we were introduced as the leader of the biconics and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was bothered by this. Even if I wasn’t a Pact commander, I have a history before that. Charr players have their own warband! But that will never matter because while Dinky might be alive for me, he’s dead for someone who chose Eurayle. The story gave us options but it can’t make use of them outside of instances because they conflict with other players’ options. It’s also too much work to include all options in future releases, so these choices end up not mattering 10 levels down the road.

Because of the segregated nature of the Personal Story, it was jarring to go from being a charr hero to an Order recruit. The people and places you dealt with 10 levels ago didn’t matter 10 levels later. While the individual arcs of the story were interesting, the progression wasn’t smooth. Even at the end when it is all supposed to tie together, many of the NPCs “returning” were either never seen before, or forgotten (that’s when you ignore the bugs, of which there were many) – now we have the opposite problem where the biconics don’t step down even when it makes sense for them to do so. My first run through I didn’t recognise most of the characters in Orr. It takes so long to get through the story and the rewards are so bad, going through numerous times isn’t very appealing. Dividing the story details into each path was supposed to encourage repeated play throughs but all it did was make the story come across as disjointed or incomplete.

To put it simply, Zhaitan or any Elder Dragon that has no personality, not motives or any of the kinds of things that makes villains so interesting, I think that’s a weak villain.

Kalavier.1097:

Well, Shud takes a kinda main point with this last update. She’s in the new gate hub area (Anybody wonder if it was always planned to end up like this story wise at least? o_O I do sometimes :P) and mentions once the gates are up and running smoothly that she can have a vacation (Magnus said she could). But she doesn’t want it because she was forced to leave the city before, and leaving again (after gates are active) would feel like abandoning it the moment it needed a steady had the most.

So it’s a nice little added character to her at least.

Yeah I saw that and it just made me more confused. Why is Magnus giving Shud permission? I thought the Captain’s Council were equals and only Lawson Marriner had authority? I could see Magnus acting with authority over Kiel (either as a father figure or her superior in the Lionguard) but Shud is his equal. Unless the Lionguard have increased authority in the city during the recovery process (or maybe Magnus saying she “can” take a break is more of a suggestion than it is permission).

I’ll read the rest of your post shortly, responding to the bit replying to me with this one.

I’d say it’s more of a “Once they are up and running, the job specifically requiring your expertise is done, you can take a break(if you want) and let the others get their jobs done too.”

For now, Magnus is probably acting as a “head” of the council being the leader of the lionguard, getting tasks assigned and making sure the city is safe and secure. Or as we both said, it might just be a “Hey, you complete that, feel free to take a break for a bit.”

Shiren.9532:

Dustfinger.9510:

You’re comparing one Living Story release to a story line that took 7 months to come out.

I’m comfortable with comparison being held against the entirety of the Living Story (and I’ve made it a few times – hence the broken record). The story of Tryia, the events going on, they seem to take a back seat to the prominence given to the biconics. When Lion’s Arch is about to be destroyed, the story was told from the perspectives of the nobody biconics instead of having the players directly interact with the Captain’s Council and really put Lion’s Arch and its people at the front of things.

I think one of the things that made the story of GW1 more satisfying for me than Living Story is that while GW1 has truly iconic characters (some people would argue the Ascalon five- Mhenlo, Devonna, Cynn, Eve and Aiden, but henchemen and protagonist NPCs like Nika, Togo, Kormir, and the heroes, were all strong story characters) they were very appropriate to the story. GW1 didn’t deliver as much fan service dialogue (we never knew where Cynn and Mhenlo lived, their sleeping arrangements etc, we know about Marjory and Kasmeer’s first kiss, house, holiday bungalow, even their curtains) but all its story NPCs were important to the plot (most of the time the biconics are only important to themselves, they aren’t iconic of Lion’s Arch). I usually knew who a character was and why I was dealing with them and not someone else. When the Ebon Vanguard turned up in Kryta, their motivations and purpose was explained. When we took on Abaddon, the Ascalon five were present but Koss, Melonni and the crew took centre stage. We still had stories about people, their history, their relationships and all that, but they had a time and place.

I think the Personal Story of GW2 tried to do this, but there were a bunch of problems with the execution. One is the unique choices. Not only does that vastly increase the work load to account for all options, it massively limits what you can do with these characters. Recently we were introduced as the leader of the biconics and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was bothered by this. Even if I wasn’t a Pact commander, I have a history before that. Charr players have their own warband! But that will never matter because while Dinky might be alive for me, he’s dead for someone who chose Eurayle. The story gave us options but it can’t make use of them outside of instances because they conflict with other players’ options. It’s also too much work to include all options in future releases, so these choices end up not mattering 10 levels down the road.

Because of the segregated nature of the Personal Story, it was jarring to go from being a charr hero to an Order recruit. The people and places you dealt with 10 levels ago didn’t matter 10 levels later. While the individual arcs of the story were interesting, the progression wasn’t smooth. Even at the end when it is all supposed to tie together, many of the NPCs “returning” were either never seen before, or forgotten (that’s when you ignore the bugs, of which there were many) – now we have the opposite problem where the biconics don’t step down even when it makes sense for them to do so. My first run through I didn’t recognise most of the characters in Orr. It takes so long to get through the story and the rewards are so bad, going through numerous times isn’t very appealing. Dividing the story details into each path was supposed to encourage repeated play throughs but all it did was make the story come across as disjointed or incomplete.

To put it simply, Zhaitan or any Elder Dragon that has no personality, not motives or any of the kinds of things that makes villains so interesting, I think that’s a weak villain.

personally, I’d rather have a giant world full of basic lore. That’s a solid base that any writer can be brought in to build upon. That’s how WarHammer got so huge.

Most characters in GW2 are either Unbelievable, or Un-likeable.

Take Logan for example. He GAVE UP a chance to kill an Elder Dragon for a woman?

Ok fine. He is a fool. Fools are everywhere. And he was blind by love. Fine, as long as no harm no foul to us the players.

But we players are FORCED to like him.

Seriously?

Yes, because a new human character have NO CHOICE but to like Logan. The story DEMANDS it. This is a problem, because:

“Logan, I have nothing to say to the likes of you. You might be a very strong warrior. But you choose to sacrifice the whole world for a woman. I want nothing to do with you. Leave me be.”

Why? Because anyone can say the same thing.

“Oh, I would sacrifice the whole world for my wife!”
“Oh, I would sacrifice the whole world for my own life!”
“Oh, I would sacrifice the whole world for my wealth!”

If everyone thinks this way, there would be no heroes.

Now it would have been fine if we players were given a choice to hate/disrespect Logan. But we weren’t given this option.

A: Love.
B: As I recall, he agreed to become Jennah’s champion, and have a magical spell that’d compell/tell him when she is in danger.
C: If he didn’t save Jennah, then we may have never killed Zhaitan.

CHIPS.6018:

Most characters in GW2 are either Unbelievable, or Un-likeable.

Take Logan for example. He GAVE UP a chance to kill an Elder Dragon for a woman?

Ok fine. He is a fool. Fools are everywhere. And he was blind by love. Fine, as long as no harm no foul to us the players.

But we players are FORCED to like him.

Seriously?

Yes, because a new human character have NO CHOICE but to like Logan. The story DEMANDS it. This is a problem, because:

“Logan, I have nothing to say to the likes of you. You might be a very strong warrior. But you choose to sacrifice the whole world for a woman. I want nothing to do with you. Leave me be.”

Why? Because anyone can say the same thing.

“Oh, I would sacrifice the whole world for my wife!”
“Oh, I would sacrifice the whole world for my own life!”
“Oh, I would sacrifice the whole world for my wealth!”

If everyone thinks this way, there would be no heroes.

Now it would have been fine if we players were given a choice to hate/disrespect Logan. But we weren’t given this option.

A dragon that is not a direct threat to his kingdom.

And given what we know, do you really want the ministry to be in charge of kryta?

Kalavier.1097:

A: Love.
B: As I recall, he agreed to become Jennah’s champion, and have a magical spell that’d compell/tell him when she is in danger.
C: If he didn’t save Jennah, then we may have never killed Zhaitan.

To clarify, I didn’t find Logan unbelievable here. I understand why he did it. But I do not agree with it. And no he doesn’t deserve any respect from me for what he did.

Understanding is not agreeing.

Logan falls into the second category for me: Unlikable.

And then we can look at how Queen Jennah is treating Logan right now. He risk world/global destruction for Jennah, one woman. And yet it appears she couldn’t care less if he dies tomorrow (not true obviously, but you get what I mean).

1) Love
Queen is sacrificing their relationship for the welfare of the human kingdom. This is the RIGHT thing to do, imo.

Logan is sacrificing the whole world for Jennah, one woman. This is the WRONG thing to do, imo.

See the different? See why I find Logan unlikable? Once again this is my opinion. I am sure many find Logan extremely romantic here. But I don’t.

It would have been fine if the game gave us players a choice to “hate” logan and trash talk him. But we wasn’t given that option. Our character MUST LOVE Logan, by lore.

B) Promises

Yes she can ask for help all she want. But should Logan really sacrifice the world for one woman?

C) We wouldn’t know because our story/timeline never went that direction.

I agree completely to the OP.

I don’t agree with the OP’s points. I can somewhat see his conclusion having merit (the story needs work) but going back to play through GW1 in any campaign makes me twitch a bit.

The story was not:

- Better.
- More mature.
- Bereft of “super NPCs”.
- Full of meaningful choices.
- All about Kormir.

CHIPS.6018:

And then we can look at how Queen Jennah is treating Logan right now. He risk world/global destruction for Jennah, one woman. And yet it appears she couldn’t care less if he dies tomorrow (not true obviously, but you get what I mean).

1) Love
Queen is sacrificing their relationship for the welfare of the human kingdom. This is the RIGHT thing to do, imo.

Logan is sacrificing the whole world for Jennah, one woman. This is the WRONG thing to do, imo.

See the different? See why I find Logan unlikable? Once again this is my opinion. I am sure many find Logan extremely romantic here. But I don’t.

It would have been fine if the game gave us players a choice to “hate” logan and trash talk him. But we wasn’t given that option. Our character MUST LOVE Logan, by lore.

Or your character could be somebody other then the pact commander. My characters never were implied to love logan at all. Respect him as the commander of the Seraph and a mentor maybe, but never “LOVE AND AGREE WITH ALL HIS CHOICES”… most of the mentors past as edge of destiny isnt touched upon until you join a order…

Also, Jennah is very good about her public image. She’s sneaky and cunning, as shown by her actions toward Cauducus at the end of his manor storymode. Logan was not sacrificing the world. Infact it makes a LOT of sense and is rather reasonable that he’s so protective of her and stays close because he feels like if she gets harmed or dies, Snaff’s death is meaningless then.

B) Promises

Yes she can ask for help all she want. But should Logan really sacrifice the world for one woman?

That “one woman” is the sole heir to the Krytan throne (known publically at least), one of TWO remaining direct descendants of Doric, and very well loved by Krytan. There is a difference between going “Hey, I’ma go ditch you guys and save that homeless dude from thugs!” and “Hey, I’m going to leave you guys because the President of the United states is in life threatening danger… sorry!”

C) We wouldn’t know because our story/timeline never went that direction.

Jennah is the driving force behind the treaty with the Charr. SHE hired the vigil to send a party to retrieve the claw of Khan Ur. She pushed it forward on the human side. If she died, the ministry wouldn’t care. Likely the war would be declared over due to the dragons, because Ebonhawke would be destroyed. Likely Kryta would fall into chaos for a bit after her death.

The peace treaty + the orders allowed human, asura, and charr engineers to work together closely and effectively. ALL three groups combined cause airships to work and function right. Without the peace treaty, charr and humanity may not be as close or friendly.

Airships may have been developed much later, making the campaign against Orr and Zhaitan harder. All theory, but yes, if Kralk had been killed (that’s a maybe, because it wasn’t for sure even if Logan stayed), perhaps the tech wouldn’t have been developed in time to fight Zhaitan. Or some leaders may have went “Hey, that one got killed by five guys… why do we really need to make an effort against Zhaitan. Just send those dudes!” Stupid, yes. but it could happen.

Either way, Logan’s actions created a LOT of good.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, since this is an older thread, but might we keep things on topic? We’ve already had plenty of threads rehashing the same old ground on how people feel about Logan’s decision; hell, one of those is still on the front page. CHIPS was making an example for one of the shortcomings of GW2’s story, and besides was making a statement of opinion. There’s no point in trying to change it: the only thing we have to match their opinion with is someone else’s opinion, and besides, CHIPS has been around for a while. I’d wager all the arguments for both sides seem old hat by now.

Well, on subject of Gw1 npcs, Ascalon’s Chosen was present for nearly everything, but actually didn’t get a LOT of development. Some yes, but not a huge amount. Though the prophecies post final mission area did explain henchmen appearing and disappearing nicely (though it was mainly for proph and not as much others). “Some left on their own reasons, others accidentally.”