Guild Wars 2

Warning: Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t finished the personal story.

After reading about the modifications to the end of the personal story, I decided to take a level 80 I have that was before Claw Island in the story all the way to Arah to see what’s changed.

For those not aware, the story has been rejiggered so that the level 70 arc is helping Trahearne finish his Wyld Hunt to cleanse Orr, while the level 80 arc is defeating Zhaitan.

To fit this new structure, three story steps were moved earlier in the sequence. As well, the “greatest fear” story steps have been entirely removed. The removed steps involved Tonn / Apatia / Labwan. Which is unfortunate, since they were some of the best done episodes.

The last three steps in the level 70 arc take place in a level 80 zone; to get around this, you are automatically transported back and forth from Fort Trinity in an airship. In practice, this just means you enter the quest marker in Fort Trinity and then appear at the destination.

As far as I can tell, no dialogue has been modified in the story. This leaves vestiges of the original format which have not been corrected. The worst offender is the last quest in the level 70 arc, The Source of Orr. Characters appear who haven’t been introduced yet, events which haven’t yet happened are mentioned, and you still fight an Eye of Zhaitan, with reference to defeating earlier eyes. In the level 80 arc you then discover and investigate eyes.

The level 80 arc covers going to the Temple of Abbadon, researching and fighting Eyes and Mouths of Zhaitan, cutting off the supply of corpses and following one order’s plan for the invasion of Orr. You then are left to do the Arah story dungeon.

What, why remove story… :S

This is another good post on the subject: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2ghcku/so_there_are_quite_a_few_plot_holes_now_in_the/

You go and remove bits from a story that is already confusing unless you play through multiple paths to begin with. Not a smart move.

Wait what? Removed? From what I heard they just rearranged it, removing parts is even worse. Also, entering it through an area and showing up at another breaks all the immersion and make it even more confused. I’m hating even more the changes every time I read about them… :S Sorry but it was a very dumb move. There wasn’t any problem with it then WTH mess with it?

I asked Chris about it on the forums and he mentions that he and the rest of the devs are looking into this. From what I can tell, the patch notes were not specific in what modifications were in place, nor did it mention anything about specific quests being removed. I’d assume this is just a major bug that not many people come across as the Personal Story does take a while to go through.

I should also point out that there are some changes done which resulted in another bug in the quest Romke’s Final Voyage. I never did this quest but to my knowledge the quest used outside of a cave in Orr and NOT outside of it. Post patch, it took me to a cave with Romke. his companions and myself without Trahearne (to my knowledge, he’s supposed to appear with me) on top of that, on the first cinematic of the instance, I could not see their lips move, let alone hear them make a single sound.

If you had a character in Greatest Fear before the patch, they are still in Greatest Fear after the patch. It lists as part of chapter 7.

Seems to be a sloppy change. And I still think it’s weird that they can’t just tell us what was planned…

Gaile says here that the team is working to address “Plot holes and story inconsistencies that may have been introduced with story realignment”. Ambiguous wording, but my interpretation is that means they’re sticking to the reshuffling of the chapter 8 stuff and will be making changes to make the new model viable rather than reverting to the original order. Where that leaves the greatest fear storyline, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

Even if they redid all of the dialogue, changed the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan to some other model and redid that fight, fixed the showing up of NPCs you never met in The Source of Orr, fix talking with recognition then introduced to Sayeh (which happens in that order), there will still be blatant inconsistencies and plot holes.

Even if they re-add the fear arcs as well, there will still be blatant inconsistencies and plot holes.

There were only one or three with release that you had a 1-in-3 or 1-in-2 chance of hitting, and one was fixed since, but this reordering and removal basically adds a 0 to the end of it, and only divides it in half if they fix the dialogue inconsistencies.