Guild Wars 2

Now I am a bit fed up with this topic.

The whole Season 2 is such a mess for me at the moment, simply because the “supposed” timeline and frame we have makes no sense.
They went out aligning everything to our calendar, so everything should more or less follow that timeframe there if I am not mistaken.

Excluded are of course things that are not happening for a period of time, but are a singular event (for example the marionette fight or the death of Scarlet), subsequently just being a gamemechanic.

Based on that and if they taking chopping of their “story” into consumable bits seriously, so they fit into a timeframe we have:

- The Roar at the start, after Scarlets defeat. Mordremoth awakes and “every Leader knows an ED is active”.

- One and half a month later: Festival of the four Winds. Lions Arch gets some funds.

- One Month and a half later: Mister E sends a letter. The group meets the first signs of Mordremoth. The Zephirites gets blown out of the sky. The Master of Truth vanishes.

- Two weeks later: The group finds the ley line hub and vines attack around the world. The PC has a Vision

- Two weeks later: The Group manages to get in contact with every leader. PC helps to get nearly all on their side. Mordremoths influence grows to the Iron Marches.

- Two weeks Later: PC attends a party to help Queen Jenna. Helps Taimi and finaly takes part in the “World” sigh Summit.

If we apply our real world time to these things, this timefame makes no sense.
If we actually do that and use the information we got ingame, then the whole world is just acting too slow, based on how much should have allready happen.

We have been told repeatedly that the leaders all knew about the new ED since the roar.
This happened three months before season 2.
Then, with its beginning, the whole things happen one after the other, but still irregular. With a lot of breaks inbetween.
Even if we consider everything happen in these two weeks, these “Episodes” are appart, they do not make sense, since the content of each episode is never “portioned” as something that happens in two weeks.

To be honest. In its current form the whole narrative happens without a real timeframe, making everything very hard to kitten. The danger of Mordremoth does not make any sense, as long as we do not know how much time has been between each of his “attacks”.

Maybe I have missed something an dev has said, or that was written ingame, but right now the whole storyline falls appart for me and to be honest, I don`t like that.

As straight forward the whole thing is written, it just leaves me lost.
It`s current form is just not enjoyable anymore since at the moment it is much too focused.

Is anyone able to shed some better insight on how we should aproach the whole Season 2?

Season 1 was much easier to follow, even though it had similar problems.

I just wish we had found out information that the world leaders wouldn’t have known. “Oh, you mean our territory and key assets in various locations have been under attack for weeks now? WHY THANK YOU FOR INFORMING ME HERO!”

Thanks for articulating your thoughts clearly.

I think the issue is that you’re interpreting each episode’s timeframe as essentially day-for-day. But in reality, with ‘shows’ like this (think Law & Order, or Game of Thrones), a single episode can span a few hours or a few days/weeks. Because of this, two sequential episodes could add up to a single day, or a few days, or a month. Ultimately, as long as a year’s worth of events feels reasonable for a year, then it essentially works.

Ultimately, I think your interpretation is a bit more granular than what the devs intended. They design it to be more flexible, as we often see in TV shows.

The syncing of the timelines NEVER made sense.

Not since it was first kittenly done, and they’ve done nothing to clarify the confusions wrought by it.

Does it really matter that the official timeline is weak? I don’t think so, as long as the timeline is plausible. When the story is written the release dates cannot be set in stone, so the timeline is always going to be flexible. It is still convenient for players to match game time to real world time. Most players are used to repeating content in a way that would be impossible under any real timeline.

Living Story 2 was delayed for the Asia launch so that messed up the timelines. Seems like a reasonable business decision to me.

Stooperdale.3560:

Does it really matter that the official timeline is weak? I don’t think so, as long as the timeline is plausible. When the story is written the release dates cannot be set in stone, so the timeline is always going to be flexible. It is still convenient for players to match game time to real world time. Most players are used to repeating content in a way that would be impossible under any real timeline.

Living Story 2 was delayed for the Asia launch so that messed up the timelines. Seems like a reasonable business decision to me.

Here is the thing: There is no official timeline.

The only thing we have is events happen in a certain order. That is our timeline.

What we do not have is how much time happens between these events.

In an videogame traveling can symbolize the passing of time and every change of szenery can symbolize the same thing.
For example in the last patch, after Taimi bails out of the chamber, the search for her could have taken a day, since the characters had to follow her trail in some way.
It could also have taken only minutes or hours, depending on how much time for that is alocated in the writers mind.

We do not know that information and herby lies a big problem.

We see things happen in “real time.” What our character experiences is happening now, in that exact moment. We are a live audience.

However we get constantly told what has happened elswhere and furthermore, in the past.

This creates a big disconnect between things that are happening now and things that have happened in the past, since they do not seem to follow the same rules.

My maingripe here for example is the simple fact that every leader seems to know about Mordemoth since the roar (they are aware that an ED was behind it).
We have no idea how much time has passed between that event and our introduction into the story.

As far as we are concerned we are the first to go there and investigate, even though the possible timeframe laid out suggests that there has been a lot of time passed since then, which would mean that the people who knew about it (aka everyone) to make their move.

However E1 was clearly designed to have us finding out about the thread, with even the “only” group of people who are investigating thing (The Priory Trio, who should be knowledgeable about the ED in some way) not having any idea what is going.
No, even in E2 no one says something new and we get batted over our headwith the Mordremoth information.

Further Episodes only break the timeline even more, as almost everyone proclaims to know about the Thread since the roar and just did not care or felt it not worthy to investigate.

At this point there is nothing to redeem this problem, since everytime someone mentioned the “past” we should have been able to see it, which we obviously haven`t.

This paints a very bad picture of the world, as it (like in S1) feels unresponsive and half baked.
The mainfocus in writing is on the wrong people (the biconics in this case) instad on creating a believeable world.

The screwed timeline makes even the Mordremoth danger not fathomable, since I do not really see a big problem here. He does nothing more dangerous then any other ED.
Two forts? pfff. expanding his territory? Who doesn`t?
We are even already countering him with Taimis device and fire and physical attacks seem to work pretty well against the Mordrem.

The whole wacked timeline works not only against our understanding of the story, but also against the story itself, since it just makes no sense without a timeframe.

The story could be days or weeks at this point. We might not even talk about months like she actually should be.

You seem to have contradicted yourself there. You say that players will inevitably create their own timelines through play. Then you complain that the timelines bear no relation to the story. Exactly!

It is a fair complaint that Mordremoth has not been shown as ‘the most dangerous dragon’, but that’s true whatever timeline you want to give it. Clearly there are problems with the way Mordremoth was introduced but that is mainly poor writing. We know from LS1 that we can’t draw conclusions from anything we are not shown in the story, so drawing assumptions from a timeline in LS2 is unlikely to work either.

It never made sense and never will and it shouldn’t be a problem (well except that Anet decided to make a big thing of changing the calendar, so yes, now it is a problem).

The stupidest thing is that if RL time = IG time, every 2 Tuesdays, Tyrian would be really really afraid because they know something is going to go wrong. As such, why place the world Summit on a Tuesday ? Why not Sunday ? Nothing ever goes wrong on a Sunday.

RedStar.4218:

It never made sense and never will and it shouldn’t be a problem (well except that Anet decided to make a big thing of changing the calendar, so yes, now it is a problem).

The stupidest thing is that if RL time = IG time, every 2 Tuesdays, Tyrian would be really really afraid because they know something is going to go wrong. As such, why place the world Summit on a Tuesday ? Why not Sunday ? Nothing ever goes wrong on a Sunday.

How do we know it didn’t take place on Friday with the Divinity’s Reach thing happening on Tuesday and Taimi’s issue on Wednesday or something? We really don’t know.

Lostwingman.5034:

RedStar.4218:

It never made sense and never will and it shouldn’t be a problem (well except that Anet decided to make a big thing of changing the calendar, so yes, now it is a problem).

The stupidest thing is that if RL time = IG time, every 2 Tuesdays, Tyrian would be really really afraid because they know something is going to go wrong. As such, why place the world Summit on a Tuesday ? Why not Sunday ? Nothing ever goes wrong on a Sunday.

How do we know it didn’t take place on Friday with the Divinity’s Reach thing happening on Tuesday and Taimi’s issue on Wednesday or something? We really don’t know.

Which actually matters a lot, a rough timeframe would be enough to estimate a thread like Mordremoth or if something happens in a reasonable time.

As it stays now, the absence of a propper timeframe is hindering the enjoyment and understanding of the story.

In fact it works against it, as a lot of the story we get is contradicted by what we are able to see.

However here is not only Time the issue, but also they way they expose us to certain information.

We still haven`t arrived in the “show don`t tell” form of storytelling.

All we know is that the roar is our beginning and everything happens after.
Though, to have everything make sense, there has to be a certain time between each event.

As it stands now, we do not have this timeframe and with that missing just a lot of questions, in how we should rate certain elements of the story.

- Leaders knowing about Mordremoth since the roar and not acting upon it could be seen as it happened just a few weeks before, let`s say three.
Or it could be handled as if it is really several months ago and they sat on their sorry kitten doing nothing.

- Same goes for Trahearn who apeaerently had an army ready and didn`t bother to show his face in front of us or near Maguuma to do anything.

What is even more concerning is: The Pale Tree was appeaerently working on better defences of the grove since the roar
If it just happened a few weeks back, then the attack at the summit would make sense, since the defences were still being construckted.
However if it is several months and we have not seen any impact then it just bad worldbuilding (oh, even if you come with: “Mordremoth is stronger then the pitty defences of the PT”… They shouldn`t be. The PT had clearly info on them and should have been able to construct anything to slow it down or even tell us about it.)

Case in point. The story we expierience and the story that is being told to us to fill the “blanks” work in completly different plaes of time and existence.
The fact that we see most of what is told to us in no way reflected in the world leaves us only with iamgining these things for ourself and then the issue of timing needs to fit.

It doesn`t and I really hope we get something to adress that.

Hmmm now that I read what I wrote again, I really didn’t make myself clear.

What I meant was that there’s absolutely no point in trying to fit real life with in-game time.

But I completely agree with needing at least an estimate of when everything is taking place. Are all the LS quests in an episode supposed to take place in a day or spread out between two weeks or even more ? (I like to think the latter)

With wanting to have a really immerse game by thinking that what makes immersion is calendar and putting WP in lore, Anet just made their story writing even more confusing.
With those two things, you unfortunately have to take them as they are and try to make the most sense out of them (until Anet says something else). Sometimes it’s not too hard, sometimes it is, and sometimes you’re left wondering “Was that NPC really that dumb or did Anet forgot what they wrote before ?”.

Well at least the waypoints help in the time frame. It wouldn’t be possible otherwise to travel from the ley line hub to Concordia, Fort Salma and back to the ley line hub in two weeks. Additional do we arrive at Concordia short after it got attacked. Even the travel through Dry Top should take some days in real time. The syncing of the calendar was probably planned for the story, but it proved impossible with the attack of the Karka at LA.