Guild Wars 2

Best: Launch through Mad King.

Worst: Everything since.

Of the ones I didnt miss.

Best

1. Molten Facility
2. Twilight Assault
3. Aetherblade Retreat
4. Tequatl (despite my dislike for open world content, it was quite fun the first time and large amounts of new content are always good)
5. Fractals (i missed the opening of fractals but they are a big part of endgame, just want the rewards to be fixed soon)

Worst

1. Flame and frost prelude
2. Canachs lair
I cant really say anymore. There were parts of most releases that I enjoyed despite them being temporary. I guess thats the problem though, temporary content feels like it needs to be rushed and when its gone its gone.

Best:
- The Mad King
- Tequatl
- Queens Jubilee, Clockwork Chaos.

Worst:
- SAB
- Scarlet ac Character
- Ascended Gear

Best
-Halloween Clocktower
-Fractals
-1st SAB
-New Tequatl
-Molten Facility

Worst
-Ascended tier
-2nd SAB
-Southsun Cove (Karka Queen chain events & Canach dungeon)
-Crafting max levels pump to 500
-Press ‘F’ n times achievements

Top 3:

3. Molten Weapons Facility and Twilight Assault: These are dungeons the way dungeons should have been designed. An emphasis on group effort and with bosses that actually require tactics to overcome. Molten Facility is an excellent example of a dungeon for newer players to familiarize themselves with how dungeons work in this game, while Twilight Assault is the same for endgame dungeons where success requires experience. Both of these dungeons were very well designed and deserve to be used as examples of what ArenaNet should do to the dungeons going forward.

2. Super Adventure Box. What can I say? The nostalgia factor is nailed dead-on and the content inside is not only fun, it feels like a classic platformer. I am always glad to step into the box whenever Moto opens it to the public.

1. Tequatl Rising, the encounter. This encounter felt like a battle with a powerful and deadly beast. There are a few rough edges (“time limit” being one of them, could have been called something a bit more inspired to get us more into the swing of the fight) but overall it feels great to be there destroying this immensely powerful force of nature. As a raid ,and yes, I consider it a raid, try as ArenaNet might, you just can’t make this stuff open-world and expect randoms to succeed, this encounter is one of the best in the game, and I look forward to what is next in store for the other three dragons and future bosses.

Bottom 3:

3. Ascended crafting, a taste of WoW. I thought we weren’t going to have to grind for stats? What is all this with time-gated daily crafting and the huge material requirements needed for them? Or the need to spend almost 200g worth of materials getting your crafting to the level it needs to be in the first place? Yes, the difference is small, but it doesn’t change that this was a broken promise, as well as a very casual-unfriendly update (which this game caters toward much more so than other MMOs). The point is, we do need to grind now for best-in-class equipment. Let us hope this is the last time we do have to.

2. Lost Shores, event fiasco. Not because the zone they added is still empty to this day, not because I didn’t get a chance to participate in it and get free precursors. But because of just how big a blunder ArenaNet made by making a one-time-only event that they knew everyone would participate in without first being sure their servers could handle the load. Short answer, they could not and the event was ruined by people having trouble participating because of server side performance problems (skill lag being a primary symptom). It was bad enough that ArenaNet gave out a complimentary reward chest to anyone who participated in the event. For gross overestimation of what their engine (which, remember, was originally designed for a game that only ever had instanced content) could handle, Lost Shores gets second bottom for me.

1. Tequatl Rising, overflow singularity. This gets bottom because the way the game was designed caused severe problems for this event, the event itself was great, but being able to participate in it in the spirit that was intended (which is to say, with enough players who are actually active present and as an open world encounter) was nothing short of a nightmare and I don’t bother with trying anymore. Generally speaking, when you design content that could put strain on an aspect of the engine, you need to know this and what can be done to correct this. ArenaNet did not do this with Tequatl Rising, and because of that it was almost impossible to participate in the event the way it was meant to be played (with a large coordinated group). There were a lot of factors (specifically AFK players) ArenaNet did not account for when designing this update. It overall felt very hasty and half-baked because of the above. I regularly run Tequatl raids now with one of the guilds that organized for him, but I know what the original intention of the update was and it failed so miserably that it gets bottom for me on my list.

I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to rate the releases themselves, as I think each one had things that were good and not so good.

These aren’t in any particular order:

Favorites:
Mad King’s clock tower
Snowball Mayhem
Molten Weapon Facility (puzzle and positioning [non-dps] mechanics ftw)
SAB w1
Guild Missions
WvW abilities & post-80 customization
infinite gathering tools
Dragon Ball
Aetherblade Retreat
Bazaar of the Four Winds (I’ll break my own rule…this entire release was amazing)
Southsun Survival
Aspect Arena
Account Wallet (thank you thank you thank you)
Tribulation Mode (I find the random acts of violence humorous…I know I’m sick :P )
Account Magic Find

Good, but could be better:
SAB w2 (only issue is the length of the zones, otherwise it’s great)
continued reliance on back item skins as LS meta rewards
infinite salvage kit (800 gems and it’s still going to charge me every time? really?)
Queen’s Gauntlet (uncontrolled farming and mechanics that benefited specific classes)
Royal Terrace (needed some reason to actually make it more convenient than LA)
Champion loot bags (the given loot needs to scale based on the level of the champion itself)
Scarlet’s Invasions (they’ve grown on me, but more incentive needs to be placed on finishing)
Tequatl update (requires too much preparation time, otherwise it’s great)

Least favorite concepts:
Underwater content has been almost entirely ignored since launch
Karka Queen (both the initial implementation and revamp)
Dragon Bash pinatas and similar LS achievements
forced time gating
account-bound craftables
Ruins of Power in WvW

Absolutely abysmal ideas:
very heavy reliance on gem store for every single update and prestige items
randomized (imbalanced) WvW match-ups & the upcoming WvW leagues
achievements that are exploitable when the patch first goes live, then fixed but not reset

Overall, I think my primary complaint is that the Living Story is taking far too long to develop into a meaningful part of the GW lore. I realize that we’re talking about a story that is intended to span years, but if you don’t keep your players’ attention, your players won’t last that long. I think this is one of the major drawbacks to the current piecemeal release schedule. If the LS was done as more sizable updates (less often), people would perceive more development in the story itself, rather than just totally disconnected content that happens to use the same characters.

/wall o text

I liked Halloween for the community feel it gave so close to launch and the fun minigames and obviously the infamous clocktower.

Wintersday is comparable to Halloween, also again had a great jumping puzzle.

Super Adventure box (both times, obviously) because I love platformers and having the ability to find secret stuff, even if it’s limited.

Southsun (although horribly laggy, the idea was definetely very nice) for providing a new zone which sadly did end up not living up to it’s potential.

Crown Pavillion as I enjoy challenging myself, something which is still not that big in this game and that may be a good thing in it’s own right. It was also quite interesting to see other players tackle monsters and running through the bosses in the lower area for the first time.

I also did enjoy the bazaar but that really wasn’t very content related apart from the nice minigame and the platforming (see SAB). The bazaar really could use something more that’s actual content rather than having to chase achievements by doing things we always did before.

For Flame and Frost the content was spread way too thin, which has been improved quite a bit now. I missed out on doing the actual dungeon so I can’t give a proper opinion on it as the first few bits were really small.

I didn’t enjoy Dragon Bash very much because it was mostly based on grinding for achievements and the dragon ball minigame was something that didn’t fit my taste. Due to Dragon bash not being very enjoyable for me and the fact I wasn’t spending much time on GW2 at the time I missed the entire sky pirate event.

The dragon boss week was alright, the idea is really good, however my server still hasn’t killed Tequatl at this point and I really do not feel like trying him anymore. I don’t have the time to keep at it and there is no scaling for smaller groups. I do think the mechanics are definetely more interesting than the other world bosses.

As for the current TA path update, I did the dungeon once so far and got myself the living story meta achievement in that same run. I have to say that being able to complete the meta like this took away all the pressure that previous events had, the same was with the boss week events. I could simply complete a few and then decide what to do with the rest of my time without missing out on temporary content. This is in my opinion a very good thing, obviously it’s also tied to these things being permanent content. As for the actual content of the dungeon, while I do find it odd that the aetherblades can have a whole base of operations in a nightmare court infested area, the dungeon felt very enjoyable. There were alot of creative dungeon mechanics that I felt were missing in just about every other dungeon path (or simply a lack of more than 1 mechanic per area/boss). If this dungeon path update is any indication of future quality improvements then I’m very positive. The way the story was told was quite interesting and from all the mechanics to the actual art of the dungeon, to the cinematics and the bonus events.. It’s all round probably my favourite dungeon path so far. It’s simply the best quality dungeon in the game, even more so than fractals which was a huge improvement back then. If there is one thing that I might say about the path is that I wouldn’t mind if it was slightly smaller, at least future dungeon paths. It took me about 90 minutes (while we weren’t perfect and even got a few optional achievements) which is fairly long. I do enjoy a 30min run and I personally think that is a sweet spot for many.

The good stuff;
1. SAB. It’s genuinely fun and has soul. Back to School isn’t quite as good as the original release, but it’s still good.
2. FotM. It’s an interesting take on random dungeons and offers tons of room for expansion.
3. The two Labyrinthine Cliffs patches. Three minigames, a beautiful zone, pretty music.
4. Mad King. Fun stuff all around.
5. Twilight Assault. A solid dungeon which shows off what the game is capable of. Molten Facility and Aetherblade Hideout were good starts.

The worst
1. Pavilion. Nobody likes Scarlet and the hole in the ground megadungeon thing was pretty lame.
2. Dragon Bash. Hit 500 pinatas. Yawn.
3. Southsun is kinda… Eh. Karkas break the established combat routine and the map doesn’t really quite pop.
4. Canach’s dungeon was really not very good.
5. Permanency. You add things then you take them out! We get a new dungeon path but you take an old one away! Are you going to delete some fractals to make way for the new ones?

Best:

1. Labyrinthine Cliffs: having to think outside of the box to get to the various sun crystals; Sanctum Sprint was fun
2. Molten Facility: best dungeon by far produced by ANet
3. Flame and Frost DE’s; the Molten Alliance took existing factions and melded them into a whole that was greater than the sum of the parts; these DE’s were a bit above normal ones in difficulty; could have been improved if there was more of a sense of what they were trying to accomplish.
4. Mad King: fun dungeon, “loot pinatas in instances” was still a new concept

Worst:

1. Dragon Bash: the start of the stories in which player contribution was relegated to “click this in an instance, and fight a few mobs.” The murder plot line had potential, but was not implemented in a compelling way; the rest of the update seemed to consist of “click this.”
2. Aetherblade Retreat: the dungeon was fine, until the laser room. Run backwards to avoid approaching death while watching foes to dodge pulls into death while dpsing while looking for slower second approaching death while jumping on boxes was too much for my arthritic hands.
3. Tequatl the Sunless: AKF turret users and overflow issues. So much for not waiting to have fun and a lack of raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play.
4. Temple event revamps: turning what were fun events where you could respond to a call-out for people and have fun into “you’d better have an organized group who knows what they’re doing” and which are annoying slogs even if you do.

Here are my “favorite” (not best)

Labyrinthine Cliffs (sky people) area: This is hands-down the the coolest concept and look to an area and reminded me of Cantha. I loved the special jump skills even though I did not care for the race. I also loved the merchants for all the karma foods in one place….please add them to LA!

Fractals: I wish I had more time to play it, but with new content, I just do not have any time for this dungeon. I kinda wished that new content was once a month, so that I could go back to the other content I enjoy.

Invasion: This was the most fun I’ve had in a large group. You felt like you were in a war, and it was all over the map! One fix: people who rez should get as much credit as those who just do dps. People (including myself) did not rez much due to the fast pace of the spawning and the penalty for not attacking. This is the opposite of team work and community.

Tequatl: This takes an organized guild or group but once you get one together, this is loads of fun. Turret duty, zerging, jump pads, battery defense….fun times. Here the fix needs to be less time waiting between events or better timers, also easier ways to get into overflows and numbering overflows so that you can meet up with people from other severs.

Wintersday and Mad King events: Any GW1 player loves it for the nostalgia, and then they made it even better than before and did a great job decorating LA!

Best:

-Dungeon Tokens to choose your reward
-Jumping Puzzles
-Difficult stuff like Liadri, the new Tequatl, etc…
-Anything that has to be played in group
-Dynamic events

Worst:

-PvP
-The new (and unbelievable) crafting mechanics
-Random or non-existent rewards (except for dungeon tokens)
-Too much “solo play” content (like the queen’s gauntlet, the scarlet farm, etc…)
-Guild missions (except for the puzzle and the race)

I think the holiday events are among the best updates, because they provide a slew of entertainment that appeals to all different kind of players. Personally, The Mad King’s Clocktower was one of my favorite game events that I’ve ever done. I enjoyed the Wintersday jumping puzzle(s), too, but I wish the rewards had been better.

I think the worst is the Living Story. Besides feeling like I’m being spoon-fed content so I will be encouraged to play, it’s confusing. Even when I was heavily involved in the content, because I was excited about it—namely, the Prelude and the first chapter—I had no idea what was going on. It also annoys me that fantastic content, like the dungeon, is whisked away before I even get the chance to experience it. I’d rather not touch that content than be perpetually afraid that I’m going to miss out on something fun/important.

Best: Queen’s Gauntlet (the 1v1 fights, not the 1st floor zerg), Wintersday JP (does that count?).

Worst: Everything else was terrible.

Tranc.6780:

Worst

1. Flame & Frost: Prelude – Fixing signs for refugees? Why was this even released independently?

Although this was not very content heavy out in the open world we tend to forget how much it added to the game.

-New SPvP Map – Temple of the Silent Storm
-New achievement system
-Laurels
-Guesting
-New utility infusions and ascended amulets

So this was a good release in my opinion and I feel that people forget about everything I listed above and just think about.. Ohh signs..

Best:

1. Reoccurring activities and festivals: The mini-game rotations (activities, please add more of these to the rotation), Super adventure box, Mad King, Wintersday, Queens Jubilee (hopefully is reoccurring?), Bazaar + Dragonbash (hopefully is reoccurring?). To be specific – I like the activity parts of the listed events but not parts where you click on x number of items or kill x number of things that aren’t part of an overall activity. By that I mean, killing 100 pirates was fine in the Queen’s pavilion when I was running with a group and completed it by doing something else. Clicking on objects to spawn 5 or 6 mobs that I may have to solo and then go to another clickable object to spawn the next ones…that I don’t like.

2. Permanent additions that increased my enjoyment of the game: Fractals (the dungeons, not the requirement for ascended gear with agony resistance), improvements to bosses and champion chests, achievement points and rewards, dailys and monthlys, WvW ranks (please make account wide though), moving many things to the wallet such as karma and dungeon tokens, adding more bank slots, LFG feature, permanent harvesting tools, cool rewards such as kites, balloons, appearance backpieces, the film noir scene that can be replayed,

3. Southsun cove. New area, two new minigames. Good, yes yes! Needs more stuff added to it though. Also, we need skritt as a playable race.

4. Molten Weapons Facilities Dungeon. I want it back.

5. Interesting characters with stories and personalities: Rox, Braham, Canach, Majory, Faren, others that are developing personalities.

Worst:

1. Living story speed temporary go go go bug ridden content. I finally got burnt out and started ignoring even the things I like that are rotating or timed. I love SAB but had reached the “meh don’t want to do anything anymore that is on a time schedule” and did very little in it. I’m laying off trying to complete living story anymore so that next time SAB comes around I will want to do it. Congrats Anet, you cured me of being a completionist. Something no other game has been able to do. It’s actually probably good for me to not care about completing everything anymore. Too be honest, I liked some of the stories, activities, rewards, and areas….I didn’t like bugs, temporary anything, and feeling stressed/pressured to do it NOW!!! It ended up burning me out to the point I actively avoid a lot of it now. When something is not going to be reoccurring or permanent I now make this face -_- and just do the other part of the game.

2. Random Number Chests. Hate gambling. Seems a cheap trick to me to put the weapon and armor skins in there.

3. Grindy boring activities. Kill 50 or 100 or more of this. Click on 100 of those. Boringgggg. It’s ok as an achievement that happens naturally (like kill 1000 grawl), its ewwwwwww when it is something that you don’t do in normal gameplay and furthermore is on a time limit.

4. Lack of things that make me want to stay in a game – I like to do things (that part is mostly ok, there are things I like to do in the game), I like to progress and have visible evidence of progression such as – a house with my collected rewards in it, a wardrobe and different appearances of weapons that I can easily switch between to give variety, titles – mostly fluffy stuff, but I like fluffy stuff.

5. I understand the reasoning behind adding the ascended gear …… but I don’t like gear creep.

TL/DR: Just read the bolded words for the short version.

Best:
1. Frost & Flame – as a whole it was really fun (Prelude and Gathering storm were awful thou), I liked story of Rox and this Norn fella a lot. Molten Facility was a terrific dungeon, I love it.
2. Bazaar of the Four Winds – outstandingly beautiful location of Labyrinthine Cliffs and cool activity in form of Sanctum Sprint
3. Super Adventure Box – just cool idea
4. Halloween update – realm of the Mad King
5. The Lost Shores – I really like Southsun Cove and Fractals of the Mist. More permanent updates are needed!

Worst:
1. Cutthroat Politics – boring activities, voting was unfair, only one meaningful difference between candidates
2. Queen’s Jubilee – farming champions
3. Clockwork Chaos – another farm fest, repetitive, boring events
4. Lack of permanent content and new zones to explore
5. This updates have nothing to do with Tyria lore and Elder dragons. Why create new villain in form of Scarlet, when we have 5 more dragons to fight with? Disappointing.

Brimstar.9036:

5.) Not enough ways to find out about LORE in game or look back on it.

Nick.6972:

Worst.
1. SAB
2. The story of “Living Story”

Kairos.7206:

5. This updates have nothing to do with Tyria lore and Elder dragons. Why create new villain in form of Scarlet, when we have 5 more dragons to fight with? Disappointing.

GOLD. These gentlemen deserve some cookies

I didn’t play through all the Living Story as I played the game from release to just past Christmas then stopped for about seven months and came back. I suppose the most jarring thing about coming back after so long a time was the utter lack of change in GW2 as a whole. The game hadn’t changed much since December in any really noticable way, beyond far more people having numerous level 80s and full exotics.

With that said, I only really experienced the LS from Dragonbash onward. Therefore, with that in mind, here’s my best and worst:

Best

- Queen’s Jubilee

The overall event was… kind of poor. Everyone saw the disruption to the event coming beyond a mile away. The characters were uninteresting and the mysterious party crasher was – insert sterotypical super villain here – material. Yet, the actual 1v1 arena fights were really great and enjoyable. Despite the farm first floor event and the story aspects, this was the best LS I’ve experienced so far. Which… when it comes to story and characters, that’s kind of a sad thing to say. Anyway, the 1v1 fights were great. Loved them and didn’t stop until I got my mini-Liadri.

- Bazaar of the Four Winds

While the entire concept of ‘people of the sky’ is utter non-sense from any practical point of view, it was at least… different from the rest of the content I’ve experienced. I will admit, the mini-games were pretty enjoyable, and while there wasn’t a lot to do beyond achievo grinding, at least the zone was interesting and the movement abilities were pretty fun.

Worst

- Everything else.

Honestly, the biggest problem with the Living Story is not only does the story not make sense, but what story that does make sense, is just really poorly done. I’ve felt zero inclination to dig deeper into the lore of the Living Story, because it doesn’t seem like any deeper lore exists. And even if it does, I don’t care about the relationship between Bram and Rox or Scarlet’s derangement, because all those characters are bland sterotypes at best and Mary Sues at worst.

The biggest disappointment with the Living Story has been just how unoriginal and uninteresting the story has been thus far. It seems to me that all the content from Karka onward has been disjointed products of ’wouldn’t it be cool if’ thrown together and then explained – however loosely – by some maniacal super villianess that has no place in the existing setting of GW2.

I know this is a negative post, but it is also an honest one. I just don’t see much good about the Living Story. I especially don’t see much good for the future of the Living Story if they continue to expand and push Scarlet Briar as some dire threat to Tyria; because she isn’t. She is just a joke of a character that ticks off all the boxes of a traditional Villain Sue and that’s not a good thing to anchor the Living Story on.

BEST:
1. Flame & Frost: Retribution
2. Shadow of the Mad King
3. Bazaar of the Four Winds
4. Dragon Bash
5. Tequatl Rising
6. Super Adventure Box

WORST:
1. Flame & Frost prelude
2. Cutthroat Politics
3. The Secret of Southsun

Best
1.Wintersday -Sooo much fun with lots of different activities to do. I loved the pvp

2.Fractals -longterm fun

3.Dragonbash -Was really cool, I felt like I was really from Tyria & the back pieces were awesome.

4. Bazaar of the Four Winds- using aspects in a map was really fun and smart and the minigames were awesome!!!

5.Sky Pirates of Tyria -Fun dungeon

Worst
1.Twilight Assault -Finished it the first day, will never do it again. Why is this two weeks long? BOOORING

2.Tequatl Rising -Finished it once, not worth it. Never doing Tequatl ever again.

3. Flame & Frost – Wasn’t even interested to do it since I was so confused.

4. Cutthroat Politics – Didn’t really care for either of them so I just voted for Evon since humans are overrated but Evon lost -_-

Best

1) Super Adventure Box (Part 1). Wonderfully made, great design, a lot of fun, and references that made me smile. Did a very good job of bringing back the feel of classic games like Mario, Sonic, Zelda, etc., while keeping my connection with my character. Wonderful release.

2) Labyrinthine Cliffs. The most fun I’ve ever had just jumping around a zone looking for things. I spent most of this release here and doing Sprint. Truly fun and new level design, and the quartz instance was the first step towards actually having a home instance that matters we’ve seen.

3) Mad King. New pvp minigames, a fun, meaningful quest with a good story (I really truly hated the Mad King by the end of it) for a cool looking back item (my first character still wears it, nothing since has topped it), and all sorts of fun monsters and events and a quick little mini dungeon. All around awesome! Unfortunately for Anet, it set the bar pretty high and all of the live events since have seemed weak in comparison.

Honorable Mentions: Molten Facility was a fun dungeon, although it wasn’t around long enough and came after a month of pounding signs and chain knockback periscopes. Fractals of the Mist also gets a mention, although nearly a year later it still has the same yawn fest dredge instance. If that got removed I’d spent a lot more time there.

Worst

1) Clockwork Chaos. Scarlet. Anything to do with Scarlet. Lamest villain ever (maybe she’ll fight the lamest hero ever Traherane and we won’t ever have to deal with either again?). Made worse by the set up with talk about a huge, earth shattering event for Tyria (there was all sorts of hype) and then it just delivered nothing. Bringing all the farmers out of Cof1 and into the open world to grind champions just made the quality of the community plummet. Terrible design all around.

2) Dragon Bash. Everything wrong about live updates. Even the one thing that they got right (the dragon ball mini game) was ruined by making it a grind achievement that filled it with AFKers. The story was lame, the achievements were grindy and dumb, and there was just no point to a huge party while the very reason for the party still represents a massive threat to Tyria. Only other silver lining was it led to the awesome Noir cut scene.

3) Super Adventure Box (Part 2). Where the first release brought back good feelings of classic games like Mario, Sonic, and Zelda, this release brought back the feeling of classic games like Daikatana. “Josh Foreman’s About to Make You His Kitten” should have been the release note. I never finished it not because of any challenge, but because I didn’t have the time to grind through such long repetitive levels more than a few times looking for achievements.

Honorable Mention – Crab Toss. The event it was part of was meh, but Crab Toss is the worst content this game has ever produced. I’ll also throw out an Honorable mention to the WvW leagues even though they haven’t happened yet, and the Bloodlust Buff (let’s give the best server in each matchup more stats! When the best possible result of a WvW update is that it has no effect, you’ve failed badly).

(I didn’t play the Lost Shores or Wintersday so those weren’t considered)

Best

1. Launch of GW2 and everything up to November 2012.

Worst

1. Pretty much everything that has come after November 2012

That may sound a bit harsh (there are some things we’ve gotten since Nov. 2012 that were nice) but overall, this game has been in decline since the release of ascended gear. The vast majority of people I knew and played with all quit playing after Wintersday 2012. Some of them have tried coming back every so often, but they log in, see the game is just as bad, if not worse, and then log back out again (not to return for several months, if at all). I myself am about to hang up my GW2 hat for good. If we don’t get something good before the end of the year, I WILL be uninstalling GW2 from my computer (to many other good games coming out in 2014, plus the wife and I are planning on doing a lot of play time on the new consoles).

In no particular order…

Best
Bazaar of the Four Winds — It had a gorgeous new area, some fun puzzley/jumpy stuff, Dragon Ball, neat lore, and just running around with the aspects was fun!

Shadow of the Mad King — I love Halloween, so I went in totally biased… But there was a lot of stuff packed into this update, and it was great to see the Mad King again.

Super Adventure Box(World 1) — Prior to its release, I was barely playing GW2 any more. SAB pulled me back in, and re-ignited my enjoyment of the game. World 2 was not for me(too long/tedious, too punishing) but that’s another story…

Lost Shores — Despite the huge number of problems, it was still one of the most memorable events in my MMO history. The lag made the game virtually unplayable, but I participated nonetheless, and the trek to get to the Ancient Karka got boring pretty quickly… But I dunno. It felt epic, and it felt like everyone was working together. It’s a shame that they have been unable to get players to stay interested in Southsun.

Flame & Frost: The Razing/Retribution — I liked the introduction of Braham and Rox as well as their associated personal story style missions. The Molten Facility was also a lot of fun, and I say this as someone who doesn’t really enjoy dungeons.

Worst
Flame & Frost: Prelude/The Gathering Storm — Such minor updates, especially when compared with what the Living Story releases have become. At the time, it made me lose a lot of faith in what Anet was promising.

Scarlet Briar — I know this isn’t a specific release, but… I just don’t like her. I recently saw someone describe Scarlet as a Saturday morning cartoon villain, and I think it’s quite apt. She’s amazing at everything, came out of nowhere, and is CRAAAAZY but also brilliant, has several huge armies of followers, and is super powerful. It just doesn’t click with me.

Storytelling — Again, not a specific release… But I’m not a huge fan of how they are telling the story. They keep adding seemingly disparate events, and then including one little detail that connects it to an overarching plot to make it seem like it all works together. This is something procedural TV shows do a lot to make it seem like they are more than just a case-of-the-week show. It feels forced to me, like a bunch of events that were conceived of independently, and then have a connection forced into them to give the illusion of cohesiveness.

Best:
1) The Lost Shores (fractals, new island and Temple of the Silent Storm, yeah!!!)
2) Sky Pirates of Tyria (Aetherblade Retreat, great!)
3) Flame and Frost: Retribution (Molten Facility, ha-ha!)
4) Super Adventure Box: Back to School (no comments)
5) Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm (no-no-no, not the living strory…. good revamp of AC and guild missions)

Worst:
1) Tequatl Rising (Teq ia great!!! but others World Bosses are lambs)
2) Queen’s Jubilee (too much farm…)
3) Clockwork Chaos (magnificent Scarlet… and extremely much farm…)
4) Last Stand at Southsun (very small dungeon…. and island is dead again)
5) Flame and Frost: Prelude (new daily are good, but…. repair the Sign Posts a whole month…. fooooo)

Best:
1. Halloween.
2. Wintersday.
3. Super Adventure Box.
4. Secret of Southsun(or whatever it was called back when they added the legendary karka queen earlier this year).
5. Bazaar of the Four Winds.
6. Queen’s Jubilee.
7. Clockwork Chaos.
8. Skyhammer. Amazing visuals, a giant cannon that can two-shot people and I can fear/knock off people from the platforms.
Ohh the memories of stealing fear from necromancers and make them jump to their death from the cannon… best map since Battle of Kyhlo.
9. Being able to hide gloves – now let us do the same with chest armour and shoes.

Worst:
1. Dragonbash.
2. When they removed the giant lake in wvw borderlands.

Hard to put the 1st 3 in order, but…
Best:
1. Halloween: loved the look/atmosphere of the festival , loved the Hide and seek game, loved Labyrinth and Mad Kings dungeon, digging candy corn veins, the guest .. Love the gemshop witch outfit. Weapon Skins were cool but I did not get lucky to get one.

2. Wintersday: Again loved the look/sound/atmosphere so much, really got me on a holiday mood. Loved the bellchoir most of all, fun non violent activity, ty! Loved my mini plush griffon and griffon tonic.. .Love the gemshop winteroutfit! Dungeon was fun. The skins from world drops I did not like much.

3. Bazaar of the four Winds: really loved the event a lot, the atmosphere, look, music and things I had time to do, but had hardly any time to play cause of summer “real life” stuff- otherwise might put it even higher. Loved the cliffs and sanctum sprint especially, glad the sprint is here to stay as an activity, hope the bazaar returns again. The back item skins from bazaar are wonderfull and good to have a collector method to get skins instead of just rare drop or bl chest!

4. achievement rewards: glad there`s use for the achievement points now.

5. Guild missions and rewards: = more guild wars

general thing about festival events: I like carve pumkins/bash pinata etc type things, hope they stay, cause they give more reason to run around decorated towns. And festival mats and recipies I like.

worst:
1. Homelesness=lack of player housing release. I hope it comes soon… A home to personalize with furniture, trophies, armor stands etc would give me a sense of base. More continuity/reason for “what are we fighting for” than what my greedy exploring adventurers get from say, heroicly doing the main quest…

2. One time Southsun massacre: (though very funny also…) Huge lag at LA event. On my overflow the Island event was a huge death fest for hours, then many people missed reward chest due to dc or running from wp. It was well handled however to send rewards for those players afterwards, ty

3. Flame and frost world events: I did not hate them nor like them. Did the achievements but was not exited about it.

4. Princess Miyas wigs- everywhere :P! And removing the non SAB related rewards from SAB, I did not do SAB more than a bit on the 1st day of Back to School cause of that.

5. Queens jubilee as an anniversary event: I actually liked/like Scarlet map invasions, but did not care for the story much, also the “festival has been ruined by the evil xxxx -heroes needed” theme had allready just been there, I might have liked some more lighthearted anniversary stuff better.

And Overall it`s been agreat and fun year for me, thankyou!

The best: SAB
SAB is a masterpiece.

The worst: Dragon Bash
I didn’t mind the “press F to get achi” achievements, but the new Dragon Arena was so bad. Had high hopes for DA as it was by far the best thing ever happened to the original GW. One-shot-KO/dodge arena got turned into a mindless spamfest.

Year one is a giant disappointment for me. The living world is not alive at all and no update to date has improved that state. ANET has completely abandoned the world of GW2 to pursue content that has nothing to do with the actual story. While some of this content was a nice and well done distraction without an expansion (if this is all we are getting with the living story) there wont be much left of the actual GW2 in a few years.

NOTHING so far story wise has had anything to do with the elder dragons. They are not even a threat. The world isnt moving anywhere. Things just come and go. Apart from a few locations the same events are still going on all over the world. Nothing has really changed. I dont feel like a hero. More like someone at work, doing chores.

Almost all updates suffer from good idea/terrible execution.
Instead of best/worst here are my thoughts on all of them:

Shadow of the Mad King
Pretty good update with mostly fun activities very much akin to GW1s yearly events.

The Lost Shores
Worst update to date with ANETs complete and utter disregard for the game, its limitations and the breaking of many promises to the player base. At this point GW2 died and Grind Wars 2 was born.

Wintersday
A fun distraction similar to Halloween.

Flame and Frost: Prelude
Boring story but at least it wasnt completely out there and felt like the world was actually starting to slowly change. New grind – dailies now obligatory. A new currency.

Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm
More meh story wise but at least it was coherent. Guild missions – yet another bad addition to the game. Yet another currency.

Flame and Frost: The Razing
Story picked up at this point and raised my expectations. ANET got rid of the horrid conversation mode and while characters werent the best at least they made sense and were interesting.

Super Adventure Box
A load of fun, probably more fun than the actual game even now one year down the line.

Flame and Frost: Retribution
A fun new dungeon continuing the story.

The Secret of Southsun
Decent interesting story continuation making use of the horrible karka island.

Last Stand at Southsun
Performance problems and zergs again. Yep, lag crabs havent changed one bit.

Dragon Bash
Boring, bland and utterly pointless. Introducing a new menace to the world when there are bigger fish err dragons to fry.

Sky Pirates of Tyria
Fun dungeon and JP. Made me wonder where ANET was going with story at that time but now that we know it just makes me cringe.

Bazaar of the Four Winds
Probably the best content update to date. New place to explore, some lore and fun minigames.

Cutthroat Politics
Boring, bland and utterly pointless again.

Queen’s Jubilee
Lets put all our players into a small place and make them run around in zergs which neither their PCs or our servers can handle. Pathetic. Challenges were interesting but again – poorly executed. Introducing Harley Mary Quinn Sue. Disastrous.

Clockwork Chaos
More of the above except in the open world. Scarlet more important and more powerful than dragons with an army behind her that could save the entire world.

Super Adventure Box: Back to School
Fun distraction again thankfully fixed in proper time and for once properly communicated. Ascended weapons however a complete disaster again forcing people into certain things instead of “play how you want to play”.

Tequatl Rising
Proving ANET learned nothing in almost a year all the problems with the first Southsun update came back.

Twilight Assault
Another decent dungeon – a bit too hard IMO. But not much else. More Scarlet barf.

Comparing that to GW1 just makes me sad. The team at ANET probably doubled or quadrupled in size since then yet managed to bring in less interesting, fun, engaging and rewarding content in the same time frame.

I am sick of fluff, bad storytelling and grind. Things better change next year or this game is done for.

Best

1. Shadow of the Mad King – Made the new Guild Wars world feel like the old “home” in Tyria GW1
2. Fractals – Though the Giant’s Fractal can be terrible if bugged out, the overall design is fantastic. Love fractals
3. Flame and Frost- The prelude quests were poorly implemented and didn’t deserve to be implemented, but the lore creating suspense was fantastic. The dungeon was fantastic
4. Bazarr of the Four Winds – Tied to GW1 Lore, which is missing in this game called GW2. Though some of the quests were not entirely entertaining, it was a neat update
5. Wintersday – I really don’t even want to include this, but the concept behind wintersday I love, it was fantastic in GW1 and glad it came back. But the Asuran Toymaker implementation pretty much disengaged me from Wintersday after a week or so. The quests seemed to repetitive, and It was too childish. I liked the Winter versus Spring concept from GW1, not saying bring back the human gods, but the “Dark versus Light” concept is awesome.

Worst

1. Scarlet and her minions – Honestly this covers a ton of the updates, the more I see her, the more I cringe. I cannot engage in the story because she seems to eccentric and is portrayed as an overeducated lunatic, unless you go out of your way to find out who exactly this character is. There is still no confirmation on if this is the personal characters nemesis, but it seems as it is, even though there was no connection until recently.
2. Clockwork Chaos – The design behind invasions is a good idea, but the mechanical army just rips the GW2 world in half for me, I only did it for the rewards.
3. Super Adventure Box – Back to School – I have to say, the first introduction to SAB was funny, and brought back a ton of memories, but those days are long behind us, and I have my old consoles to break out if I really want to go old-school. When this was re-introduced and tried to be tied into the lore, I baughed at the concept. If anything this should had been a side project and implemented into the game as a “mini game” for the players who love it. Some people even suggested making it its own little executable game. But I don’t think it belongs in Guild Wars 2. My 0.02c
4. Mini Games – All around, we went from having a few mini games, to being bombarded with mini games in every update until finally it slowed up. We never did get bar brawls…..
5. Lost Shores – New map implmentation in the first couple months was exciting, but to much disappointment the lore and story continuation fell short. It was not optimized either.

best:
Inspector Noll Encounter(mechanically the best encounter in gw2 )
FOTM
Southsun Cove

Worts:
F&F prelude

Best:

1. Quality of Life fixes like Wallet
2. Bazaar of the Four Winds
3. Dragon’s Jade Weapon Skins
4. Queen’s Jubilee
5. Clockwork Chaos

Worst:

1. Time-gated crafting (honestly, WHAT were you thinking?)
2. Account-bound crafting (Play how WHO wants?)
3. Tequatl update (This is a structured raid boss, NOT open world content.)
4. SAB (I know a lot of people liked it, but I have 0 interest in it and the 64-bit rewards are cute but DO NOT BELONG in the setting.)
5. Living Story has no discernible plot to follow (Even episodic stories have 3 acts…)

Best:

1. Fractals of the mists
2. Legendaries updates (recently)

Worst:

1. SAB 1+2

The Good:
Halloween event
Wintersday
FOTM
SAB
Tequatl Rising
Aspect Arena
Candidate Trials (the basic idea of a fighting game survival mode for a party of 5)
South Sun Survival
Queens Gauntlet
Molten Facility
Aetherblade Retreat
Twilight Assault

And I know I may catch some flack for this but I liked the once in a life time big karka event from Lost Shores. Needed some polish but the basic idea was nice

The Bad:
Scarlet story arcs
Dragon Bash (turbo F key scavenger hunt)
Cutthroat Politics

The Ugly:
Bi-weekly updates (once a month tops)
To-do lists, Achievements in overdrive (F key scavenger hunts in particular)
Dragon Coffers and other boxes filled with garbage (read RNG)

Best:
- Lost Shores: Though I didn’t actually log in during this update I do like how it added Fractals of the Mists as well as an entire new zone to explore that didnt disappear after the event ended.
- Flame and Frost: A bit slow at first but it was neat how it slowly unravelled bit by bit over a few months. The Molten Alliance Dungeon was actually well-made and fun.
- Ascended Weapons: I know this is a touchy subject for many players but I personally don’t mind the introduction of these as it gives something to work towards and they also look quite nice aesthetically. Just don’t overdo it with new tiers too soon after Ascended Stuff.
- All Quality of Life updates such as the wallet
- Bazaar: A new map to explore (if small and temporary) as well as a few fun achievements and puzzles

Worst:
- Sky Pirates: The update responsible for the introduction of the Aetherblades and, to some extent, Scarlet. I just don’t really care for the faction at all and the AR retreat dungeon was a nightmare to try and complete.
- Tequatl Update: Not much to it really and the increase in difficulty was a little too extreme.
- SAB: For the first time SAB was actually kind of neat and had that nostalgic value but the novelty wore off when its sequel arrived. Also too many issues that I personally experienced within it that stripped it of a lot of the fun.
- Mini Games: Pretty much every mini game thus far has fallen flat in my eyes. The few exceptions are the Lunatic Inquisition and Sanctum Sprint.
- Pavilion Update: Though it had some interesting aspects to it, it heavily encouraged zerg grinding within the Pavilion and the Gauntlet suffered from some cheap combat mechanics.

I’ve only been here since september so I don’t really have a broad range of living story experience but from the recent past

Fractals: I did my first set of fractals a couple of days ago and apart from showing I need to go and try the jump puzzles so I learn how to control my movements better I found them interesting overall
Jubilee: I knew the “twists” I enjoyed the zone but I wasn’t in a guild and didn’t get the dungeon finished so I never got to go back to it. I’ll get it done later – honest!
Clockwork Chaos: I thought it was nice that there was shoulders and got interested in past rewards and guildies filled me in that they are mostly backpacks and I was like
Super Adventure Box: Again, horrible at jumping. I like the feel of the event though, more of a diversion and wind down for people who like the retro feel and want a break from the “real” game. Also since I wasn’t around for round one I don’t suffer from content fatigue from the event so maybe the event will be different for veterans
Teq, Boss week: I like teq, well I like him/her/<dragon pronoun> since I have only been there a couple of times for achieves, I hate the fact that I am on Kaineng and can’t reliably get a teq running and beat it on the times I am on. I hate the waypoint just outside with a passion – since it exists but is perma contested

So, Fractals – good but I need to learn to jump/move better. Teq – zzzzzz after I finally got a kill. Not fun to be there for a consolation prize when I know that our server can down the boss.

Best
1) Fotm.
Casual players can play at lower levels and more serious can play at higher difficulties for better rewards. Can’t get any better that this.
2) SAB world 1
Good fun will it lasted.
3) Flame and frost. (Specifically the molten facility dungeon.)
Boss is challenging but it is actually possible to make a comeback if you happen to make a mistake so it is still fun.
4) Bazaar of the 4winds
Sanctum sprint is fun ( but the rubberbanding can be frustrating) and so is using the aspect skills to get around the bazaar.
5) Southsun isle
It is pretty empty now and the irritating karkas are still there but it is still a new zone for us. It also gave us new jps, a ranger pet and more ori/ancient wood nodes.

Worst
1) Sky pirates (specifically the aetherblade retreat dungeon)
Unfun dungeon that have 1 hit kill laser and mob that pulls in the same fight.
2) Tequatl Rising
Unnecessary addition of a timer to meta bosses that only serves to create frustration in players.
3) Queen’s Jubilee (specifically the gaunlet)
The gaunlet is actually quite fun but the camera ,pov and aoe circles are horrible.
4) SAB world 2
I expected SAB to be something fun and not an excercise in patience.
5) Shadow of the mad king
The clock tower is frustrating to do. Adding to the fire, we still have to wait between rounds.

Best
1) Tyria The world itself is not only beautiful, it is a ton of fun. One year out and I’m still discovering cool new places and events. This is an amazing setting and I’m still thankful to ArenaNet for giving us a chance to wander around it.
2) Halloween. Brilliant presentation with the Mad King bursting out of the LA statue. Oswald was hilarious and the Halloween themed decorations were great. The events and activities were all terrific. It really captured the feel of the holiday in a uniquely Tyrian manner. Overall the best update in GW2 so far IMO
3) Wintersday Close second behind Halloween. The floating toy fortress was an awesome sight to see. I enjoyed the slowly evolving Toyshop, although it was a kind of grind it was a very fun one to do with friends. And the music was superb. I’m looking forward to seeing this return in a couple of months.
4) Flame and Frost It was terrific to see the introduction of likeable NPCs of Rox and Braham (and Frostbite!). The story pacing was a bit slow in the earlier months but the finale was excellent and final boss of the Molten Alliance facility was the definition of EPIC. It was difficult but it was the kind of challenge that makes you think about it and try to go back after you have tweaked your strategy.
5) The Queen’s Speech Excellent new cinematic system introduced to present storylines in the game! Great to see the event was not very difficult so there was no tedious faceplanting/character dying that only interrupt the story (Challenging content should be kept out of cinematic events like this, leave it for the dungeons). It wasgreat to see Lord Faren show his heroic side and Hobo-tron was hilarious. I hope this is the system ArenaNet will use from now on to present their stories.

Worst
1) The Lost Shores Karka event One of the top 5 worst MMO gaming experience I have ever had. I would trade that Karka bag for those 3 hours of my life back. It felt like this event was thrown out with no QA and no feedback from any sensible testers. The fact that it had all that only makes it more depressing.
On the plus side, ArenaNet admitted what a fiasco that event was and we haven’t seen anything this horrid since.
2) SouthSun Cove People saying they love this zone should be shown the metrics of how much time they spend in this zone compared to all the rest. Travel here is pointlessly annoying. Filled with CC-spamming mobs, terrible layout and limited waypoints, SouthSun throws out the excellent design seen in lower level zones with the excuse of being ‘challenging’.
Dynamic events in the zone should be challenging. Moving from one point to another should not. Orr is almost as bad but SS is worse. (Also karka are by far the most tedious mobs in the game)
3) Canach’s dungeon/SouthSun Shores event Very bad presentation of a storyline. Unclear dialog that could be easily missed. Vital plot points hidden from players unless they stumbled across them. Critical NPC text buried in dialog boxes rather than explained in a cinematic.
ArenaNet has since made a cinematic system that takes advantage of MMO mechanics, rather than letting mechanics to get in the way of presenting the story.
4)Frizz’s Lab in the Aetherblade Retreat. The single worst encounter I’ve seen in any GW2 dungeon. Usually GW2 challenges are fun and make you want to try them again with new strategies. This stopped my gaming group cold. We knew we could do it until we beat it but it was so unenjoyable we had NO interest in trying. This was the –only- time this has ever happened with GW2 content.
There was no build or strategy that would help with this encounter. You either jumped on the poorly designed boxes at the right time or you didn’t.
Frizz’ lab gutted the concept of supporting each other. The occasional Swiftness would do little in what was basically a party-wiping jumping puzzle. Even the mobs were designed to yank players apart, further isolating the party to the point that you might as well have been playing this alone.
Even worse, it gated the storyline so unless you got through it, you never were allowed to see the conclusion to the Aetherblade storyline.
I really hope that we never see anything like this ever again in GW2.
5) Don’t have one
And frankly GW2 has more positive points to it than negative so I thought my list should reflect that.
There is so much good in the game that it makes the bad stuff stand out in even greater contrast. Each one of the four examples I picked were wholesale deviations from the fundamentals of GW2 that make it so enjoyable (high polish on content, easy zone travel, dramatic storytelling, cooperative gameplay etc). I just hope that we continue to see content that follows those excellent fundamentals and less of the lamentable deviations from them.

Best:
1. Super Adventure Box
2. Wintersday
3. Shadow of the Mad King
4. Bazaar of the Four Winds
5. The Lost Shores

Worst:
1. Tequatl Rising
2. Twilight Assault
3. Queens Jubilee
4. Super Adventure Box Back to School
5. Dragon Bash

Best:
1. Though I loathed finding all the crystals, I loved the rest of Bazaar of the Four Winds. Sanctum Sprint is still my favourite mini-game.
2. Queen’s Gauntlet.
3. Wallet.
4. Though I will never grind for one myself, the Legendary update to ascended with on-demand stats.
5. …nope… got nothing…

Worst:
1. Tequatl Rising
2. Tequatl Rising.
3. Clockwork Chaos.
4. Queen’s Jubilee.
5. Aetherblades.

Top

1. The beta weekend events

2. Tequatl – I STILL love this and look forward to more like this

3. Halloween, Mad King

4. Bazaar of the 4 Winds

5. Queen’s Jubilee

The only thing I didn’t like and didn’t participate in was: Super Adventure Box (SAB)

The releases all feel the same to me (I still have no idea what the story in GW2 is and I feel no connection between the lore of GW1 and GW2). I did enjoy the gaunlet.

Best

• The account wallet, because it reduced some of the infernal inventory clutter.
• Guild missions, one of the few reasons why I even log in anymore.
• The Labyrinthine Cliffs and Zephyr Sanctum — a gorgeous, atmospheric zone with interesting lore that ties into GW1 and offered some interesting challenges. (This does NOT include the nonsensical “election”, only the Zephyrites and their lore.)
• Rox and Braham are rather fun to listen to.

Worst

• Ascended items and anything related to them, including Fractals. What the bleeding hell happened to this not being a gear-obsessed, gear-grinding, gear-gated game?
• Scarlet and anything related to her. Terrible writing, infantile brattiness as a sorry excuse for a “personality”, and overall a disgusting example of an untouchable oh-so-superior-to-absolutely-everyone-ever writer’s pet character who needs to die YESTERDAY and be completely forgotten.
• The overall direction and presentation of the so-called “living story” which has no impact on anything whatsoever, little to no connection to the established lore and themes, needs to be researched out-of-game instead of being able to be experienced in-character, and changes the feel of the game from a supposed high-fantasy “save the world from the eldritch threat” to a shallow mess of parties and Steampunk deus-ex-machina supertech. As an added bonus, it has absolutely no room for our own characters because Anet cannot afford voiceacting for them.

best (in no particular order):
The Bazaar (labyrinthine cliffs), Mad King, Super Adventure Box, Flame and Frost, Wintersday.

Worst:
Clockwork Chaos, Queen’s Jubilee

The others I am neutral towards. I didn’t like the farming and there were many issues with the gauntlet for me. I like stuff that includes permanent content. I like just plain fun. A good story is also good. I really felt like Flame and Frost was the way to go with developing a storyline for a Living Story. It was the event that really, to me, felt most like a living story. The other plot points feel jarring in comparison. I mean, Scarlet pops out of nowhere. Same with the aetherblades. And there was a bit of a mystery with Flame and Frost at the beginning as we didn’t know what was causing the issues. I really liked the mystery of it and enjoyed following the story with Rox and Braham.

Best: Account Wallet, WvW Ranks, Labyrinthine Cliffs map design and aesthetics, changeable stats for Legendaries, infinite harvesting tools

Worst: SAB, WvW Bloodlust/Leagues, all of the event dungeons and minigames, Scarlet, Skyhammer PvP map, timers on all world bosses

The Bloodlust, Leagues, and world boss timers are the worst of the worst. My former server hasn’t been able to kill Jormag since that patch, struggles with the Shatterer, and is losing both PvE and WvW players (including myself) at a shocking rate. Needless to say, I’m disappointed with the majority of the Living Story updates.

Best

Tequatl Rising.
Tequatl Rising.
Tequatl Rising.
Tequatl Rising.
Tequatl Rising.
Tequatl Rising.

Worst

This Event Blood and Madness. I dont know what to do in game 1 time for half year…..

Best:
Shadow of the mad king
Wondorous workshop of toymaker Tixx

Worst:
Queens Gauntlet
Twilight Assault