Had to split this into 2 posts
———————————————————————-
I like Guild Wars 2.
There are many aspects to the game which I greatly approve of and many more which I hope will some day be implemented. The direction the game has been going with “Living Story” content however is not exactly to my liking.
This is not because I don’t like the content of the “Living world”. The pace of the living story and the focus on small events as apposed to large conceptual struggles is grating to me at times. Granted, this last Dungeon ended with a few chosen words with Caithe, which seem to link to something quite old and quite big; which is promising – plus I must admit to a degree of trollish glee every time Arena Net announced yet another boat load of Karka. Unfortunately this sort of fast paced, steady content growth seems to be stifling the sort of additions which usually only accompany expansion packs.
I won’t say I cry myself to sleep at night due to the absence of the Largos as a playable race. For that would be unmanly. The double edged sword of openness and honesty on Arena Net’s part has developed a trend of cutting both ways though, especially on the subject of hope
Regardless of my mixed feelings on living story content, this last release took a turn which was downright bizarre. I like words; you may have gathered as such from this text wall type apparition. I pay attention to them and thus I nearly fell off my chair when I hit a snag in the release notes for Twilight Assault.
The Twilight Guide talked about the new dungeon path, the Release Page also talked about the new level 80 dungeon path. The Release Notes however? The release notes read: “The Aetherpath supplants the Fyonna explorable path in Twilight Arbor”.
At first I thought this was put in as some sort of flora based pun. “SupPLANTS”. Funny. Then, after some looking about, I was shocked to find out that it wasn’t. When this dungeon path was added to the Twilight Arbor, an old path was removed. Some points should be made clear about the path that was removed:
1) It was the least played path.
2) It was a very buggy path.
3) I had never gotten round to playing that path.
4) I now will never get to play that path.
The first oddity is why the path had to be taken out to begin with? The layout of the new Aetherblade path is awesome. It also, by the looks of it, was nearly completely redone layout wise. So I have no idea why a fourth path couldn’t just have been opened in the wall and why an entire dungeon path had to be DELETED to make space for this new one? Secondly, a piece of the Twilight Arbor original story now seems out of place. Talking to the old guide still makes reference to stopping the three Twilight aspirants from reaching the evil tree – despite the fact you can now only try stop 2 of them.
It just seems… Silly?
My entire group of friends moved through and out of Guild Wars 2 before “Living Story” got into full swing. We did lots of dungeons together but they wanted to wait till me and some others were fully geared before doing the harder ones with us – great friends aren’t they. Since they left I’ve been working through group content on my own. The LFG tool has been great. I inform lost souls about it from time to time. Several of them have expressed their desire to kiss me. Hopefully most of them are female. I’ve been doing it slowly, at my own pace. Unlike the hectic “Living Story” content, The dungeons are relaxing to do – because I can do them at my leisure.
And then an entire dungeon path was removed from game without any forewarning – with a silly plant pun to boot? I nergled. I nergled hard. I have no idea what nergle means, but it seems to accurately describe my response to the bizarre direction Arena Net took when implementing this new path. I didn’t rant, I didn’t try to understand, I just nergled – and I nergled hard. I sunk my head into my hands and made strange murloc noises, because I just googled the work nergle, and that seems to be what it relates to.
Its not just about enjoying a game. The amount of time I’ve invested in Guild Wars 2, I care about this game. I want to see it succeed. I want to see it get better. I want to see it GROW. I want to see more stuff appear in it for me to do, I want the horizon’s of the world to expand. I want to walk on foreign shores, greet new people and then kill them with my SAB themed pistol.