Guild Wars 2

I have so many questions. Like what’s happening with Glint’s egg? What happened after Mordremoth’s death? What happened with the Sylvari? Is Anet going to stop delivering Living World updates?

We all have questions. But they are delaying the Living Story release until after the third raid wing, when the second has only just been released. They’re still working on it, but its going to be quite awhile with no content.

Why are they making raid content? I remember specifically choosing GW2 because I got sick of the raiding drama in other MMOs.

To draw a new audience and keep veterans in need of a challenge playing, not all content is aimed at the entire audience.

I’m a casual gamer who hates grinding. The moment a game feels grindy I stop playing. I was disappointed by the grinding nature of the new mastery skills. I would rather play new content (even if it’s small) and see where the story goes instead of grind mastery points. The story is what I find most engaging about GW2. But, I understand. It’s a business decision to create raid content. Well, when they start expanding the story again I’ll be back.

It’s not just a business decision…
They’re trying to create content that appeals to different players. The Living World appeals to you, while Raids appeal to another set of players. It’s the same reason we have PvE content, PvP content, and WvW content. Not all players are the same. Just because they’re preparing one type of content for the next release doesn’t meant they’re neglecting other parts of the game. Likewise just because raids aren’t content you personally want doesn’t mean that it’s a business decision.

The bottom line is they are working on the next living world season and we have an approximate release window. It’s better for them to wait a little while so that as many people as possible can finish HoT and be up to date on the story.

And regarding the grind of HoT – they’re going to be reducing it in April with the Spring Quarterly update. how much is unknown, but they stated that the Spring update (which will be in April sometime) will focus on reducing the grind of the new content.

They could also do something about the rampant HoT Meta events. Either most maps are empty and no one is around to do them, or plenty are around and no one wants to do them. I’ve never seen Dragon’s Stand or Octovine succeed even though I’ve done them countless times. Meta events is like the worse form of PUGing. It’s frustrating…

The problem I see is they keep worrying about rebuilding and polishing the base while actual content gets pushed back further and further.

When they showed us HOT, they said that the reason it was so light on actual content (no fractals, guild missions, etc) was because they were taking the opportunity to implement base systems that would make it easier for them to quickly role out new content.

Then we enter into what is starting to look like an 11 month drought on new content. Worse, they make the questionable decision to package all of the living story together, offering the excuse that it is for “quality” purposes.

There is a pretty severe disconnect somewhere. Either the right hand isn’t communicating with the left at Anet or they have, once again, decided to change direction in terms of game design.

They gave us an expansion that was supposed to make new content delivery easier and more streamlined, but we have yet to see anything new in terms of guild missions, fractals, story steps, dynamic events (other than tweaks to Shatterer), adventures or even legendary weapons. Yes, they have released raids for a small percentage of the population, but – as many are quick to point out – those were originally considered part of the expansion itself.

Then we get the AMA about Colin with some small timeline discussions that, instead of showing us they are using that foundation they built, only offers excuses about why we have to wait so long for new content (which they describe in extremely vague terms). It makes it very hard to be excited about the short term (and long term) future of GW2.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

It’s not just a business decision…
They’re trying to create content that appeals to different players. The Living World appeals to you, while Raids appeal to another set of players. It’s the same reason we have PvE content, PvP content, and WvW content. Not all players are the same. Just because they’re preparing one type of content for the next release doesn’t meant they’re neglecting other parts of the game. Likewise just because raids aren’t content you personally want doesn’t mean that it’s a business decision.

The bottom line is they are working on the next living world season and we have an approximate release window. It’s better for them to wait a little while so that as many people as possible can finish HoT and be up to date on the story.

The issue is that it is just too long to wait for new living world content. It would have been better if they had alternated the release of different types of content so that different types of players would all have something new to do.

Keriana.9635:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

…

The issue is that it is just too long to wait for new living world content. It would have been better if they had alternated the release of different types of content so that different types of players would all have something new to do.

If they had the Living Story done, they would have released it already. Lets hope they can finish it as soon as possible, the waiting its killing a lot of people (including me!).

Keriana.9635:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

It’s not just a business decision…
They’re trying to create content that appeals to different players. The Living World appeals to you, while Raids appeal to another set of players. It’s the same reason we have PvE content, PvP content, and WvW content. Not all players are the same. Just because they’re preparing one type of content for the next release doesn’t meant they’re neglecting other parts of the game. Likewise just because raids aren’t content you personally want doesn’t mean that it’s a business decision.

The bottom line is they are working on the next living world season and we have an approximate release window. It’s better for them to wait a little while so that as many people as possible can finish HoT and be up to date on the story.

The issue is that it is just too long to wait for new living world content. It would have been better if they had alternated the release of different types of content so that different types of players would all have something new to do.

Alternating content types is exactly what they are doing. They do have to allow that things may not necessarily be done when they had first expected though. You also have no idea how large the next LW content is going to be, how many people are working on it, and what kind of content they’re implementing. It may just be that they needed a bit more time to spend on it because it’s bigger than past releases or for some other reason.

They have different teams working on each thing (and the raid team is quite small).

Emtiarbi.3281:

If they had the Living Story done, they would have released it already. Lets hope they can finish it as soon as possible, the waiting its killing a lot of people (including me!).

I am sure they would have. I was just hoping for it sooner! ;p

FlamingFoxx.1305:
Alternating content types is exactly what they are doing. They do have to allow that things may not necessarily be done when they had first expected though. You also have no idea how large the next LW content is going to be, how many people are working on it, and what kind of content they’re implementing. It may just be that they needed a bit more time to spend on it because it’s bigger than past releases or for some other reason.

They have different teams working on each thing (and the raid team is quite small).

Well, we used to get new LW updates about once every 2 weeks, and now we get it what, once a year? That is a pretty big change. Maybe once every 2 weeks is too difficult to maintain, but I was hoping for at least quarterly LW updates.

Keriana.9635:

Emtiarbi.3281:

If they had the Living Story done, they would have released it already. Lets hope they can finish it as soon as possible, the waiting its killing a lot of people (including me!).

I am sure they would have. I was just hoping for it sooner! ;p

FlamingFoxx.1305:
Alternating content types is exactly what they are doing. They do have to allow that things may not necessarily be done when they had first expected though. You also have no idea how large the next LW content is going to be, how many people are working on it, and what kind of content they’re implementing. It may just be that they needed a bit more time to spend on it because it’s bigger than past releases or for some other reason.

They have different teams working on each thing (and the raid team is quite small).

Well, we used to get new LW updates about once every 2 weeks, and now we get it what, once a year? That is a pretty big change. Maybe once every 2 weeks is too difficult to maintain, but I was hoping for at least quarterly LW updates.

I think quarterly would have made sense if the 2 week schedule didn’t work – and it was the to the standards/scope of season 2 (specifically Drytop and Silverwastes). Once a year means, to me at least, that isn’t really a living world anymore – its just the standard content drop model every AAA MMO uses – which is really sad.

Living world was abandoned a long time ago. After season 1 LW was abandoned in favor of living instanced content.

Season 2 was also living world. The main story was – just like in Season 1 – told via story instances, but there was a lot of ambient story – just like in Season 1 – that was told via events.

humm blob events or instanced maps will continnue on LS3 for sure, but i would bet in mostly instanced zones, since blob driven content on server shards didnt proove to work that well.

Imo this game would not loose that many player if stayed sever based, with more player/heavy guild driven mechanics, i think Living stuff would fit pretty nice in that gamemodel, gw2 is even way to much themeparked for what Anet makes…

I am keeping my trust on it not being abandoned as it’s the main reason I still check the forums every now and then and log in once in a blue moon.

HoT isn’t as enjoyable to me due to very group oriented, very much on the timer and being more difficult to me as solo player then I’d like when I play a game to relax. Seeing my free time which can be assigned to gaming is limited I won’t put that time into a game I stand around wondering what to do that is fun and relaxed, and i haven’t done dozens of times already.

It’s not like I am done with GW2. I love the game when there is stuff for me to do. But I just don’t have much reason to log in at the moment. Which makes me a bit of a stranger to the guild and as such lessens the reasons to log in more and more. I personally do not raid and never will for various reasons. So that content as far as i am concerned is no new content as for me for my play-sessions it would make no difference if it’s there or not.

I am waiting on the living story (and the festivals) to give me a reason to log in again. But it looks like it will be a long wait still. A shame as I’d love to play the game and have fun in it with something new. But I had a big gap in my playtime before, been away for nearly 1,5 years before. And I came back and had fun after. But if there would be no new Living story that could well mean I will have little reason to log in more then once in a blue moon just for the heck of it. And I will have little reason to till Living story drops.

The Living World from Season 1, seems to have been forgotten. Too many people confusing Living World with Living Story in my opinion..

Technically “Living World” is the term ArenaNet uses now. When Season 1 began, they used Living Story.

EragamerLG.2390:

The Living World from Season 1, seems to have been forgotten. Too many people confusing Living World with Living Story in my opinion..

How is it forgotten? It was developed as one-time content and as much as ANet might want to bring it back, it would cost a lot of resources to do so, at the likely expense of newer content. Given that the community wants everything, my guess is that ANet probably won’t bring it back unless something else they are doing makes it easier to do so.

I’d recommend looking into it before posting, they’re waiting until after the 3rd Raid Wing (sometime in July most likely)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

EragamerLG.2390:

The Living World from Season 1, seems to have been forgotten. Too many people confusing Living World with Living Story in my opinion..

How is it forgotten? It was developed as one-time content and as much as ANet might want to bring it back, it would cost a lot of resources to do so, at the likely expense of newer content. Given that the community wants everything, my guess is that ANet probably won’t bring it back unless something else they are doing makes it easier to do so.

I think Eragamer was being critical about the terminology of “living world” versus what we actually get and is one of those who believe that Season 1’s content was a ‘proper living world’ while season 2 wasn’t. Truth is neither was, as both only furthered the main story (or stories, as there were two in both – one following Kiel/LA, and one following Scarlet/biconics which is the main story).

Also, some devs have mentioned desiring to bring back Season 1 in a permanent format, but that it’s more work than worth as it stands. A silly thing, imo, given that as time goes on more and more players are going without knowing a full chapter of GW2’s story (going from personal story to season 2, little to no in-game knowledge of Season 1’s events which very directly lead into Season 2).

I can’t be the only customer who hates sylvari at this point, can i?

Hate? Nah. Tired of them being the focus? Ja.

HoT should have been “the focus” TBH, but they skipped just about everything that needed to be covered…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

EragamerLG.2390:

The Living World from Season 1, seems to have been forgotten. Too many people confusing Living World with Living Story in my opinion..

How is it forgotten? It was developed as one-time content and as much as ANet might want to bring it back, it would cost a lot of resources to do so, at the likely expense of newer content. Given that the community wants everything, my guess is that ANet probably won’t bring it back unless something else they are doing makes it easier to do so.

I think Eragamer was being critical about the terminology of “living world” versus what we actually get and is one of those who believe that Season 1’s content was a ‘proper living world’ while season 2 wasn’t. Truth is neither was, as both only furthered the main story (or stories, as there were two in both – one following Kiel/LA, and one following Scarlet/biconics which is the main story).

This was my point, yes. I firmly believe Season 1 was more of a Living World Living Story, while Season 2 was merely a Living Story, an ongoing storyline to progress the narrative. I think the big difference within the terminology would be not only the sheer scale and impact of events, but the fact that in a living world we get more foreshadowing(remember when the black veil started appearing in original Kessex Hills? And we had no idea what it was.) and things change around the world to give it a more dynamic feel(Scarlet’s Ley-Line Pillars say hello, as well as her army invsasions), while Season 2 was not only instanced, but the meta’s within each map that also worked to progress the narrative were completely isolated from the rest of Tyria. One-time events with a short notice and short-stay may have created problems for some players, like the Lost Shores update, a true one-time event, but prolonging episodes and events like in Season 1 was much more suitable without sacrificing scale and impact.

I honestly wish ANet somehow find a middle-ground between both the Living Story and the Living World as it would be a shame to give up one concept for the other.

I understand the technical constraints of both formats. I’m merely saying what we’re getting with Season 2’s format isn’t a Living World, if anything, it’ll be a Living Story.

We had gotten some form of foreshadowing with Season 2, as well as progressive updates to the world after the releases came.

One example for both was the waypoints, and how over days they’d flicker and then a vine would spawn next to them, then the vine would wrap around them, and some would be destroyed. Players had tracked them and plotted out their paths – which led straight to Fort Concordia and Iron Marches, and through Fort Salma, where we saw Mordremoth’s vine in fuller force. This went away with the fourth episode, when Taimi ‘fixed’ the waypoint problem.

And then there was the Vinewrath’s vines, that were progressing slowly ever since Silverwastes was first released, which foreshadowed the assault on Camp Resolve.

There were other, smaller, ones like seeing the “mysterious figure” centaur at the cliff edge before Episode 2’s release, hinting towards the centaur camp.

Truth be told, Season 1 did not have as much foreshadowing as you proclaim. If you want to stretch the term to include ‘tying one chapter into something practically fully unrelated via small commentary’ then we got one for Secret of Southsun, one for Dragon Bash, and one for Escape from LA, but the only true foreshadowing was just the Tower of Nightmares arc which you mentioned.

Season 1’s format was far from suitable due to the temporary nature – sure it was better than true one-time events like the Ancient Karka fight, but it was hardly suitable at all. Nor was it a Living World at all, because every single update focused solely on the two main plots. There was never any updates to the rest of the world. EVERYTHING in Season 1 dealt with either Scarlet’s plot (aka Mordremoth’s plot) or Kiel’s plot. Just as everything in Season 2 deals with Mordremoth’s plot or LA’s reconstruction (aka Kiel’s plot).

From the beginning, we’ve been getting a Living Story. I don’t get why ArenaNet decided to start calling it the Living World after Flame and Frost (yes, originally it was called Living Story, not Living World – Living World is the second name for it).

That said, personally? I’d love a mixture of Season 2’s format and the format used for Tower of Nightmares arc. An open world preview that’d go away – just aesthetics maybe dialogue and NPCs – followed by a forced story instance (which starts the journal) that gives access to a changed location (changed/new events, changed/new npcs, and changes to hearts on top of aesthetic changes) and new location(s) with more story instances (which will always hold this second appearance of old location and first appearance of new locations), which culminates into a closing instance and a second change to the old and new locations related.

But that’s still not a Living World. And it won’t ever be until they recontinue adding unrelated events and NPCs across the game. The only time they had close to a Living World was the first Halloween when they added the Modus Scleris and a few mini-dungeons that had no relation to Halloween.

Dante.1508:

I can’t be the only customer who hates sylvari at this point, can i?

They’re clearly the favorite pet of the writers. To bad they’re a boring race.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

We had gotten some form of foreshadowing with Season 2, as well as progressive updates to the world after the releases came.

One example for both was the waypoints, and how over days they’d flicker and then a vine would spawn next to them, then the vine would wrap around them, and some would be destroyed. Players had tracked them and plotted out their paths – which led straight to Fort Concordia and Iron Marches, and through Fort Salma, where we saw Mordremoth’s vine in fuller force. This went away with the fourth episode, when Taimi ‘fixed’ the waypoint problem.

And then there was the Vinewrath’s vines, that were progressing slowly ever since Silverwastes was first released, which foreshadowed the assault on Camp Resolve.

There were other, smaller, ones like seeing the “mysterious figure” centaur at the cliff edge before Episode 2’s release, hinting towards the centaur camp.

Truth be told, Season 1 did not have as much foreshadowing as you proclaim. If you want to stretch the term to include ‘tying one chapter into something practically fully unrelated via small commentary’ then we got one for Secret of Southsun, one for Dragon Bash, and one for Escape from LA, but the only true foreshadowing was just the Tower of Nightmares arc which you mentioned.

Season 1’s format was far from suitable due to the temporary nature – sure it was better than true one-time events like the Ancient Karka fight, but it was hardly suitable at all. Nor was it a Living World at all, because every single update focused solely on the two main plots. There was never any updates to the rest of the world. EVERYTHING in Season 1 dealt with either Scarlet’s plot (aka Mordremoth’s plot) or Kiel’s plot. Just as everything in Season 2 deals with Mordremoth’s plot or LA’s reconstruction (aka Kiel’s plot).

From the beginning, we’ve been getting a Living Story. I don’t get why ArenaNet decided to start calling it the Living World after Flame and Frost (yes, originally it was called Living Story, not Living World – Living World is the second name for it).

That said, personally? I’d love a mixture of Season 2’s format and the format used for Tower of Nightmares arc. An open world preview that’d go away – just aesthetics maybe dialogue and NPCs – followed by a forced story instance (which starts the journal) that gives access to a changed location (changed/new events, changed/new npcs, and changes to hearts on top of aesthetic changes) and new location(s) with more story instances (which will always hold this second appearance of old location and first appearance of new locations), which culminates into a closing instance and a second change to the old and new locations related.

But that’s still not a Living World. And it won’t ever be until they recontinue adding unrelated events and NPCs across the game. The only time they had close to a Living World was the first Halloween when they added the Modus Scleris and a few mini-dungeons that had no relation to Halloween.

I never proclaimed one season had more foreshadowing than the other. I stated that a Living World has more potential for foreshadowing than a Living Story. Both Seasons had this, I merely used examples from the first season.
ANet didn’t start calling it Living World after Living Story. In fact, Living World was how the world of Tyria for GW2 was marketed(Check the back of the hard cover, check the 2012 Manifesto), and the Lost Shores Special One Time Event was their first experiment at that scale. Living Story didn’t start until January 2013.

My discussion here isn’t with what ANet wanted to do and did instead, but rather how those two concepts have different potential, that if used together can go a long way. I’m not saying Season 2 didn’t have a Living World facet, which it did, but personally the fact that most of Season 2’s LS was instanced almost overshadowed the LW side of things. Battle for Lions Arch and the Tower of Nightmares were good examples of how players had to band together for Tyria, instead of going to an instance and becoming the main character.
Season 2’s LS is very different from Season 1’s LS.
In Season 1, GW2 being the MMO it is, the narrative gave a reason for all players to be together with one common goal, Season 2 is more of a Single Player focused story with no mention or even acknowledgement of other players, with the exception of the few LW events, which still didn’t solve the issue as well as Season 1 did. I understand the 1325 PS had the player character as the commander, and that was our character’s story and how players became aware of that common goal in unifying Tyria. But Season 2 and HoT brought back the idea of singleplayer-protagonism to the forefront and it stops being an MMO story and becomes a single-player story.
Case in point, A Living World has more context for an overall goal, while Season 2’s LS drastically changed this context. All players being commanders doesn’t make much sense, and Season 1 effectively reiterated on this, while Season 2 pulled back.

Edit: I didn’t include Halloween as the first Living World event as that has been a recurring annual event since GW1.

Hmm, I did not feel that LS1 created a common goal for all players. My goal, for example, was to not play after the first chapters. Terrible writing and tedious gameplay (IMO) preventing a player character from feeling like a relevant part of what was going on meant that the concept of LS or LW was lessened.

I think somewhere along the way they lost focus. Maybe they listened to the complains of the vocal part of the community that didn’t want ephemeral content – but that is the essence of a Living World, isn’kitten. The fact that now they have Raids when it was one of the differential aspects of GW2 it’s a sign they don’t stick to their vision and try to please everyone. I think that’s wrong. WoW, The King of Kings already pleases a bit of every gaming preference within MMO… GW2 was different, they should stick to that. No end-game, no raid nonsense, a dynamic living world, that was their vision.
Maybe with leading change they’ll be back on track again.

LS is dead, and I’m glad it’s gone. It was a poor content delivery vehicle IMO, the content wasn’t very good and was too short-lived in scope.

Besides, the only way to get a real living story is the way EVE does it – full sandbox/emergent gameplay.

LS is so dead that it’s mobbed with the tiniest event coming out today.

Oh wait, that doesn’t mean it’s dead after all. Oops.