Guild Wars 2

In a recent interview, Colin said that it would be tricky to advance Orr’s timeline because it would split the community, which could be true, but I think there’s a way to do it.

First, we don’t need “pristine” Orr. Give Trehearn some time to work. That can wait a few years to fully clean up Zhaitan’s aftermath. It would be nice though to show an Orr with Zhaitan’s corpse in it, a bigger, more fortified Pact presence, sort of like when work crews are working on Lion’s Arch or Southsun, an Orr that is still messed up, but working on getting better. This means that you can leave most of the events intact, and maybe just move around some of the permanent spawns.

Second, you wouldn’t need to leave “old Orr” up in it’s current form. Just take the current three Orr zones, and make a “simple” version of them, one where all the events have been disabled, all the paths opened up, all the completion goals removed, and many of the enemy spawns pared down, just enough to give the place ambiance, but not so many that they get in the way. Maybe also seal off areas like the jump puzzle and reduce the quality of mob rewards so there’d be no point to farming anything there. Basically remove all impediments to them, and all reasons to be there other than story mode completion.

Nobody would have reason to ever be in “broken Orr” unless they were working on Story Mode completion, but it would be a place where you could continue your personal story and complete it normally. To access it, the minimal way would be to just have a portal to it from LA, but ideally you could be a prompt when trying to enter Straits from the two natural entrances if you haven’t completed the personal story yet.

In this way, people who just want to farm (or jumping puzzle, world complete, etc.) and not follow the personal story could just go to “new Orr” and have fun, while those who wanted to play story mode could still reach “old Orr,” which would be simplifie for their convenience, and offer no reason to go their beyond story mode.

i’ll preface what i am about to say by stating that i’m really just another schmuck who knows nothing about game design with an opinion about game design. that said, i found Colin’s comments a bit confusing. in my mind, why can’t the current Orr be turned into instanced story zones thus paving the way for a new Orr?

The problem is that the final chapter of the personal story & Zhaitan’s death either hav occurred, are occurring, or will occur in a character’s personal timeline.

Right now, Orr is so vague that it serves as both pre- and post-Zhaitan Orr.

A dedicated post-Zhaitan Orr would have to be unaccessible to characters who haven’t completed their personal story yet – thus dividing the player base. (I’m not personally that bothered, but many players already seem to feel that Orr is too abandoned to do many of the dynamic events.)

And if there was a post-Zhaitan Orr that was slowly healing, should it be easier or harder to adventure on that map? Logic says that it should have fewer risen in it, but that would potentially be robbing more advanced characters of endgame.

So, all sorts of problems.

I would love to see Orr heal, but I don’t know how to achieve this without losing the last illusion of timeline coherence.

It seems a bit puzzling to me that Colin would say that. In essence, isn’t the whole point of their living story that the world lives and changes after what we, the players have done? It’s the best kind of result we can hope for, the purification of Orr.

I understand his concern that how the newer players would feel about it. But I’d say – tough! You’ll have to deal with a different kind of Orr. A one with not as desolate as before.

A dedicated post-Zhaitan Orr would have to be unaccessible to characters who haven’t completed their personal story yet –

Well, I think they could leave it up to players to choose. Do you want to ignore the personal story on your character, or do you want to keep it. If you want to keep it, you’d go to the “mini-Orr” for completing it, while if you wanted to skip to the farming and stuff in “new Orr” you could do that too. I have eight characters, only one of which fully completed the personal story. I’d really want the option to keep bringing the other characters to “farming Orr” and just accept that my first character killed the big Z without them.

And if there was a post-Zhaitan Orr that was slowly healing, should it be easier or harder to adventure on that map? Logic says that it should have fewer risen in it, but that would potentially be robbing more advanced characters of endgame.

I would maybe have less wandering mobs, but the events could remain intact.

Id personally prefer seeing the personal story changed, have zhaitan not dead yet and have him handled as a new PS arc or even a pure LS event (big buildup of content, new Orr maps, new zhaitan fight within a new permanent dungeon for the world etc).

This would mean a replay PS system would be needed, for players who want to re-experience the end of the PS, but more importantly, the zhaitan fight can be re-implemented and Orr could eventually be purified from undead corruption.

Other MMO’s tend to handle this with Instancing, not sure if GW2 can. Frankly if they added a new part of Orr it should be one that is in the process of being purified or has been purified so there are far fewer Risen and more (new) wildlife moving in. You could make it so that once a character has completed the PS in it’s totality on an account unlocks the zone for all further chars (Since not everyone wants to retread the last half the story/do Arah SM on different characters).

There could always be an explorable map version of Arah with a time set some time after Zhaitan’s defeat.

Something shared, kind of like Southsun, that unlike the rest of Orr, can go on with time as it’s set after the personal story.

You would not get to see the rest of Orr restored, but you’ll get to see Arah turning into an actual outpost, then slowly getting people until becoming a proper city again.

Id personally prefer seeing the personal story changed, have zhaitan not dead yet and have him handled as a new PS arc or even a pure LS event (big buildup of content, new Orr maps, new zhaitan fight within a new permanent dungeon for the world etc).

This would mean a replay PS system would be needed, for players who want to re-experience the end of the PS, but more importantly, the zhaitan fight can be re-implemented and Orr could eventually be purified from undead corruption.

Well, they have talked about redoing the Zhaitan fight, and I’d be cool with that, especially as a redoable dungeon. It might be cool as a Fractal dungeon. I do think the story should advance though, they need to have a world that evolves over time, and with the world they’ve set up, part of that evolution MUST involve working our way through the various elder dragons.

I haven’t seen the interview where Colin talks about advancing the timeline. Can someone link it please?

In some ways the Devs have created their own nightmare here. GW2 is supposed to be a living, evolving story that constantly updates and changes. But at the same time they’re creating a situation where a large part of our characters lives are frozen at the beginning of the story. I see and understand why this happened and I can’t really fault them for making those decisions either.

That said, I think the solution is fairly simple. Well simple in concept, difficult and expensive in execution. Just advance the beginning story for new characters and advance the state of Orr.

Here’s an outline of what I would do. First, create the next generation of heroes in the personal story. Their story should focus less on the reunification of Destiny’s Edge and the formation of the pact and more on building/expanding the pact and preparing for the assault on the next dragon (use Kralk as an example.) Their story could revolve around locating Kralk, learning how to fight Kralk, then training other races to beat him. It would culminate with a large scale assault and, hopefully, destruction of the dragon.

Second, start the clean up of Orr. In the personal story it was mentioned that Zhaitan has ossuaries (sp?) that created Risen for him. Some were killed in the story, but not likely all of them. Their continued existence is hindering the healing Trehearn started and keeps the numbers of Risen high. As the living story advances, create some events for players to destroy the ossuaries. As a side mechanic, create a system to govern the population of Risen in Orr. As the ossuaries are destroyed, lower the population and respawn rate until it’s relatively minimal.

Concurrent with this, create a more official/permanent Pact HQ than Fort Trinity. Also, create an Order/Pact research system similar to how the Guilds work. The goal being to create new weapons/magic/tech designed specifically to take down one of the other dragons. Characters will be able to earn influence for the Orders and even help vote on what the next research item should be (simple majority wins?)

Third, reclaim Orr. After the Risen are weakened and now that they won’t replenish themselves as easily, have the pact start creating more bases in Orr with the goal of having “safe” zones that are “Risen Free”. (If you’ve read World War Z, kinda like that.) In the safe zones normal mobs will start spawning and become much like any other map. Orr was once a beautiful land the races should work together to help make it so again and reclaim it from Zhaitans influence. Repair the cities and temples. Invite the gods back maybe? Defend it from one of the other dragons minions? Maybe Ascalon’s ghosts want to move in? Zhaitan’s death left a power void in Orr, I’m sure something wants to move in. New events can be created to bring in supplies, rebuild temples, fight branded creatures, etc.

I think this creates a framework to fix the timeline issue and advance the story with the dragons. It also does it in such a way to be modular and reusable after the second dragon is killed and it’s flexible enough that it could easily take 2-3 years to finish with Orr at a reasonable rate. The concept meshes well with what Anet has already stated for their release schedule and how they’re building their events teams. It also has the benefit of giving existing players more reasons to create new characters and replay the stories. The downside is the likely considerable cost in recreating new starting content every 2-3 years or so.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Apologies for the length.

There are timeline in the areas?

Don’t get me wrong I can somewhat understand the reason (however it still infuriate me that they keep excluding Orr from the bi weekly events so it’s still a hard area to navigate due to less players in it) but I still do not see why it is excluded to getting those special event drops? I mean the last event “kite basket” were a perfect example of suitable events drop being placed in Orr (they came from the sky thus they landed in a danagerous zone).

Honestly does it bother the players who venture in Orr that much when they see an event item looted from a Risen and question when it happen (timeline)?

I think we should just be able help trahearne cleanse orr over an extend period of time. Something that slowly happens either by Anet slowly adding dynamic events that chain together or adding a huge update to orr were we the players are helping the soldiers take ground so they can cleanse the land.

It would certainly bring people back to orr if done right. They could do something like the karka event but always going back and forth. Also with bosses that respawn and can cause undead corruption to spread again unless defeated over this period of time during orr’s cleanse instead of a big one time event. It could involve multiple types of dynamic events with escorts, group events, gathering events, events were we actually cleanse the land and tons of others even some mist related events. They could also have the undead lich taking over elona tie into this maybe having him take control of the leftover undead across Orr. This would allow them to keep the temples as well because they could just say he is constantly bringing them back as they are extremely powerful and can help him spread his rule in that area. (although I don’t know if this could work lore wise it’s just a thought)

This could be the theme of the update were they redo the Zhaitan fight(if they decide to do this) to really give the personal story the send off it deserves. We get an awesome dragon fight and help cleanse orr all in one update i think that would be fun and tie together really well. The dungeon will still feel stuck in time of course and that won’t be a problem as most dungeons will feel like this for the majority of the game. If they really felt uncomfortable about this they could throw it in the fractals and make a old dungeon area of the fractals were players can return to the dungeons that have come and gone because of the living story.

How to continue the story?

Simple, Zhaitan didn´t die!

Or at least not the way normal creatures and Dragons die.

I admit, it´s not a very innovative plot device.
Tolkien did it with Sauron, whoever wrote the Bible did it with Jesus, Lucas did it with Obi-Wan and lately Rowling did it with frikken Voldemort!
I´ll leave it to the payed staff to properly continue this thing.

As for the time-gating of Orr and the adjacent Risen influenced maps, I fear that´s inevitable and in fact needed.
Technically it could be just as simple as automatically dumping everyone with an unfinished PStory on an overflow with the current maps.

It gets trickier with the actual Temple fights and the rest of the events.
I heard that the Orr maps have 1500 events. About the majority of the events in this game.
That´s a lot of stuff that needs rewriting.
Which is ironical as I think not 25% of the player base has ever seen a major number of these events.

But I heard ANet has currently 4 teams working on other important stuff.
Oh well, maybe next year.

When you look at Orr in the world map you can see that we can only explore half of it, leaving plenty of space for 1 or 2 new zones which could show an Orr after the death of Zhaitan, e.g. plants re-growing, maybe another big pact headquarters etc. Anet could just restrict these new zones to players who have completed the personal story, or just completed Arah storymode. The zones could have event chains based on the Cleanup and rejuvenation of Orr and would be a great way to follow on from the end of the story. Well, i think it would be good. :P

Or you just change the PS. The Pact Arc in Orr could become a Pact Arc in the Crystal Desert, or wherever.

Have it connected to Home Instancing somehow.

Let’s say you get a commemorative plaque for helping to defeat Zhaitan. Putting that plaque up in your Home Instance makes it so Orr maps you go to are “cleansed” versions. If you want to go back to Risen Orr, take the plaque down. Make it so you can only toggle this once a day, and taking the plaque down prevents you from taking part in any new Personal Story steps until you put it back up.

It would be like promoting from Pre-Searing to Post-Searing, only more like guesting and you can actually go back to Pre-Searing.

This will no doubt split the community, but not irreversibly so. Depending on your world server’s community, you might end up having a pre-heavy community or a post-heavy community or a community that switches with the zerg. This could end up with players from a pre-heavy world guesting on a post-heavy world and vice-versa.