Guild Wars 2

Enough is enough of the always goody goody innocent style of stories.
You better start writing some more dark themed stories for the people that played GW1 and are no longer puberty teens anymore, you know, you remember them, the ones that actually started this whole GW universe revolution, remember how cruel and dark themed GW1 was ? we want more of that at least story wise !

I’ve had enough of trahaerne, logan, kiel and now jennah !

give me some darker stories please for the love of Abaddon !
see what I did there :P

I think I’d agree.

Prophesies was harsh, and tragic, and dark, and full of twists. By Grenth, we were the villains!
Everything that happened in Factions.. and in fact on Cantha at all.. was terrible. To put it mildly. Not a bad story.. a really good, horror story… Nothing good happens in Cantha. Ever.
Nightfall was exciting and dark. Then darker. And Darker. And “oh… no…..”
All the other storylines after that, were, to one degree or another, tragic at their core. Desperate, often struggling to find the last glimmer of hope.
And they were all beautiful.

Guild Wars 2 has not been the same kind of story.
It’s been an action adventure flick. There’s been moments of tragedy, little bits of sadness in the living story. You will often be responsible for bad things. But it’s overshadowed by the high fantasy story that’s sweeping along. And that’s not really a bad thing, per say, it’s just different from before. The bad part is, it was built up to be a story of desperation, about races facing utter annihilation, and it has really not delivered that feel as effectively as it could have.
The living story, and I have always believed it was all connected, has crept over us slowly. Maybe too slowly. It has tried to have that flavor that Guild Wars had. I’ve seen the echoes of stories past. And I have high hopes for the twists that I sincerely hope are coming. But the impact has been lessened by the episodic presentation – and not enough obvious, permanent changes in the larger world. If the living world story arc had been released as an expansion, with the whole thing there, so we could play the story at our own pace, I think it would have had better reception. But then, the little alterations in the larger world wouldn’t have been possible.
Guild Wars 2 is a different kind of game, with a different kind of presentation, and a different kind of story. But I agree, I would love to see a more tragic turn.

I’d point out stories that are dark for no reason except to be dark as just as boring, and tend to be the sort of crap only enjpoyed by early 20-somethings who think mature story = blood, death and violence

The bar was set too high in GW1. Nothing I’ve seen in GW2 so far leads me to believe that the stories will ever come close to the quality that GW1 was.

TehPwnerer.7215:

The bar was set too high in GW1. Nothing I’ve seen in GW2 so far leads me to believe that the stories will ever come close to the quality that GW1 was.

The target audience now is different. The books have some glimmers of hope.

This is why I could never bring myself to play a Sylvari, they acted so friendly and 1-dimensional that I wanted to puke.

It’s your fault for voting Ellen Kiel if you wanted darker stories.

I don’t think GW1 veterans voted for Ellen Kiel … except for GW1 pvp-ers … that’s a special breed

BRING BACK SHIRO!!!! I have 8 fully geared and fully explored etc.. in GW1, and I voted for Ellen. :P

Kovac.4372:

I don’t think GW1 veterans voted for Ellen Kiel … except for GW1 pvp-ers … that’s a special breed

I voted for Kiel and I’m a GW1 vet, granted I’m under the impression Ellen won’t be a good leader and will cause a lot more chaos because she’s going to start a war on consortium etc.

IMO, the stories of GW1 were not that well written out until Nightfall and Eye of the North. Betrayal is good in a story… once. But not Betrayal, then Betrayal, then Betrayal, then more Betrayal! It was hard to keep up with prophecies due to the betrayals and felt jumpy due to that. Just because they were dark… doesn’t mean they were well-written. I’m hoping GW2’s story improves over time like it did in GW1. In GW2 the best-written parts of the story are the beginning stories that we could test in beta. It seems to drag on towards the end. Also, I feel that perhaps Sylvari should have had Trahearne as a fellow Wyld Hunt Valiant and that other races should have had different buddies performing different functions (maybe Trahearne cleans up Orr still, but the Asura buddy started building up Orr again, etc). As a Sylvari, I liked having Trahearne on my team. It felt like he was my peer and it just made sense for us to team up as we were doing two Wyld Hunts that fit well together.

Quite obviously since the last two LS villains are Sylvari and since the Nightmare Court exists, Sylvari aren’t “pure and innocent and goody-two-shoes.” And please, can’t we have a villain that’s not a Sylvari or a Mesmer?! Unfortunately it seems that they like to reuse plotlines and similar villains.

I’d like to see some darker stories involving the human politics and human/Charr relations. I really liked the Ghosts of Ascalon book exploring that side. I also would’ve thought it would’ve been more likely for a Charr to plan an assassination attempt since the queen showed the Charr as “one of the enemies” of the human people in the opening ceremony with logan. And since Anise made it Rytlock. Also, the tension between the humans and the Charr goes all the way back to GW1 and can potentially make some great Living Stories, either overcoming it or showing the darker side thereof.

Man In Zero G.8312:

Prophesies was harsh, and tragic, and dark, and full of twists. By Grenth, we were the villains!

I never even played GW1 but I read up about this storyline, and it sounded amazing. I can’t imagine what it felt like to play the game back then when you finally realised you had been mislead the entire time, and doomed the lives of innocents.

That kind of storyline is what we need, something that basically takes everything you think you know and flips it on its head.

everything so far has been horribly predictable. I’m hoping that come the 20th its going to be something amazing, not just. “hi I’m scarlet and I’m the leader of the aetherblades, who setup up the molten alliance” This we have already predicted.

Death and destruction and twists.

Why is a dark story better? Because it has more to give, even for a teenage audience people love stories that make you feel sadness for the chars you’ve grown to love.

Dark doesn’t have to mean bad ending, it simply means making the atmosphere more tragic, loosing major characters, defeating the bad guy, but not without scars or painful memories.

Dark stories make for more personal experiences and as such, more possitive ones because the irony is, the darker a situation is, the more happy you feel when you are the one bringing hope to the lost.

We saw glimmers of it in GW2 but GW1 definatley had a lot more by a long shot.

The living story? I cant say its really been “dark” for me, its more “heroic” and the problem with a heroic fantasy is you know where the twists are going to come, whos going to betray who, whats going to happen next.

That said? I love time travel, the Aetherblades have POTENTIAL to be more interesting than they currently are, but we need more exposition, we need to know who these people are, what they want, we need to feel a closer sense of connection to them, they need to do something “personal” to us.

The reason that the Molten Alliance was so interesting was because as time went on, you saw the world change, you saw the affects of their actions hurt people, and it left you a personal longing to see them suffer for it.

Then you look at south sun and- OH GOD WHY DID YOU EVEN-…

What I mean to say is -coughs politely- Please for the love of Abbadon and Dhuum and Menzies never again do something like South sun because that wasn’t dark that was just PAINFUL.

The villain was dull and uninteresting, why? Because all of his story was told in the short-story, and in background, we never met him until one occasion and he had like what, 3 lines of dialogue?

Even in his previous encounter he wasn’t much of a char to get to know.

The thing is…

People like to KNOW who they are fighting, not just some random nobody but a face, a face they can remember, love to hate, and long for nothing more than the final confrontation with that char that they can FINALLY HAVE THEIR RETRIBUTION.

…Eh hemn, excitable moment there, but yes.

You want to make it interesting A-net? Take some risks, let some heroic chars die, chars we’ve grown to know, Magnus, Jennah, chars that are important to the universe and whose deaths would be significant because we “know” those people now.

If not kill? Seriously injure, cripple, turn them evil for a while, albeit with us to knock some sense into them and bring them back. Do something, risky, do something, interesting.

The Opening Ceremony was a good start, leaving lots of speculation, now hit us with something edgy, something that leaves people going OH SNAP.

Or going T_T BUT I LIKED THAT CHAR.

NOW I’M GOING TO MURDER THE VILLAIN _

See? It works really well at making people motivated to love the universe even more.

Hell, even the player char themselves is shape-able, let US do something bad, or be forced to.

Now wouldn’t that be something?

My final note:

Scarlet is shaping to be the kind of bad guy I want, but I want more, she said she wants to make a special project out of the hero, so what is that project? I want to know!
And if I cant know, I want it to leave enough mystery, and fear in me that I want to find this woman and beat the living snot out of her!

But I want it to hurt…

Because beating up the Saturday cartoon bad guy isn’t always fun, in a universe that’s foundation (gw1) was set on having serious, creepy bad guys whose aims were never clear until the end, yet they always kept you hyped, desperate to confront them, and beat them down.

(spoiler) the death of your pact companion was a good example of personal, I wanted Zhaitan dead after that, set out to make it so. I wasn’t too happy with Treaherne taking most of the glory but at least I got to be the commander, so there was something there.

I like a long chase, I like someone that has minions, lackeys, some of them even redeemable, but more than that, I like a bad guy that is in your face, someone that really makes you angry.

In the case of Zhaitan its excusable because hes the classic example of almighty evil force and forces of evil are simply all world destroying anyway, but…

For a char like Scarlet? It needs to be a human face that makes a human problem for you, as a person, you need to feel a sense of personal hatred for this char from an action that has maimed you personally.

You need a nemesis, to be a nemesis, and just as they make you, you, make them.

Dark stories /not signed

I want more fairies, princesses and ponycorns.

Big spoilers from GW1 (don’t read if you want to play):

Sad moment in GW2? (spoiler) Tybalt, Sieran, Forgal.
It’s a core of the game, so only Prophecies had 5 sad moments. Even Guild Wars: Beyond was sad, if we’re talking about Guild Wars 2 or Guild Wars 2 Living story.

For me, there’s only one sad moment in GW2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AA5Ylpm9Ko

ANet, fix it! More true story, less fantasy.

Kovac.4372:

I don’t think GW1 veterans voted for Ellen Kiel … except for GW1 pvp-ers … that’s a special breed

90% of GW1 Pvp players left the game 1 week after release.

And tha amount of vote tickets you got from Pvp.. is 0.

Besides our Wps are already free, I can’t see why should GW1 Pvp players vote for Kiel.. I crawled out of PvP just to farm for Evon.

And yeah I’m still waiting for magic to return to the world and some fantasy too.

Oh and a threat we don’t defeat with helicopters submarines and megalasers.

I believe the main problem is that we still don’t love GW2’s Tyria. The designers, the devs, the game, don’t let us love it, because of the stories and the npcs.

For example, your ruler must be loved, a ruler to die for, or hated, a ruler that will kill you if you fail. But the current queen kittens. You can’t love her, nor hate her… she’s only a nuissance, a rag-doll queen.

kristof.7182:

Big spoilers from GW1 (don’t read if you want to play):

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

1. We had Charr invasion and The Searing. We’ve lost everything.
2. King Adelbern exiled his son – Prince Rurik.
3. Prince Rurik died.
4. Bloodstone, White Mantle, Mursaat – omg!
5. Vizier Khilbron aka’Lich, his trick, invasion and Titans!
6. Shiro Tagachi and the Affliction.
7. Togo died.
8. War in Elona.
9. The massacre of Sunspear.
10. Kormir lost her eyes…
11. Veresh Ossa unleashed the Vortex, which lead to the Realm of Torment.
12. Abaddon’s corruption.
13. Jora and blood washes blood.
14. Gwen!
15. Dwarves turned into the stone.

This was what drawn me into the GW universe, each story step felt engaging, wanting you to see more, what happens next, some stages were really epic and unexpected, like discovering who your enemies were, and the whole thing with Rurik, his exile and his fate.

I do hope the Living Story brings back some of what we witnessed before, I keep playing in the hopes that something does (and that there isn’t any other MMO worth playing right now), what worries me though , is when another title comes out and does have the things I’m looking for I may end up pulling away from the GW universe and that would make me sad.

No thank you… Being a mature adult, I don’t need to explore or entertain such childish impulses.

DeWolfe.2174:

No thank you… Being a mature adult, I don’t need to explore or entertain such childish impulses.

Oh no he didn’t!

For the record, I also really enjoyed the War in Kryta stuff in GW1. That was also dark. The White Mantle and their Peacekeepers terrorizing the countryside. Having to defend a lone village against this onslaught of Mantle troops, and then finally the Battle for Lion’s Arch. Probably the epic conclusion for the entire game. They even gave the Mursaat their very own send off.

I totally agree with this. I was actually talking/complaining about this in chat a few weeks ago xD.

GW1 was/felt much more desperate which I like. There was always a horrible and hopeless situation. Prophecies had endless betrayels and there was alot of death around you.
I actually felt like you were unwanted everywhere and had to be on the move constantly. The atmosphere in post ascalon was so grim and dark and the crystal desert really had that ‘everything went wrong here’ feeling to it.

Factions/Cantha had that disgusting plague caused by Shiro which turned everyone into afflicted and enslaved their souls or something. And the kurzick/luxon areas had this sad and tragic feeling to it as well. they really showed how bad Shiro’s impact on the world was and is.

Nightfall story was probably the best imo and had that ‘on the run/fugitive’ thing prophecies had as well c: it also really the ‘You and your marry band of misfits versus evil incarnate’.. And the entire realm of torment was just the very definition of despair and.. torment >__>

EOTN was mostly the player agains’t impossible odds as well. And every ‘part’ of the little army you gather had such a tragic and dark story behind it as well.

For some reason GW2 just didn’t really give me the feeling like the world was probably doomed even though it clearly is when compared with previous threats. And though most areas were not really peacefull most of them felt so happy and stuff x__x (Not all of them. I think Orr, the Dragonbrand and the Kodan Sanctuaries were absolutely brilliant and felt very Guild Wars-ie to me :>) and everyone always has that cheery attitude.
The only parts in the PS that were IMO actually sad were some of the early PS racial missions and Tybalt.

And now its even worse with the living stories because to me it feels like Tyrians are doing nothing but partying lately (I know the molten alliance, karka and aetherblades are trouble but they felt alot like minor problems for some reason). I think GW2 just lacks good villains at the moment :/ the elder dragons are more like natural disasters rather then being actual villains and the others are not serious enough IMO (Bandits are the worst imo because it seems like its ‘one’ group like inquest or w/e but their lack of identity makes them very plain and boring).
The nightmare court is an exception though. Both the PS and the dungeon shows how cruel and dark they are and they have good lore backing them C:

ohmygush I had alot to say about this. Time flies while typing o.O

What I would Like to see is that now during the queen speach some charr kill Jenah so its brings back the Charr – Human War and if you walk at charr territory as a human they will attack you and if you walk with a Charr in Kryta they will attack you too. During the war Logan and Rhytlok will face and one of them will kill the other muhahahaha im EVIL!!

edit: Also I forget to say that the pre-set of GW2 is really cool. for example King Adelbern destroyed his own home just not to see in charr hands (and also he was crazy…) Or the dragon who killed everything in its path… So the Lore of GW2 is very cool I think