Guild Wars 2

I’m done with LS1, 75% of the world completed, really having fun with this game. I really want to go through the second season now. Should i just buy it packaged (1250 gems?) from the gemstone, or just wait for HoT because it’s gonna be unlocked as a part of it? (or is it?)

thanks

It’s not part of HoT.

How did you do Season 1 or are you referring to yourself having played back then?

I think he’s mistaking the personal story as Season 1. A lot of new folks accidentally do that.

wait wait waittttttttt, isn’t a Season the same as Living Story?

i’m talking about the LS (apparently). I have finished the one with Zhaitan (and thought it was season-1-living-story), but now i see living story 2 locked. my question: will this storyline be unlocked to those who buy HoT?

and,
if an LS isn’t a season, what exactly is season 1 and 2 and how do i unlocked them?

thanks fellas
much appreciated

alright I think i understand now. i mistaken the LS1 for Personal Storyline. Is there any way to play Living Season 1 now? Will there ever be in the future?

Also, will LS2 be included in HoT? If not, is it worth buying it now, and will it ever be removed (just like LS2) ?

Thank you

Season 1 is not available now as it was made as temporary content. ArenaNet has stated the intent to rework Season 1 after HoT’s release. Until then, we have a recap cinematic of the important parts for S2 and HoT in-game (it’d be under “Scarlet’s War” in the story journal).

Season 2 will never be removed, as it was made to be permanent. I have seen no indication it will be packadged with HoT.

And it’s PS – Personal Story – not LS – Living Story. Living Story was given in seasons, Personal Story predates the Living Story.

Regev.6971:

alright I think i understand now. i mistaken the LS1 for Personal Storyline. Is there any way to play Living Season 1 now? Will there ever be in the future?

Also, will LS2 be included in HoT? If not, is it worth buying it now, and will it ever be removed (just like LS2) ?

Thank you

Living story Season 2 wont be included in HoT so you’ll ahve to buy it seperatly. I don’t think they’ll ever remove it, no.

Living Story Season 1 was made up out of temporary content, they are looking in a way to bring it back in the future, but it requires quite some work to change them to instances (most were openworld events) so it wont arrive till after HoT, but they are looking into it.

Alright, thanks, so I suppose there’s no reason not to buy the LS2 right now.

Do you recommend the 100$ HoT option (with 4k gems), or simply buying gems directly?

Regev.6971:

Alright, thanks, so I suppose there’s no reason not to buy the LS2 right now.

Do you recommend the 100$ HoT option (with 4k gems), or simply buying gems directly?

Well if you’re planning on buying gems anyway, i believe the 100$ HoT option is better.

As for buying ls 2, while you do miss out on the start (the whole scarlet debacle) HoT story does start immediately after the events of the season 2 story, some important things to the story have been revealed in such. I think, even without the first season, season 2 is still a good thing to complete before HoT. Just watch the season 1 cinematic they put in the game (should be activatable in story journal) so you know who the characters are with you

What happens usually on Black Friday? Does the game itself goes on sale, does the gems price themselves go on sale (from real money), or do just the items on the gemstone go on sale?

Regev.6971:

Do you recommend the 100$ HoT option (with 4k gems), or simply buying gems directly?

If you’re going to buy HoT and gems anyways, the ultimate is the best option since it’s basically the standard plus $50 worth of gems with the deluxe bonuses for free.

Regev.6971:

What happens usually on Black Friday? Does the game itself goes on sale, does the gems price themselves go on sale (from real money), or do just the items on the gemstone go on sale?

Gems themselves never go on sale as they’re treated as a currency. It’s possible to find gem cards on sale however in some stores. The only sales ArenaNet might do on Black Friday is for items in the gem store like they’re currently doing for the anniversary. The game has gone on sale in the past, but with HoT releasing in late October, it would be too soon. Other retailers may be offering it on sale however.

So HoT isn’t likely to be like $20-25 post-release, on the official website, or at least on G2A or any similar price?
I feel like ANet might end up offering it for a much lower price since everybody seems to be complaining
What are your thoughts?

My thoughts on the price is: If they half it immediately after launch I will be quite upset having bought 4 copies. If they half it more than 6 months after, I’ll be delighted to upgrade my currently free account.

Did anyone suggest tagging along with someone who has LS2 just to see the story? You cannot get the rewards if it is locked, but you could see how things happened.

Regev.6971:

So HoT isn’t likely to be like $20-25 post-release, on the official website, or at least on G2A or any similar price?

HoT can already be found for around 20% off on sale on some of the (officially supported) sites. For veteran accounts at least, this will likely be the best deal we’ll ever see if you consider the $10 value of the character slot. After release, 20-25% off sales will become more common, but there’s absolutely no chance that you’ll see 50%+ off within the next two years, and by then, the next expansion will be announced and the price will reset.

Around 6-12 months into HoT is when ArenaNet will likely offer a sale of their own. They’ll either lower the price by $10 or keep it the same, but bundle in some gem store items in the same way they launched the heroic edition for the original game. They could bundle in season 2 with this “heroic” edition, but that would seem like a bad move as people would again complain about having to buy something they may already own.

As soon as the living story start backs up however, the money you would be saving is going to be lost the longer you wait. Assuming they stick with the same price and schedule, each episode will cost 200 gems and they’ll be released every 2 weeks. Several months after the final episode is when they offered the complete season with a 20% discount. Eventually, the price of the full package is going to outweigh the original price of HoT, until the next expansion when HoT is given away for free. If you didn’t know, for active HoT players, you simply login during the 2 week release schedule to unlock the episode for free.

20% off the Ultimate? Where is that? I only found the normal key for $35 on one of the CDKey websites.

Not sure I understand your last paragraph, Healix. You’re saying, if I login during the first two weeks post-release, I get what episodes for free? LS2? And what do you mean the money you would be spending is going to be lost the longer you wait?

Thanks a lot mate.

If you are interested in the story, I’d highly recommend getting Season 2.

Here’s how the Story/Seasons work:

Personal Story (PS): It’s part of the ‘’Core game’‘. It’s the story that starts when you first make your character, that takes you from your racial city to the defeat of Zhaitan.

Living World/Story (LW/LS): The idea behind the LW is that it’s like a TV show. You’d login every 2 weeks to play the current episode like you would watch every week an episode of a TV show.

LW Season 1: It ran from October 2012 to March 2014. You’d log in every 2 weeks with new content that was mostly temporary. Some lasted for a month and it had some hiatus between episodes for celebrations ( Wintersday, Halloween). Some stuff stayed (Southsun Cove/ The new Twilight Arbor path/ The new Fractals) but mostly stuff stayed for that 2 weeks period then you could never play it again( Scarlet minions maps invasions, the Flame&Frost events, The Marionette, The Tower of Nightmares/ etc).

While it was a cool concept, many people (myself included) found it too demanding and stressful to try doing all the content in just 2 weeks and others where sad that they had missed an episode because of real life stuff. All of this was free by the way, you’d just log in and play it. We also got many things people take for granted today like balance patches, more crafting levels, Ascended Armor, a crap ton of skins, reworks to better UI/events/rewards/etc. We basically got (imho) more than an expansion worth of content and it was good.

There is no way to currently play Season 1 but you can find a recap of the events in the Story Journal.

The Story Journal and Living World Season 2!

Arenanet shifted their focus from temporary content to permanent content. Everything story related now go thru the Story Journal ( Press H for the Hero panel>4th tab) It includes PS, a Season 1 recap and Season 2. Future LW Seasons will be added to the Story Journal and most probably HoT and future exxpansions

LW Season 2: It ran from July 2014 to January 2015. 8 episodes were released, you can see them in the Story Journal. Since they are now permanent content, if you’d log in every 2 weeks between July 2014 to January 2015, you’d unlock the episodes for free. You didn’t need to play them right away, just log in on a character for 1 minute in the 2 weeks period and it would be forever unlock to your whole account ( current and future characters) If you missed an episode, you’d have to buy it with gems at 200 gems per episode or cheaper as a Pack in the ’’Upgrades’’ Section of the gem store. Don’t forget that you can trade gold for gems, currently 200 gems is about 50g.

Arenanet have said that this would be the model for future Seasons. Also I highly doubt they would include Season 2 free with HoT for now, maybe for the next expansion.

If you want more details, I’ll put links below for you to check.
So there you go! I hope it helps you understand the flow of the Story mechanics.

TL:DR Personal Story -> Living World Season 1 (n/a) -> Living World Season 2 -> Heart of Thorns -> Living World Season 3(TBA) -> Future Expansion

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

woooooooooooooow, thanks a LOT. now i get it.

What’s the quickest way to get gold?

And if Im just gonna buy it, do you recommend buying the whole Ultimate version (and buy the pack with gems – $90 total), or just buy the CDKey for standard ($35 at g2a) and buy gems separately?

i do spend gems from time to time, when there are promotions, bought the watchwork mining pick (PRICELESS!), and I’m waiting for the harvesting/gathering tools to go on sale too, plus Belinda’s Greatsword Skin (any idea when it’s supposed to be on the shop again?)

so my main concern is whether i should buy the ultimate, or just buy the cdkey for the standard/deluxe, from some cheap website and get gems

again, thanks a lot

If money is not a problem and you would buy gems anyway, buy the ultimate. The 4000 gems are 50% off in the ultimate version. Usually 4000 gems are 50$US but if you compare the deluxe edition (75$) and the ultimate (100$), you get 4000 gems for 25$. You could buy Season 2 with those gems :P

playing S2LS without HoT is like reading lord of the rings the two towers without reading the fellowship of the ring (altough, LOTR has a story with tons and tons more lore and depth then Anet can ever make), i do think that if they are so generous then they should include this in HoT.
if anything, add this in their deluxe pack, it’s expensive enough so adding S2 with it to at least let new players know the whole deal around why HoT exists.

Regev.6971:

Alright, thanks, so I suppose there’s no reason not to buy the LS2 right now.

Do you recommend the 100$ HoT option (with 4k gems), or simply buying gems directly?

If you’re buying HoT and 4k gems regardless, the $100 option is superior because you get deluxe edition for free by comparison.

As for not buying S2… It is worth buying, IMO, since the story directly leads into HoT. You will be confused and be spoiled to S2’s massive plot reveals if you go from PS to HoT.

Granted, you’d get the same from just looking at all the HoT promotions, and the same would happen for S1 if you play through S2.

In your shoes, I’d probably read a good summary, watch the cinematic they put in to summarize the important parts of S1, and then buy and play through S2.

Alternatively, take a multi-month break. Come back in January or something and see if they’ve made S1 permanent or if there’s any news on that. If you don’t mind being behind in the plot, simply “not playing until S1 is permanent” is an option given the game’s no subscription nature. And it’s not like there’s gear treadmill you’d have to rush through upon coming back.

Regev.6971:

So HoT isn’t likely to be like $20-25 post-release, on the official website, or at least on G2A or any similar price?
I feel like ANet might end up offering it for a much lower price since everybody seems to be complaining
What are your thoughts?

They probably will.

Eventually.

But you’d lose out on the free character slot from pre-purchasing on the official site, and might even lose your chance to get deluxe/ultimate editions (without upgrading to deluxe from gemstore).

sorudo.9054:

playing S2LS without HoT is like reading lord of the rings the two towers without reading the fellowship of the ring (altough, LOTR has a story with tons and tons more lore and depth then Anet can ever make), i do think that if they are so generous then they should include this in HoT.

I like to compare GW2’s story to LotR too, though I disagree with the “tons and tons more lore and depth” – if you played GW1, there was a lot of depth, and in all honesty in just LotR and The Hobbit alone I don’t think there’s as much depth as many people claim, but that’s me. How I like comparing GW2 to LotR is like this:

Personal Story = The Hobbit
Season 1 = Fellowship of the Ring
Season 2 = The Two Towers
Heart of Thorns = Return of the King

You can play through S1 and S2 without knowing the details of the PS, though the PS leads into S1. But you can’t really play S2 or HoT without knowing S1 or S2 respectively.

Thanks man, appreciate it.

The standard HoT CDkey is about $35 in some sites, so it’s really either $35 + gems as you need them, or a full $100 for everything (Not sure any of the other deluxe bonuses are worth anything to me, except for the extra character slot maybe in the future)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

sorudo.9054:

playing S2LS without HoT is like reading lord of the rings the two towers without reading the fellowship of the ring (altough, LOTR has a story with tons and tons more lore and depth then Anet can ever make), i do think that if they are so generous then they should include this in HoT.

I like to compare GW2’s story to LotR too, though I disagree with the “tons and tons more lore and depth” – if you played GW1, there was a lot of depth, and in all honesty in just LotR and The Hobbit alone I don’t think there’s as much depth as many people claim, but that’s me. How I like comparing GW2 to LotR is like this:

Personal Story = The Hobbit
Season 1 = Fellowship of the Ring
Season 2 = The Two Towers
Heart of Thorns = Return of the King

You can play through S1 and S2 without knowing the details of the PS, though the PS leads into S1. But you can’t really play S2 or HoT without knowing S1 or S2 respectively.

GW1 has the hobbit and LOTR in one, GW2 barely makes the hobbit and that’s including HoT.
i was talking GW2+HoT, not GW1.

Be careful with G2A there are some stolen keys there that will be banned if you buy them.

sorudo.9054:

GW1 has the hobbit and LOTR in one, GW2 barely makes the hobbit and that’s including HoT.
i was talking GW2+HoT, not GW1.

So was I.

Season 1 directly leads into Season 2 which in turn directly leads into Heart of Thorns. Those three storylines function as a trilogy.

The Personal Story is a prequel to S1/S2/HoT, but is not directly influencing the plot of said three beyond setting the stage. Very similar to how The Hobbit is a prequel to Lord of the Rings, setting the stage for the trilogy, but does not directly influence the plot of LotR.

GW1, however, does NOT tie in directly to GW2 and aside from the latest installments, particularly Eye of the North and War in Kryta, does not even set the stage for GW2. GW1’s plot and story is 100% unrelated to GW2’s plot and story – the only similarity they hold is being in the same world.

And until recently, even that didn’t matter much with how few references there are to GW1. You can easily play GW2 without any knowledge of GW1 at all. If you play GW1, there’s only minor tidbits that you gleam as additional facts. Unlike where you can read LotR without the Hobbit, but if you read the Hobbit then you gleam many additional facts that are related to LotR.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

sorudo.9054:

GW1 has the hobbit and LOTR in one, GW2 barely makes the hobbit and that’s including HoT.
i was talking GW2+HoT, not GW1.

So was I.

Season 1 directly leads into Season 2 which in turn directly leads into Heart of Thorns. Those three storylines function as a trilogy.

The Personal Story is a prequel to S1/S2/HoT, but is not directly influencing the plot of said three beyond setting the stage. Very similar to how The Hobbit is a prequel to Lord of the Rings, setting the stage for the trilogy, but does not directly influence the plot of LotR.

GW1, however, does NOT tie in directly to GW2 and aside from the latest installments, particularly Eye of the North and War in Kryta, does not even set the stage for GW2. GW1’s plot and story is 100% unrelated to GW2’s plot and story – the only similarity they hold is being in the same world.

And until recently, even that didn’t matter much with how few references there are to GW1. You can easily play GW2 without any knowledge of GW1 at all. If you play GW1, there’s only minor tidbits that you gleam as additional facts. Unlike where you can read LotR without the Hobbit, but if you read the Hobbit then you gleam many additional facts that are related to LotR.

you can watch LOTR just as easily without the hobbit, better yet, the hobbit is almost as unrelated to LOTR as GW1 is to GW2.
almost all the important human characters in GW2 have something from GW1, just as LOTR has characters coming back from the hobbit. (keep in mind that there is only 60 years in between LOTR and the hobbit, GW1 and GW2 has 250 years in between)

You could play through Season 1 – and Season 2 – without doing the personal story and not missing anything. Season 1 was designed to be that way.

This is a pointless thing to argue over though.