Guild Wars 2

I have very mixed feelings about it. In general the idea behind the story is OK – as far as I’m able to say. However the character design and the dialogues I do not like. It’s like I’m finally free from the annoying bunch of drama queens from Destiny Edge, and then I run into the Marjory and her sidekicks. I just can’t feel anything positive to my “friends” in the living story.

At least they should hire some lesbian writer, who lives in a happy relationship, to make the lesbian romance dialogues feel real! Marjory and Kasmeer feel and sound rather like a typical B-movie couple, a daredevil male + his naive busty blonde. It is not like lesbians are “males in skirts”, or gays are “disguised females dressed in pink”. Lesbians should feel more feminine, like any female which is comfortable with herself. I guess that the writer who did it was just imagining Marjory like a male character.
Lesbians are just females who love other females, like gays are males who love males. Simple as that.

And how many lesbians do you personally know?

Sure, many are quite feminine, but it also rather usual for at least one of them to behave more “manly”.

The Kasmeer/Jory relationship felt quite normal and real to me, at least when comparing to real-life lesbian couples I know.

As for them hiring lesbian writers: I am actually quite sure that ArenaNet have both homosexual, bisexual and transexual people working there, so it is rather likely that they have quite good access to knowledge of those kind of relationships.

Just because you feel like women must be feminine doesn’t mean that is how it is in the real world, even less so in a fantasy one.

Not to mention the whole deal about who decides what is considered feminine. It all depends on culture and such.

lordkrall.7241:

And how many lesbians do you personally know?

These I know feel like typical women – as well as female bisexuals. And male bisexuals and gays who are behaving like normal men. I don’t say that women MUST behave some way. They just do, because it is what they are. Might be hard to explain, even if English is my native language.

But I can say I don’t know any lesbian who would look and behave like the typical male parodies from stupid movies or jokes (or the Marjory character). There may be some “real life” lesbians, who might feel guilty for what they are, and tend to behave like their haters expect, but I never met any.

However, I forgot to mention that I liked the living world from the game point of view. The story aside, I enjoyed the gameplay, instances, and that they managed to get us out of the typical drill.
Also I think Silverwastes are a succesfull response on the champ training.
If this is mated with a better storyline, NPC characters and dialogues (and they are quite able to write such, I enjoyed most of the main story where the DE was not involved) I’m a happy man.

A success.

A majority of loose ends were tied up coherently, and of what loose ends that remain (The identity of ‘E’ for example, and the true reasoning behind Scarlet’s intentions which I do believe will be revealed in Heart of Thorns), it’s enough to bring us into Heart of Thorns and get us involved in the lore.

Bosses were well designed for the most part (molten facility fight as a very strong highlight of this, as well as Tower of Nightmares as a whole), the ambiance in the new zones is superb, and the way in which conditions were given a place in addressing PvE enemies such as husks is a definite plus.

Fext.3614:

It is not like lesbians are “males in skirts”…

I never got this impression from Marjory. Yes, she’s not especially girly, but I don’t think of her as “manish”, either. Just look at her relationship with Belinda. She bawled when she found her strangled, and her look in that cut scene when we go back to Fort Salma. How does this not seem feminine to you? Or do you have some other complaint about these characters?

The start of season 2 was really confusing to me, because Ive never been around for season 1. This makes me generally dislike how whole of season 1 was set up. I hated how the NPC’s acted like they were my best buddies and I was even the ‘boss’ of their group and acting like I was supposed to know who scarlet was (I looked her up, that helped, but still is stupid that I had to do that) when I had not even heard of them yet.

The story of season 2 rapidly build on me though, I grew fond of Destiny’s Edge 2.0 and the replay value of it all, different dialogue with other NPC’s like Belinda depending on your race and backstory <3

Overall I find season 2 was a succes, I liked the story, the bosses where a lot of fun, the achievements made for awefull lot of alt-tabbing to wait through dialogue >.< but the new maps were interesting.

The way they handled season 2, is the way to go, defenitly if you see the ‘point of no return’ where you could replay the boss fight over and over again so you didnt have to go through all the dialogue.

Rognik.2579:

Fext.3614:

It is not like lesbians are “males in skirts”…

Or do you have some other complaint about these characters?

Pretty hard to put this into words, but let me try.

There is a wide range of quality of dialogues in the game. Sometimes I feel very comfortable with the characters and dialogues, sometimes it hurts.

The whole “Marjory – Kasmeer and the other lesser sidekics” stuff is the second cause.

Do you know Karl May? He was a popular German writer who was writing the typical “boy” stories about adventures in 19. century America and Arabia. He wrote about one main character, himself, nicknamed Old Shatterhand in his American adventures, and Kara Ben Nemsi effendi in Arabia. He presented his fantasies as the true stories.

His main hero is simply “the best at everything”. He is the strongets, wisest, best shot, best horseman, best scout, whatever, speaks fluently almost every language on the Earth and so on and so on. And he always wins. It is a contemporary macho fantasy blown up to the limits.

Obviously the author was somehow deprived and he dreamed about himself being the overpotent hero, and thus he wrote a series of books about his own glory, to escape from daily reality of a loser.

I have the same feeling about Marjory. She is always the real, ultimate “boss”, surrounded with followers and in fact she is the true hero of the whole story. Concerning Kasmeer, she is allowed to excel at feminine qualities to make herself a shinnier prize, but she is always a faithfull and submissive sidekick who needs protection of her mighty lover.

The whole story just tastes like a fantasy about personal grandeur of an author I’m not very comfortable with. The love story is not much about love, but about ownership.

Next time, please, let me roam with a band of crazy asuras kittening about their theories or skritt punks, stealing and scavenging to feed their kits, but I had enough of the mighty and shiny heroes like the Destiny Edge and Delaqua investigators.

Just my feelings about it. I understand you can feel differently.

A failure if you consider that all new players to the game have a freaking stupid black age of argument between personal story (or treaharne`s…) and the events of the S2 which also they have to buy on top… But ok, lets not enter that discussion. But still the gap is there, and is pretty freaking big.

It was a TERRIBLE idea, a complete failure to do living story like LS1. And fixing it on S2 (and not by much) means that you got at best a 5/10 which is a failure, and thats at best, i would call it a 3/10.

The problem here was lack of foresight. Absolutely lack of it. No thinking in the future, on the new players, etc. I know this cause i brought a few pals with me like a few weeks ago, the ones who stayed are starting S2 but they feel like nothing makes sense cause they didn`t saw the S1.

Is not like is a complex story or anything, but is still annoying when you want to like and try a game so bad but the game itself isn`t friendly with you. Just because of this and the treatment of new players and the lack of vision from part of the team.

Living story is one of the worst ways of story telling to date in MMORPG history.

Living story is one of the worst ways of story telling to date in MMORPG history.

Wow, that is a very bold statement.

It isnt.

Since is leaving players out of 1/3 of his own story. Pretty much nailed it. I do not know of any MMORPG who does that kind of stupidity.

lordkrall.7241:

Living story is one of the worst ways of story telling to date in MMORPG history.

Wow, that is a very bold statement.

There, now it’s bold
(sorry that one was too easy)

There were one great crystal-like dungeon, that’s the best thing Anet came up with in a while. Sadly it was single player and meant to play through only once.

It should have been made into a new dungeon, and the living story should have been the story mode.

I’m pretty mixed about it. I’m not really into the story aspect and the new areas aren’t that nice either, they’re a pain to traverse across (particularly Dry Top). Plus is it just me, or has GW2 just become too focused on achievements? They aren’t fun half the time either, just time consuming and frustrating. It really has turned me off the whole of Living Story 2 and I just can’t get any motivation to play through it.

LS is a work in progress. Mechanically, I think they nailed it with Season 2. In terms pof writing it was significantly improved.

I’d also like to remind everyone that this expansion is not a new idea. They structured their staff specifically to support LS releases while working on the expansion they led up to. S1 was really where they were working the kinks out, then we had a lot of CDI, and they switched strategies to what we have now:

LS updates (semi-regular)
Feature packs (less regular)
Expansions (even less regular)

The net result is that they’re making good on their vision of pushing content at a rapid pace and creating what their vision of a living world looks like.

Expect a feature pack release a month or two after HoT release, and a new LS season to start after that, foreshadowing events (with some unrelated smaller plotlines) for one or more seasons until their next expansion is ready to release.

This is their new deal, after taking all the community feedback, and I’d expect it to run until such time as it becomes financially unsoluable to do so, and they decide to start work on another game or all get fired.

Just bought the two parts you need to pay for, as I decided to grow mawdrey.
I really LONG for a possibility to say “HEY since I am the boss, stop wasting my time and move your kitten, we have a work to do. You can tell each other how magnificent you are later.”

I believe this can be implemented with ease, as some kind of a Next button for ingame dialogues. So the player who likes the NPCs and social interaction with them (rather among them) can wait and watch the motley crew to chat over and over, while the rest of us can go straight to the action.

Also, as a boss, I don’t know why I am bossed around. It should be my toon who decides the course of action, as it is now I’m rather an emloyee of the NPCs, who wait behind for me to do the dirty work. They should work like ranger’s pet, at least to hold some aggro, or heal me as I go. As it is now, their biggets asset is wasting my precious time.

Rognik.2579:

How does this not seem feminine to you? Or do you have some other complaint about these characters?

This is a proper lesbian romance put into a song. One would take a bullet for her… she is not being religious, or preachy, just so full of love.