First let me start off saying that I’m not trying to bash Arenanet. I think their game is great. I enjoy playing it. I enjoy smashing scarlet’s head in several times a day. Secondly, these are just my opinions. Having said that, I have a criticism of the current Living World model and possible solutions.
The Living World system as it stands now is great for delivering new content at a rapid pace. Things like Super Adventure Box, Southsun Cove, and Queen’s Jubilee were great and offered players alot to do, without having to wait for an expansion or a big “Content Patch”. This is because those patches in particular took advantage of the rapid release model to provide a several weeks framework for people to enjoy a range of activities. Crab Toss, World 1, Queen’s Gauntlet, Wasting All Your Gold On Liadri(ok maybe this was just me). The point is, these releases seemed to consciously acknowledge the length and essence of Living World.
Now the problem is, is that many of the releases aren’t doing this. Let’s look at Clockwork Chaos. Clockwork Chaos’ main content activity is running around the map with your server heroically stopping Ketchup Salad from invading the world. Great, sounds fun in theory. The problem is, in reality its two weeks of following big zergs and pressing 1 because everyone finds it more beneficial to farm instead of do the portals, mostly because the end of invasion rewards are pretty much the same whether you finish or not. The content doesnt take into account thakittens a living world release. Its structured as if it were meant for a weekend.
This is the problem I’m finding with many of the releases: They aren’t structured around being a limited released for a month or two weeks. Lets look at dragon bash. The festival consisted almost entirely of hitting f thousands of times in lions arch to break pinatas, or spamming the holographic dudes at generators. While Dragon Bash was fun for a weekend, it was not designed for players to have fun over a longer period of time. This is the problem, the content is unfocused around being a chapter in the living world. There are too many “novellas”. There’s a problem when the most fun activity in your release is a moa-betting minigame.
This lack of focus also seems to lend itself to the overall narrative of the living world as well. The developers understand that every so often we need a break from story for a fun activity such as super adventure box. I have no problem with this. The problem is, is that there isn’t enough story for me to even WANT to take a break. “Oh, hey, we found out who the villain behind Molten Alliance and Aetherblades is. Can’t wait to find out her motives in the next patch and go after her.” Wait no we’re going to do Super Adventure Box instead.
Each release seems to give us the bare minimum in regards to story, and quite frankly, its making me start to not care. Half of September is SAB. I suspect half of october will be mad king. december’s latter half is wintersday. So we have a limited amount of time to figure out who the hell scarlet briar is. The fact that we might not even figure any of this out till 2014 is…..disappointing. The current living world story arc has been going in earnest since January and we still have almost no concrete idea of what is even going on. This is the problem.
Now here is where I offer my amateur, non-developer, likely-to-be-called-complete-kitten-kitten-kitten-solutions.
1. Have teams rotate out a couple different story arcs. If the teams have more time to work on Scarlet’s arc between releases, I find it likely that the focus could improve while still having good instances/farming/flavor content.
2. Have 1 fluff patch between every serious patch. By this I mean have a random festival/SAB/orrian x-treme bobsledding release so that the serious stuff has more time to develop
3. Make each arc shorter. This would allow stories like Scarlet’s to be solved faster without writers feeling the need to stretch to allow multiple content releases in each arc. This would also help us explore more of Tyria and the groups within it instead of spending months with the same group and learning nothing.
Thanks for reading, I hope you havn’t lost your mind in rage : )