Guild Wars 2

If I were to sum up the living world season 1 in a sentence it would be this: The Good, The bad, and The ugly with a taste of bland. There were some REALLY great moments in the season (Teq, Wurm, Tower, escape from LA, SAB, Jubilee etc) but there were some really bad moments as well (beggining of F&F, Canach/Southsun, Dragonbash, etc) and then there were some meh moments like Baazaar, Cutthroat, Clockwork invasions, etc.

I think the overall problem of the first season was a multitude of things. Firstly, the story-telling was very poorly told. However to the Dev’s credit, they have gotten much better at this in the recent updates and they have acknowledged that they realized their faults. I think the main issue however was that…there was no “beefy” content.

Sure, every two weeks we got content that could occupy the average player for a week or so. But that’s all we got. The content would last for 2 weeks to a month depending on which one it was and then it was gone. There was nothing permanent left over either and despite the fact Anet said they would give us more, the only thing we got was the remnants of the tower, nothing more nothing less.

When I mean “beefy” content I mean content that stays around and that we can enjoy for a long time. Meaning new zones, races, skills for each class, professions, etc. There was nothing that was left behind that had actual meaty content to it (save for Teq and Wurm). When I look back at this game between now and launch I realize that all we have new is 1 new boss, a revamped boss, and a few small dungeons (I don’t really count Fractals as LS season 1). The tower had an impact sure, but it was a handful of little events to do here and there. I did enjoy the change to Kessex, but that was it. It was just new scenery in a small zone people had already played through and a couple of new events here and there. It wasn’t a new zone with a dungeon or two, new events all over the zone, new scenery and monsters, new skills to try out on classes.

Overall, I feel the LS didn’t add anything to the game. The concept of a living world is cool, sure, but if you never add anything significant to the game, and give us little scraps of stuff here in there (e.g a new dungeon/boss every 3 months along with temporary content) then it isn’t enough. I feel very sad knowing that WoW is getting a new expansion with a ton of new content, while we have barely gotten anything permanent in the last year and a half. It’s like buying your parents giving you a new toy as a child and you’re really excited to play with it, but they give you one piece at a time over the next year and a half. Let me get this straight: I’m not expecting Anet to pump out maps every month or two weeks, I understand these things take time. But it’s been a year and a half and we have gotten…bottom of a barrel, so to speak.

So what are you’re thoughts on the LS Season 1?

I share your thoughts on this. It was an interesting idea and they’ve certainly gotten better at it over time (bugs aside,) but the major failing of the LS has been temporary content. I have friends who simply will not return to the game until we get new, expansive permanent content that they can enjoy at their own pace.

Nvm that GW1 spoiled us by having two full expansions out at this point in its life. Or the fact that ANet utterly refuses to preview or properly announce future content, preferring instead to hint and let the hype train do all the work. Now, it seems to me that has something to do with the LS; if new zones and content are in Maguuma related to Mordy, they want to wait until the current LS wraps up to announce that to give everyone the chance to see the ending for themselves.

So this epilogue chapter better be paired with an announcement of major new content coming our way soon. And frankly one or two new zones and a couple bosses won’t cut it. In a year and a half the GW1 team put out two full expansions. There is no excuse why the GW2 team shouldn’t be able to release one full expansion’s worth of content in the same amount of time.

I love this game, but you can only string me along with temp content for so long before I put it down and walk away. I’m not there yet…but another six months with no major permanent content and I will be.

I personally feel that some of the Season 1 LS content was ok, be it tempory or not, some of it was shockingly bad at the same time, I think they used the first LS as a benchmark to see how far they could push the client etc and how to scale events for the future,

For example when Sun South cove came out it was horrible, the lag for the event was off the chart, people being kicked out all over the place, log in servers being taken offline so that people could not overflow hop to get the rewards time and time again, they did learn from this though,

They then lost there way near the end by adding content that required 100+ man zergs to beat it, and I wouldn’t have beaten some of this stuff if it wasn’t for TTS forcing an overflow so we could beat it undisturbed, but im fairly sure that’s not what Anet invisioned.

I agree that in GW1 they had in the same time, had added, Sorrows Furnace which added green weapons to the game, shortly followed by Factions, which personally I did not play until after Nightfall was released due to the horrible lag is had, im not sure what Anets planning to do, if they don’t announce an Expansion they better have some awesome projects planned, as the game is stale atm, Im at the point where I log in do the daily and log out, and well there are some big games coming out this year so yea.

I have to believe that if its the same team that works on GW2 that worked on GW1 that there is another factor holding them back from progressing the way the community seems to want them too, its like a friend of mine said last week, if it wasn’t for the Artists that work for GW2, this game probably wouldn’t be here now, as the art in the game is some of the best ive seen in an online game.

On a purely personal note, I think the whole concept of the LS was a good one. Its downfall was in that the execution was kind of iffy.

There were parts that were incredibly fun, but in the end, most of it was “run with the zerg or die.” One didn’t get to actually see most of the content. You couldn’t solo the tower, for instance, and explore the nooks and crannies. If your group left you, you died. period.

You just weren’t given the chance to explore the story.