Guild Wars 2

I do not know about anyone else but I would like to see Flame and Frost and Living World Season 1 brought back as pay to get the episodes like LW 2 was so that people who missed the beginning know what and how things started. I was around for Flame and Frost, finished it but I missed LW1 and would love to play through that just like LW2.

Colin (game design lead) and Bobby Stein (writing team lead) both established a desire to rework Season 1 in Season 2’s format. I was kind of hoping for it to be placed with the “upcoming in 2016” notes, but no luck there.

Either way, the devs want to do it. It’s just a question on if the effort is worth the outcome. Last time it was asked about, shortly after HoT release, the answer was basically no change from before – the things they want to do was being considered (in retrosight, for the recent blog posts’ plans) but no confirmation if S1 revamp has been accepted as a project.

And before anyone says: No, the main story of Season 1 was not primarily in the open world – despite continuous belief that it was. Most of the main story was in fact spread in roughly 30 instances and 2 dungeons. Only The Lost Shores, Cutthroat Politics, Tequatl Rising, Origins of Madness, and Escape from LA/Battle for LA was primarily open world (and would be the hardest to translate into S2’s format) – and while listing 6 releases may seem like a lot, unlike S2’s 8+prologue releases, S1 had over 20 releases (even counting Flame and Frost as one update). Most of S1’s open world events were not designed for zergs – only 4 updates (Lost Shores, Origins of Madness, Escape from LA, and Battle for LA) had temporary zerg events – and as such could be readded to the game with little continuity issues (no more than Season 2’s added events in Iron Marches that’s for sure).

Most of the work would be converting the story from instance types A and B to instance type C. But, in theory from a player’s standpoint, the hardest work would be converting Cutthroat Politics into the format, given the election and how little content to it there was.

Sorry to detract, but it does get tiring when people make posts sounding as if there wasn’t any (or at least far to few to matter) instances in S1.

Edit: I sent Bobby Stein a PM hoping for a new update given a few months passed and we got that plans for 2016 blog post out. So hopefully we’ll get a dev’s word on the matter.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Edit: I sent Bobby Stein a PM hoping for a new update given a few months passed and we got that plans for 2016 blog post out. So hopefully we’ll get a dev’s word on the matter.

I just want to confirm this:
When you PMed Bobby, did you ask him to update us regarding Season 1 remake in season 2 format for 2016? And did he say to you he has the plans regarding season 1 remake in the future 2016 blog post which will be released later?

maaaaan i wish they would make S1 this year

the games story is just a broken mess without it

and s1 story had ALLOT of content in it overall for a story. i missed like 60-70% of it was playing other games also.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Edit: I sent Bobby Stein a PM hoping for a new update given a few months passed and we got that plans for 2016 blog post out. So hopefully we’ll get a dev’s word on the matter.

I just want to confirm this:
When you PMed Bobby, did you ask him to update us regarding Season 1 remake in season 2 format for 2016? And did he say to you he has the plans regarding season 1 remake in the future 2016 blog post which will be released later?

I asked him if he could post here to denote whether or not there’s been an update in the plans for Season 1’s return, figuring there might be one worth mentioning because 2 months have passed since last update on the matter and the blog post was released.

He did not reply to my PM.

I always felt HoT story is short, then I thought about there is the Living World.
I played through S2 to HoT, I never played S1 because I only played GW2 since the seeds of truth released and always felt the whole story of HoT been cut out.
I really hope S1 to release soon, for completion sake.

S1 is really just about scarlet being a big crazy pants, an S2 explaining why she was a big crazy pants.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Edit: I sent Bobby Stein a PM hoping for a new update given a few months passed and we got that plans for 2016 blog post out. So hopefully we’ll get a dev’s word on the matter.

I just want to confirm this:
When you PMed Bobby, did you ask him to update us regarding Season 1 remake in season 2 format for 2016? And did he say to you he has the plans regarding season 1 remake in the future 2016 blog post which will be released later?

I asked him if he could post here to denote whether or not there’s been an update in the plans for Season 1’s return, figuring there might be one worth mentioning because 2 months have passed since last update on the matter and the blog post was released.

He did not reply to my PM.

Thanks for clarifying that =)

Got a reply from Bobby:

Hi Konig,

I’m glad that you and others are passionate about the game and interested in seeing Season 1 restored in some form or fashion, but that’s not something I can comment on. I’ve stated in the past a personal desire to work on such a project but ultimately that decision is out of my hands, as is the outward messaging. I know it’s not the answer you and others were looking for but I wanted to reply, just the same.

Thanks,

Bobby

So basically “cannot comment on it” – but what’s odd, to me, is that he commented on it 2 months ago. Which implies to me (tinfoil hat time) that there was a change on the subject matter.

Whether there was or not, however, I feel that 2016 with its focus on improving content over making new content, reworking Season 1 into a permanent format would be more than fitting.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Got a reply from Bobby:

Hi Konig,

I’m glad that you and others are passionate about the game and interested in seeing Season 1 restored in some form or fashion, but that’s not something I can comment on. I’ve stated in the past a personal desire to work on such a project but ultimately that decision is out of my hands, as is the outward messaging. I know it’s not the answer you and others were looking for but I wanted to reply, just the same.

Thanks,

Bobby

So basically “cannot comment on it” – but what’s odd, to me, is that he commented on it 2 months ago. Which implies to me (tinfoil hat time) that there was a change on the subject matter.

Whether there was or not, however, I feel that 2016 with its focus on improving content over making new content, reworking Season 1 into a permanent format would be more than fitting.

Thanks for the Update.
So you think they are working on it but not saying it or you think they are not saying it because they are not working on it?

Could go either way, I just hope its the former. If we get no announcement when Q2 comes, then I’d say that they decided not to rework Season 1.

BobbyStein.2315:

Feel free to speculate (and continue to express support for the things you’d like to see), but ultimately you should refer to official announcements for things like this. Thanks!

I am intrigued. OK! speculation: the new fractals will be called “a look at the past” you need to have the max AR in order to not to struggle AND they will be 10 man, yes 10 ppl can enter the fractal island, when you get close to the gate you will have 2 options:
1. regular fractals “need 5 people use the lfg tool”
2. a look at the past “need 10 people use the lfg tool”

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

So basically “cannot comment on it” – but what’s odd, to me, is that he commented on it 2 months ago. Which implies to me (tinfoil hat time) that there was a change on the subject matter.

Actually, there’s been no change. We’re always looking at ways to improve the game, and LWS1 is just one of many potential projects that gets discussed periodically. Feel free to speculate (and continue to express support for the things you’d like to see), but ultimately you should refer to official announcements for things like this. Thanks!

Isn’t there an intern of something you can put in a cubicle somewhere and tell him “You’re not aloud to leave until you’ve complete re-implemented S1”? XD

Any time spent working on reworking season 1 is time they don’t spend working on Season 3 or the next expansion.

How much value is there in bringing back season 1? One of the biggest criticisms of HoT was how little story and lore there was. Imagine if the next expansion has a similar issue and the decision was made to scrap a story like Malyck and his tree and the Nightmare Court so they bring back season 1? We would get old content that many have already played and wouldn’t play again more than once, but we would sacrifice part of the future story.

You make it sound like they can only work on one thing at a time.

Furthermore, at worst, working on S1 before working on S3/next expansion wouldn’t result in less content for those releases, just a longer time for them to be released. There would be no ‘sacrifice’ to part of the future story except for possibly when we’d get it – any reduction of story would be done regardless unless they establish themselves a deadline before dividing out workloads, which would be idiotic to any management system.

And as time goes by that “many have already played” becomes less and less in comparison to the number of people who haven’t played it.

I’d love to see the return of Season 1. Those “dungeons”; Aetherblade and Molten Facility was way to much fun. And since we have the season 2 ready for replay at any time, it should fit into the game. But I think I read somewhere that they have some problems with the way the Flame and Frost and LS1 was made to make them accessible again..

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

So basically “cannot comment on it” – but what’s odd, to me, is that he commented on it 2 months ago. Which implies to me (tinfoil hat time) that there was a change on the subject matter.

Actually, there’s been no change. We’re always looking at ways to improve the game, and LWS1 is just one of many potential projects that gets discussed periodically. Feel free to speculate (and continue to express support for the things you’d like to see), but ultimately you should refer to official announcements for things like this. Thanks!

Bobby, with all due respect, I think it’s pretty absurd that this isn’t considered at least a somewhat high priority item. The format change for season 2 of the LW refocused the overall narrative into a character-based perspective bridging the Personal Story into the Living World. This was a fantastic change, except there’s a giant gaping hole where the story of the entire first year of the game unfolded, including the very important introduction and build-up of many supporting characters used in S2 and presumably S3.

This comes across as extremely unprofessional and unpolished, and it all but destroys any immersion the story provides for someone who likes to experience it as a new character. It’s also been long enough now that many people who were playing the game don’t remember that much about it or would just be interested in playing it again.

The thing that makes it particularly frustrating is that I don’t see how it would be as challenging as everyone keeps acting like it would be to work it in, and it’s something you could directly make money off of by putting the episodes in the gem store.

The vast majority of the S1 content is just like the S2 content – progressive, story-based instances. Only some of it was open world. Some of that could just be left out, some of it could be easily converted into instanced content, and some of it (like pre-destruction/post-rebuilding Lion’s Arch) could and should utilize a form of map-branching (sort of like pre-searing and post-searing Ascalon in GW1). The S1 dungeons don’t fit in well with FotM and would make way more sense as actual world/story dungeons. Using map-branching would also open up a lot of flexibility for future LW content (allowing it to work as a hybrid of S1 and S2’s styles) and would fix certain oddities in the game now, like how PS chapters that take place in LA use the original map despite how the PS is occurring in the present from the perspective of your character.

Also, Flame and Frost would work nicely as a LW prologue to help separate the content out a bit.

This is a perfect example of why so many players question Anet’s leadership. I know you don’t have unlimited resources, but the focus of those resources almost always feels too scattered and/or concentrated on the wrong things while important content is gleefully abandoned and basic updates take months to years to be released.

Season 1 absolutely needs to make a reappearance. It becomes incredibly embarrassing when I try to introduce new friends to this game and they are missing a large chunk of story. I have a friend who just recently came back to the game and he is completely confused. I sat down with him for over an hour and we just talked about what happened in this season he never saw.

So many of the current cast of characters were introduced in Season 1, that it becomes jarring for anyone who wasn’t here for that season. Ela Makkay makes a poor stand-in, and worse this is a video game and you have an NPC telling you about your deeds in Season 1 instead of actually experiencing them. Also much of Magister Makkay’s dialogue is rushed and glosses over many finer points of the season and she doesn’t even go into the captain’s election or anything on Ellen Kiel, Canach, Evon Gnashblade, the Zephyrites… I can go on and on.

Please note too that it has been two years in real time since the start of the living world idea. People will forget the details and being unable to replay or have a good log of the events from that time will create problems in the future, especially if you try to tie Season 3 and on to the events of Season 1.

Love S1, best story so far. <3