Guild Wars 2

Just saw the news on where ANet are taking Guild Wars 2, and I love what I’m hearing.
- Supposedly we’ll get more permanent content along with the releases, which should be of better quality than what we’ve seen thus far.
- This means that improvements to the core gameplay is on the way, and yeah, you should be excited about that because when it is a the state where the developers can truly say “This is a good foundation to expand upon.” (And I mean expand on the core structure of this building/MMO and not just one particular room/feature) it provides for a good foundation to build an expansion upon and yes, I do believe that we’ll see an expansion but not until the Map of Tyria is fully explorable (Colin said something about introducing the new areas more organically rather than “A wild area appears” – which leads me to believe that new zones are on the way + their story/lore, but I don’t think we’ll see the expansion until after that).

TO THE ISSUE
- Yeah, the above is sort of a rant, but I like to comment a bit and share my thoughts on those news.
- Now, my problem (and my only problem) with Living Story is that when it hits, all players around the world of Tyria gathers to see what is new.
It provides a lack of population in the other areas in Tyria, which I think is a shame since the Dynamic Event system is built around the Multiplayer concept.
- To be fair, Colin did state that new permanent content would be provided around the zones along with tweaks to the world bosses and such (the world bosses being something I’m extremely excited about seeing improved) so we might get more compelling content to draw our attention in that direction.

- Hopefully, the dev’s are aware that releasing new content every two weeks (yeah, tweaks and updates are very welcome) with new Living Story content makes for players being focused in one particular zone, and I did hear Colin mention something about widening out the zones where the Living Story takes place.
- I don’t like the thought of being told where to go every two months because all the compelling content (and players) are there, but hey, even if it does and ANet can see it working against their game, GW2 will probably head in a different direction (it’s hard to see where this game is going. Sometimes, to me, it is the best MMO ever, while at other times I find it boring and uninteresting).

tl;dr
- Will the LS with it’s “Go here this week” theme take away the population of other zones, or will there be a balance with more permanent content in other zones to fit the needs there?
- I won’t conclude anything as of yet, but it is the one thing that worries me about Living Story in GW2.

Sinifair.1026:

TO THE ISSUE
- Now, my problem (and my only problem) with Living Story is that when it hits, all players around the world of Tyria gathers to see what is new.
It provides a lack of population in the other areas in Tyria, which I think is a shame since the Dynamic Event system is built around the Multiplayer concept.

- Will the LS with it’s “Go here this week” theme take away the population of other zones, or will there be a balance with more permanent content in other zones to fit the needs there?

Pssst… It’s a LIVING World. If nobody is in in an area to take on “baddies”, well it looks like the bad guys will hang out for awhile. And if you are really meaning lack of people at meta-events, well the chat system has always worked well for me.

It almost sounds like you want to get rid of the core of what makes the living world (being dynamic). For example – if you are a mid level and new content is released AND you want to assault Kingsgate with Captain Edwards, you might want to wait a bit.

bribrim.9710:

Pssst… It’s a LIVING World. If nobody is in in an area to take on “baddies”, well it looks like the bad guys will hang out for awhile. And if you are really meaning lack of people at meta-events, well the chat system has always worked well for me.

It almost sounds like you want to get rid of the core of what makes the living world (being dynamic). For example – if you are a mid level and new content is released AND you want to assault Kingsgate with Captain Edwards, you might want to wait a bit.

Psst… for a truly Living World see the ideas implemented in Archeage with players running the game as Merchants or government officials or all that stuff (seriously though, while it might look grindy to some, I think of it as tons of stuff to do, but the idea of having players running the world truly makes it living. )
- This is the story of NPC’s that we follow, instead of our own characters’ progression.

I like the concept of Living Story and I hope to see improvements to it and how it works, because I haven’t been intrigued by it for a long time now (Razing and Retribution were nice. I liked the Personal Story touch to the Razing. In a group or solo, it was fun either way).