Guild Wars 2

There’s a decent amount of buzz still circulating about what people want to see in season two of the living story. There’s a lot of talk about fighting Mordremoth, new races, and new professions –all of which are very interesting yet still over-talked about.

Honestly, my expectations for season two are very macroscopic. All of the aforementioned things would be interesting and great, but what I want to see are new permanent, constructive additions to the world. Interpret that as you will: new maps, new buildings, new cities, ect. And I stress this a lot because if there was one largely overlooked aspect of the living story that that is this: the largest cosmetic changes to the maps since Flame and Frost have been matters of destruction.

When the toxic tower fell, we were left with debris and destruction. When the marionette was destroyed, we were left with debris and destruction. When the battle of Lion’s Arch was over, we were left with debris and destruction. I’m hoping you notice an emerging pattern here.

The world we’re left with is a lot darker and in the case of at least Lion’s Arch feels more empty than ever. Praise where praise is due, the developers and writers have done a good job at creating world-changing events. I absolutely want this to continue, and it necessarily must for the sake of meaningful conflict in the continuing plot of the Living Story.

However, for every decimated Lion’s Arch, we need something else of meaningful value created, another place of importance that we can revisit again and again as evidence of hope for the future of Tyria. If all we ever see is destruction, all we know is a world headed to its doom.

The Queen’s Pavilion stands out in my mind as one permanent act of construction we saw in this season. However, how often do you visit the pavilion? What is there to do? Chances are that unless you have a pass to use the crafting stations there, you will never have a reason to be there. This is not a meaningful change, this was merely covering up the great collapse with another –albeit fancier- hole.

I don’t need or even want a new map to be released with each Living Story arc. Some examples of things I might want to see as permanent, explorable developments could be things like keeping the Molten facility and converting it into a factory for building weapons for the pact, or keeping the tower of nightmares and converting it into a sylvari pet-project for revitalizing the land after being exposed to corruption (as a means of helping to aide in the process of revitalizing Orr), or actually having a permanent activity housed in the queen’s pavilion open to everyone. Or, even having the Bazaar of the four winds as a moving but permanent fixture would be nice.

Heck, some of these could even be reworked into new explorable dungeon paths. The process of converting the molten facility or repurposing the tower of nightmares in and of themselves could be a single-path explorable dungeon comparable to TA’s aetherblade path.

Regardless, that is my hope for next season. I want to see new permanent developments that showcase positive changes in Tyria. Either way, I’m looking forward to what comes next.

I’d very much agree with this! Arenanet have done a fantastic job of making the first living story arc about us being on the back foot, having to respond to Scarlet’s plots, it was really enjoyable and the climactic Lions Arch updates were amazing!

So now that the pressure on Tyria has let up a bit (temporary as this may be) it will be very interesting to see any rebuilding and development each race can afford to partake in now there is “no threat” to deal with! For at least Lions Arch their code practically necessitates they try!

Perhaps use the pavillion as an arena for fights against npcs or even players on duels,there is a lack ofpermanent and most of all meaningfull content,if you missed a patch you missed the content,and that is not very new player friendly,also we sorely need more story and lore based content,what of the Vigil?the Priory?the racial choices and personal story ones we made at the start,some havent been touched upon yet,like the human sister that never matters,or the race that you help that simply stand in an empty home instance,to fix those,to bring more life and meaningfullness and more choice to the game would be my desire for season 2

I dunno. The races of Tyria have largely been at war with everything else: Zhytan (sp?), Scarlet, the Aetherblade pirates… etc. The constant destruction (which, by the way, I personally feel you are exaggerating) seems appropriate.

It’s not like you’d go to Iraq or North Korea or something and be like, “Ok guys, we’re gonna do a lot of damage here… but for everything we destroy, we’ll build something else.” I just don’t see the game working that way.

I do agree there need to be new areas though.

I would like to see new areas, which we’ll mostly definitely get in Magus Falls/Maguuma Wastes, depending on where Modremoth is stationed. (Im assuming Mordremoth is the next dragon we face, considering Jory’s sister goes out to Brisban Wildlands at the end of The Dead End LS Instance)

I’d like to see at least 1 new dungeon in these areas though.

I’m just guessing here, but they probably decided they’d want to implement something like the “Megaserver” before releasing any more zones.

Southsun was largely vacant after the initial release (excepting that one Living Story release).

Now, with the Megaserver, less traveled maps can feel “full” as they’re pulling from all servers.

There shouldn’t be as much fear about releasing a zone and having it be viewed as “empty” after the Living Story moves on to a different area.