Guild Wars 2

A divergent story progression, as opposed to linear, is where a chapter of LS has the opportunity to continue along more than one set path.

So far, we’ve only seen the Election of Ellen Kiel vs Evon Gnashblade as a divergent path, with different content being promised (and then released) by each candidate. While this did not have any marked effect on the LS progression, it was great to see the playerbase getting involved in something they thought would influence the next phase of the game.

This is what I’d love to see in future installments of LS: the possibility of significantly influencing what a future chapter will contain instead of having one inevitable outcome which renders player involvement, or lack thereof, utterly meaningless. But by making the LS somewhat divergent, by having player involvement matter one way or another, it builds investment in how the story proceeds and helps the world feel more alive.

It wouldn’t have to always happen. Hell, it wouldn’t always have to be something big. But it shouldn’t always be linear.

This is something I’d love to see as well, although I also clearly see the problem with such a style. Namely, that it increases the workload on the writers. I help to write rules and story for a LARP group, and we have run into the same issues when trying for divergent story.
That being said, I do think that ArenaNet is fully capable of handling the increased workload of a reasonable, not-too-complicated branching storyline, and that this is absolutely something they should look into.

Well there’s a obvious limitation to how much divergence they can provide. At the end of the day ANet will attempt to stay away from having to develop separate parallel living world content (only so much resources to go around). Having something like the election again is likely, but given given that ANet develops content ahead of time might be problematic since we’d only see the results of such choices several months later.