Guild Wars 2

Mostly, I’d like to say that I really enjoy this model for the Living Story.

Having it behave the same way that our Personal Story behaved, and being able to complete it at a later date – either after freely unlocking it by being active at the right time, or by purchasing it later – is much better than the temporary, often open content from Season 1.

Also, I feel like the price for purchasing it was fair. It’s a decent amount of content, fully optional and can easily be gotten for free – purchasing is just a convenience for those that missed the activity window and don’t want to tag along another player in order to complete it now.

As for the content itself: I think the story is alright, nothing specular but nothing terrible either, about average for the genre. The writing is, unfortunately, a bit poor; and most characters come out as bland. Taimi is great, though, even if her quirks are a bit overplayed.

Some of the combat encounters had gimmicky mechanics that were quite annoying instead of challenging, especially at the beginning of the story, in Dry Top.

But overall, it was enjoyable and I mainly want to reinforce my initial paragraphs: I really hope they keep this model for Living World after Heart of Thorns.

I agree completely about the quality of the story and the value for gems spent. I had to purchase the first half of S2 since real life got in the way of play. I don’t regret it at all.

Going forward, I’d like to see a phased combination of season 1 and 2. Phasing is where different players have different images dispalyed on their screen within the same zone. For example, we’ve now seen the near destruction of Camp Resolve and the Pact Fleet and yet, everyday I play SW I still see Pact airships, including a smaller version of the Pride of Tyria, flying above and Camp Resolve is still being built, not repaired. NPCs are still griping about taking orders from “cabbages and mice” with no sense of urgency regarding the Vinewraith or the lost of ships or the dead/missing comrades.

I understand that HoT will likely change some or much of this, but this could have been changed throughout season 2 with little to no impact on replayability and a much greater sense of immersion. Each story step could have been accompanied by a different phased view of the landscape surrounding, and air above, Camp Resolve. The camp could progress though under construction to nearly complete to nearly destroyed to under repair at each step in the story. The number of Pact ships players saw could have increased and then disappeared; NPC dialogue could have changed from trust to skeptism of Sylvari, all without changing any of the functionality of the zone.

honestly, im playing through living world 2 right now and i absolutly HATE it – i cant say how much i dispise it – its one big chore for me – unbelievably boring couppled with unbelievably annoying…would definitly not buy again

and the absolute worst thing about that absolute chore of an season was that for some reason it didnt lock in my progress on one part so that i would have to do that S all over again – seriously 1/10….