Guild Wars 2

I think the Living World really needs to start focusing on old/new lore. Take us to the Crystal Desert , Ring of Fire Islands, Deldrimor Front, Tarnished Coast I could go on. Take us back to these places… tell us the storys of what happened there. Let us help open these areas back up. I was a hardcore GW1 player and I for one miss all of these places and would like them back. I understand this is gw2 and things are new … but ppl like me miss old gw1 lore and half the things we used to know are gone… such as a lot of the older zones. I just feel like the Living World should guide us into the rest of Tyria and unlock the rest of the map while telling the story of the past 250 years. Letting us heros fight our way to controlling Tyria again. Don’t get me wrong I have liked the Living World thus far… but I think its time to start pushing into more content bringing back 8 mans like FoW and UW. Revealing the secrets of the world.

I think pushing into the rest of Tyria brings nothing but good things to this game… it allows players to become more involved with the lands they new an loved and for new players to see the beauty of the rest of the world. It would make players feel as if they are actually making a diff on the outcome of Tyria and bringing back hope of the old shinning into the new. Lets face it PvE players want more dungeons… more lore… more places to go and more places to explore and what a better way to present this than the Living World.

kitten YEAH NUKKA!

I agre we there should be more lore, more adventures and new-old lands. We should rediscover the past and create a future.

I think there has to be a balance between old lore and new lore. For example, elaborating on the Colossus and Scarlet is completely new lore and that’s good for the future of the game. To elaborate on Glint, her kid and the Zephyrites builds the solid foundation of the Guild Wars lore. Both are necessary, both go hand in hand.

Actually …

I also really want to find a little old … former known points, the old temples gw2 graphics version, but with the old desing, just for fun.

I want to rediscover the old with new.

While on the surface I agree it would be great to see the story develop into these fondly remembered territories from GW, I just don’t see it as a good idea given how the Living Story has been managed so far. The type of epic stories that would need to be told here would involve new fully fleshed out zones. We have not received any update like this since the Living Story was first called “The Living Story” in January of 2013 ¹. I think such content should be relegated to more substantial releases, like what we got from GW Factions/Nightfall/Eye of the North.

The closest we have received to a complete new zone came before the Living Story was announced, and was likely planned well before release. This event was the invasion of Southsun Cove. While I think the event as a whole was well done (i.e., the concept of helping to form a new permanent territory); the zone itself is small, was lacking ² events, and the event had many technical problems. It was notable in that it told a complete tale in game from start to finish with some loose ends to be tied up through future content. Unfortunately, that tale would have to wait three months for a small update with the consortium taking on displaced settlers, and then a major update about three months after that. (cont’d).

¹ – The Living Story in Guild Wars 2

² – Now it has a major meta event few do because it is poorly structured. It would be better if it acted more like a back and forth between the settlers of Southsun and the Karka. The settlers would have their corner(s) of the map and the Karka have their territory. As the settlers need more resources they risk going out into the island. As players we protect them, but in doing so we start to enrage the Karka Queen. As more territory is claimed by the settlers the Queen responds in kind by initially sending out karka to take back the territory. If she continues to fail she fully enrages and joins the battle. This way a small contingent of players can get the event rolling and then the event can pop up on GW 2 stuff. As it is now the pre-events aren’t on GW 2 Stuff (as the events are always up, so what’s the point of tracking them), which means that players that use GW 2 Stuff to guide their farming never show up there. I’m not too fond of GW 2 Stuff to begin with, but it definitely has its uses for getting the farmers to help out on group events. As an aside to this aside, the Karka Queen needs a better model.

The other updates have, at their best, added small story instances and entertaining dungeons that contribute to the Living Story tale, but leave many important details out of the game to be found in blog posts or interviews ³. At their worst they offer achievement grinds and farming, seemingly forced story lines to explain quality of life changes (e.g., Tequatl’s increase in power), teasers for wider stories that don’t seem to be on the agenda anytime in the near future (e.g., Zephyr Sanctum’s connection with Glint and possibly her offspring), or vehicles to promote Ellen Kiel and Scarlet no matter how tacked on their inclusion seems to be.

To me these releases show a need for Arena Net to take their time and only put a stamp of approval on them when they are ready. Two weeks between them seems like too short of time to tell a cohesive tale given their resources. They say their scheduling gives each team four months to work on content, but are these teams large enough to create a new zone populated with interesting dynamic events, new meta-events that tell the zone’s tale; and potentially a new zone dungeons, jumping puzzles, and open world mini-dungeons? I have my doubts. They say that their Living Story is a kin to catching your favorite T.V. show every week, but it’s more like catching a ten minute clip of your favorite show every two weeks (sometimes months).

Given their track record since they started calling the game updates “The Living Story”, I don’t trust the Living Story team to create the fun, entertaining, and story driven content needed for places like The Crystal Dessert or Ring of Fire. However, if they are looking for ideas on how to structure their releases in a way that makes them interesting this forum is not short on good ways of telling a story through frequent content updates (⁴,⁵).

³ – I place Flame and Frost as one exception to this. This content, while poorly paced, at least seemed to give the bulk of the important details in game. The explanation of the reason for the Molten Alliance was left as a cliffhanger, which I’m fine with. What was really disappointing was that it took five months to give us a reason for the Molten Alliance’s creation and that reason was the poorly introduced and developed, at least in game, Scarlet Briar.

⁴ – The Villainry of Lazarus

⁵ – The Hoelbrak Gathering

while I agree, I feel that older links to the previous game are best served in story only and in new fractals.

I want to know what’s north of Divinity’s Reach. or whats west of Rata Sum. or what’s east of Mount Maelstrom. new lore breathes new life into the story. just going over older story stuff is almost pointless. links here and there are great, but if you want a full game of that content it’s still there, and it’s called GW1.

I agree but we still need to re-explore the zones we had b4 do we not? I really ment we just need to push into the rest of Tyria unlocking all those named zones and what a better way to do that than have the Living World take us there and revamp the old zones and bring back what was once playable areas of GW.

Psilo.2485:

I agree but we still need to re-explore the zones we had b4 do we not? I really ment we just need to push into the rest of Tyria unlocking all those named zones and what a better way to do that than have the Living World take us there and revamp the old zones and bring back what was once playable areas of GW.

Exactly!

Now that I’ve achieved 4 lvl 80’s, nearing the end on a legendary, ran all the dungeons, and explored every possible area available… I’ve been doing exactly what every other person would do that loves this game and wants it to continue forward. What, oh, you wanna know what that is? Alright, I’ll tell you..

YouTubed the _ out of every decent/crap piece of GW lore available.. Not to mention, reading the GW2 Wiki. Well, attempting rather.. I can’t get through a paragraph without clicking on EVERY link I come across. It’s not like the links stop there either.. I know some of you feel my pain.

Anyway, this obviously has had an impact on me.

What are these places we cannot go to?
Why are they on the map if we can’t go there?
Will we ever be able to go there?
What is this living story business about?
Will the living story let ME (not having played GW) be able to explore the past since we’re obviously “living” through new content?

These are just some of the questions that I have as well as others..

Yes.. this is GW2. But seriously.. If you’ve done the research I’ve done, i’m sure it’s easy to see that there is a ton of loose-ends EVERYWHERE. There is literally hundreds of ways we could link the future with the past and visa/versa. The Bazaar for example was NEW content, but we could easily revisit the origin of the Zyphyrites which (per wiki) are of Canthan and Elonian descent. I won’t get started on the Crystal Desert..

So yeah.. It’s doable A-Net

Please do it!

I think exactly the same except for the new content, most of it just not related to gw lore, it’s very banal and nonsense lorewise.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-World-1-year-later-a-sincere-opinion/first#post2957613