Log in while the Entanglement release is live to unlock free, permanent access to the Entanglement story content. Once you’ve completed this episode’s story, you’ll gain access to a new set of ultra-challenging achievements meant to put your skills and wits to the test!"
I’m a new player having just bought the game this weekend, from reading the quote above am I to understand that I won’t have access to any of living world story content that was released before I started playing? I was assuming wrongly it seems that the living world content was free, will I now have to buy 2 or more years worth of living content to “get caught up” with everyone else? Is it even still available? While I don’t mind either way I’d like it if someone could answers my questions.
I’m enjoying the game and while I will be disappointed if I can’t access any of the old content it certainly won’t keep me from playing the game and getting my main/alts to lvl 80 before I eventually move on to a different game. If anyone could enlighten me about this I’d be thankful
Season 1 of Living World was mostly temporary content and story which isn’t available yet in the story journal, no. They recently added the journal to the game, in which you can unlock the story and play it whenever you want in the future, as long as you logged in when it was active. If you didn’t log in while it was active, you can buy the episode from the gem store for the cheap price of 200 gems (which you can buy with in-game gold). If you bought the game and logged in this weekend, you should have unlocked all the story (just 2 episodes under Living World Season 2) that has been released in the story journal so far. Season 1 hasn’t been released in the story journal to be replayable yet, but ArenaNet have said they want to release it someday in the future. They haven’t said if it will be free for everyone or if new players have to pay for it though.
The reason why Season 1 isn’t in the journal yet is because the content and story wasn’t made with the journal in mind, so they’d have to make major adjustments to the content if they were to release it in the journal.
And you were assuming correctly that the living world content was free. It’s just that it was temporary before. Still, some of the previous LW content was permanent. Some of it has been converted into fractals. Southsun Cove was added as a free permanent world map, even if you don’t have access to the temporary stories and one-time events that were going on there at the time of its release. Other living world changes in the past were additions of world bosses and revamps of existing ones. They also added a new path to the Twilight Arbor dungeon. But most of the content was temporary.
