Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen quite a bit of grumbling about this release, from the size of the zone to the story to the lack of armor/new race/new profession/etc. You need to think of the context here.

This is not an expansion in which you are frontloaded all the content you can do at once.

This is the first episode of a new season.

Just like a TV series, you don’t get everything in the first show. You have to wait for further episodes for the plot to develop, new characters to be introduced, new challenges for the protagonists, etc. I for one thought this was an awesome introduction to what is ahead. The story is better, they did a great job of building tension and anticipation (the way Kasmeer talked about the Elder Dragons really built that sense of dread, that “something is coming…” feeling), the story journal is a much better mechanic, the new zone is short but sweet, with lots of details quirks put in.

But the best part? I know more is coming. A lot more, including more zones. So don’t throw your hands up right away because you expected the season launch to be like an entire expansion pack. The content you would get from an expansion is coming, and frankly, I like a developing story more than a bunch of stuff plopped on my lap to be done all at once.

Worth noting is that even if they front-loaded and put out an expansion worth of content that delivered everything “we” wanted, the forums would still be plagued with dissatisfaction and complaint.
Mostly because there is no “we”, people want different things and there will always, always be someone out there who didn’t get what they wanted, how they wanted it.
That’s what forums essential are (or at least one of their prime functions), a place where people come to gripe about things.

“Just like a TV series, you don’t get everything in the first show. You have to wait for further episodes for the plot to develop, new characters to be introduced, new challenges for the protagonists, etc.”

And that’s the problem. People interact with a video game, not with a TV show.

If there’s little interaction, and sparse content being released, people aren’t going to waste their time. Trying to fuse a MMO video game with a TV show format will always fail.

Skills, events, combat, armor, new races & classes, new pvp gametypes, and all these can be interacted with, but we’re not getting this. Instead, we’re getting story as the main feature, which is taking up all the resources, while everything else is being neglected.

If you’re not “interacting” with the story, you haven’t participated in the last two years of releases.

I’m not saying that I don’t desire the same things as you (new race, profession, weapons, etc.). What I am saying is that this game has a different format than games that release those things in infrequent chunks. We get story patches, and we get feature patches. This was a story patch (ie. the start of a new season), and feature patch things get put in where they can. People were expecting a huge amount of content from this release, when they shouldn’t. It comes in steady amounts instead of huge delays for lots of stuff at once.

Again, this is not to say that they’ve waited a long time to introduce the new things you are asking for. I agree there. I hope those things come soon. I just think people shouldn’t have expected it all this patch.

Perfect example: Nexxe.
He doesn’t like this release format and is expressing as much. Many other people do, and more still will be converted and start liking it.

Arewn.2368:

Perfect example: Nexxe.
He doesn’t like this release format and is expressing as much. Many other people do, and more still will be converted and start liking it.

Statistics, please.

You like living story. Fine. Cool. Good for you. But unless you have statistical evidence, arguing that “many other people like it” is silly.

Arewn.2368:

Perfect example: Nexxe.
He doesn’t like this release format and is expressing as much. Many other people do, and more still will be converted and start liking it.

Or people will get fed up and just leave quietly, frustrated at the endless jump puzzle LS additions and lack of meaningful character, skill, map, wvw development.

Sarrs.4831:

Arewn.2368:

Perfect example: Nexxe.
He doesn’t like this release format and is expressing as much. Many other people do, and more still will be converted and start liking it.

Statistics, please.

You like living story. Fine. Cool. Good for you. But unless you have statistical evidence, arguing that “many other people like it” is silly.

I said many, not majority. Many could be a dozen people, many could be a hundred people, many could be a thousand, many could be a million. I used positive language because I have a positive outlook on the matter, I did not say anything that would require statistical evidence.

Hyble.4271:

This is not an expansion in which you are frontloaded all the content you can do at once.

Which is one of the reasons we’ve been asking for an expansion. Also, you’re being extremely disingenuous with your characterization by using the term “frontloaded”. That would suggest that LS & expansions have the same amount of content & that expansions just do most of it at the beginning.

The fact is that the first 1.5 years of LS doesn’t have even half the content & features we get in a a year of a GW1 expansion.

I have a feeling that the people who are disappointed with this chapter of LS2 are going to be even more upset with chapter 2.

Arewn.2368:

Perfect example: Nexxe.
He doesn’t like this release format and is expressing as much. Many other people do, and more still will be converted and start liking it.

GW2 sold around 3 million copies. The “many other people” are just a fraction of that now. It’s no coincidence Living Story contributed to this.

For a new LS update to have its forum section at only 5 pages (at the current time) is pretty anemic. And it was already at 4 pages before the update dropped.