Guild Wars 2

So, with the awakening of Mordremoth, I was really excited at first for the 2nd Season of the Living World, which may take us into the depths of Maguuma, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted this entire current structure of the Living World, especially if Season 2 is gonna lead up to a possible fight with Mordremoth….

Lemme explain my concerns. So we have the Personal Story missions currently in game, which just focus on Zhaitan’s story, and then after that we have the Living World, which I always kinda thought would be a nice filler between Dragons, which it kinda seems to have done. But if the entire lead up to Mordremoth’s fight is just going to be through Living World updates, then will our alts, or friends that decide to play the game later never be able to replay the story that leads up to Mordremoth’s eventual death?

Or will ANet, through the Living World, add new Personal Story missions to the game, since the Personal Story seems to pretty much do with the Dragons themselves, and that way would give everyone a chance to replay the story leading up to the Dragon?

I really hope that as soon as the story focuses back on the Dragons that we get new Personal Story missions, to have the entire lead up to Mordremoth be just through temp Living World content, that would be an enormous let down. I already have a hard enough time convincing my friends to play this game, their response is always, “I don’t know what’s going on with the story since I can’t replay the content” (referring to the Living World stuff) I feel that Dragon stuffs would always be handled via Expansions, giving us a whole new chapter to the Personal Story, but how will they handle Personal Story via the Living World?

So does anyone else share my concern? Or am I just alone here? I haven’t really seen this being brought up but I think it’s definitely something to think about and let ANet know how we feel before they get too far into development of Season 2.

Personally, I’m hoping this is a segway into an expansion, or an expansion-sized content update. It would fit perfectly.

so long as the mordremoth arc/ lead up to him is done through personal story, then i’ll be happy…. wait… lemme add something to that – i don’t care about getting content every 2 weeks, if these updates come in the form of ‘chapters’ for personal story, wouldn’t mind getting them every 1 or 2 months – (in my head) longer time between updates = more refined/better content

if arena net insists on content every 2 weeks, maybe filler updates in between the big ones? kinda… they’re related to the plot but you don’t necessarily need to play them (kinda like the secondary quests from gw1 (e.g. killing the demonic fortune teller/feed the hungry) – kinda like helping with damages caused by mordremoths minions/setting up bases (like fort trinity – its a good example, trahearne says he’s gonna set up a base at the end of the chapter, in the intermediate fortnights, we help set up the base, so when the next chapter is released, its there)

I have a feeling we are going to be getting a massive content update/ expansion in the next few months with mord, and any living story we get until then will be a lead up to mord. But once mord hits, I think that will be permanent and the living story updates after that will be leading up to something different way down the road.

There are several ways Arenanet can follow. One way would be to deliver the confrontation with Mordremoth via Living World. We would witness the preparations, the journey to its residence and the final fight in “real time” Afterward you can replay the whole arc as Personal Story. Tis would keep people 6-8 months busy.

Another way would be an traditional expansion where everything is delivered at once. There you have the risk the the PS is consumed at one weekend since there is no gating via character levels possible.

Third way would be a combination of LW and traditional expansion. Or they sell the PS via gem store along with modules like PvP maps or explorable modes and paths for dungeons.

I personally picture, not an entire xpac worth of zones being released, but one every two weeks, or one every month.

Slowly heading towards wherever the dragon is.

Of course, the dragon also woke up, so there’s nothing stopping the devs from just having him hope over to a zone that already exists to save development time.

This is the way I hope it goes. LS leads into who the next dragon will be and the PS will be us fighting the dragon like how it was with Zhaitan. I think wiht the PS at the part right before u go to Claw Island the player should choose a path as to which dragon they will go after adn when they are done they choose what dragon is next. that way the player gets to choose which dragon they fight first rather than going in a certain order.

like i said, have 2 teams, one smaller team that does the ‘filler’, non permanent episodes every 2 weeks and the larger team working on monthly/bi-monthly permanent chapter updates to advance the story

this is what personally think they should do if they want to continue with the 2 week updates – also…. polymock, bar brawl and firing range? (maybe as celebration for defeating scarlet)

I believe Colin has said already that there are 2 teams LS team and a team that does expansion type stuff like armor, weapons, class balances, etc.

I would be interested in seing both LS and PS unfold at the time.

Imagine it like this:
- every 2 weeks, we could get 1-2 missions of the personal story, that would emphasize your character and your decisions (yet done so that they would not counteract the LS) and that would be permanent for replayability and new players.
- At the same time, you would get the LS with a focus on all the big events unfolding at the same time.

We already had a bit of this during the LS since the most spoken parts of the story itself were told through instanciated zone. What I suggest could be easily achieved through better narration during the “solo story” parts of the LS and adding decision making to them in order to turn them into a chaptered PS that can be replayed.

Here is an example:
- on the LS side, a large scale battle
- on the PS side, a sabotage mission where you get to choose what your objective. During the mission, NPC can chat and provide you with information on what is happening on the LS side (therefore providing a LS summary through the PS after that LS chapter is done).
An interesting idea could be to have a separate set of characters for the PS and LS parts so that PS can have some die depending on player choices and actions without affecting LS. That would help in managing a canonic LS.
- Once the next chapter comes, you learn in LS that the battle was won thanks to several infiltration groups which successfully sabotage key enemy assets. Nice link to your PS, and it fits everybody. Afterall, the mission you did not chose was logically given to another party (did you ever wonder how, in original PS, the orb always reaches Fort Trinity while you only get it by yourself in one of the several mission choices ?)

@gilgalas – in that way, it increases the workload of the teams doing it – its like having 2 releases at once very 2 weeks, plus the fight(or lead up to the fight) with mordremoth would either be over too quickly or drag on way too long (hah drag on… dragon….. its a pun)

i know its not up to me but ill still stick with the personal story being released in chapters – does anyone know how long it takes to develop a mission for the personal story?

but i think we can all agree that we want the proper mordremoth arc to be a permanent thing (personal story instead of living story), its unfair to players who’d miss it