Our Living World releases will expand on the promise of what it means to be a continually growing game. In the future, you’ll see a wider array of content and experiences in each release, with a greater focus on permanently expanding content. We’ll go into specifics on the variety of playable content you’ll be receiving as each update approaches, but some of our focuses will include improving our existing world bosses, continuing to update and refine our dungeons and fractals, creating world events with a larger and more permanent impact, and expanding the number of dynamic events across the world.
Taken from the “Looking Ahead” blog post about the second half of 2013.
July we had the Bazaar, August we had the Queens Jubilee, September we have SAB, October will be the Halloween event, Novermber ????, and December will be Christmas. 5/6 of those montly events are TEMPORARY CONTENT. We were promised more permanent content, more events, permanent impact. What happened?
I can’t speak for everyone, but to me when I say I want more permanent content I don’t mean Scarlet’s minions staying around to attack a zone randomly. I mean I want to go into the Northern Shiverpeaks, the Crystal Desert, Maguuma Wastes, Ring of Fire, see the rest of Orr. I want to open up the world, explore new zones and have something real and substantial to see and do.
I don’t want carnival events every month that get boring after the first couple days that draw the entire population of the game to one single map. I don’t want to spend all my time on a jumping puzzle air ship, in one part of Divinity’s Reach with everyone else in game or on a random map zerging event after event like a mindless zombie.
This game has turned into the worst kind of theme park MMO and it doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon. What’s going on Anet? What happened to the Manifesto and creating a Living World? These updates aren’t anything of the sort. This world isn’t even a poor copy of living. It’s a set of random or more often non-random timers that circulate the exact same thing over and over. Events were supposed to be the heart and soul of Guild Wars 2 and you’ve completely abandoned them in favor of the carnival rides. The absolute certainty about a living world is that it changes. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t change, the current carnival packs up and leaves to make room for the next carnival arriving. But at it’s core, the world stays exactly how it was before. Non living, static, boring.
I’m writing this not because I think the game is doomed, or even that I dislike it but because it’s not what I was told when I bought it. It’s not what I’ve continued to be told over the past year and it doesn’t appear to be changing into what it’s being sold as. Living Story is what you call your patch cycle. What story? How is a carnival rotation an approximation of a living world? The carnivals are fun, some more so than others, but they lose their luster quickly. I’d really like to have more substance, more world, more dynamic (actual dynamic, not rotating timers) content. I’d really like to have more of what I was told and continue to be told is in the game.