Guild Wars 2

My friend and I haven’t ‘really’ played gw2 since sometime around the first haloween event.

I’ve been on and off over the past year but never really touched any of the living world content. We just decided to start getting back into the game only to discover that we’ve essentially missed out on a years worth of content that we will never get a chance to see again.

It’s not really that big a deal for me as I did make the concious decision to stop playing GW2 and that decision lead to me missing out on content. My friend however, is really irritated by it and I see where he is coming from. I just visited Southsun Cove tonight and found it to be entirely desolate of any player activity. I literally didn’t see anyone but me on it and could only do one event. Some content, like the player vote, can’t really be made to last forever. That said, a lot of the content that’s been taken out could have been implemented for the long run with a little prior planning. I had no idea why I was teleported to the Tower of Nightmares upon going to Kessex Hills. Nor did I feel like blowing it up was important. I also would have really loved to have seen what it looked like while it was standing.

I can say more but I am aware there are tons of posts like this one so I’ll try keep it brief. I strongly believe that future living world content needs to incorporate an instancing system like the one found in WoW. For those unfamiliar with it, it goes something like this.

Event starts -> Map changes (new enemies, different textures, different missions, new locations etc)

Player finishes event -> Map changes to post event state

Next event begins -> Players that completed prior event can then participate in the new event

Obviously not all events would need to be run in succession and many story lines could be concurrent.

The only problem with this system would be group missions that are part of the main story. I would imagine newer players having difficulties finding groups for these missions. This problem could be circumvented by reducing rewards and turning elite and champion enemies into normal ones. I’m sure the developers could come up with other solutions as well.

As it is right now the living world only wastes developer content. From what I’ve seen there has been some great content added over the past year and it is a shame for it to be buried never to be seen again. Rather than dissuade new and old players from picking up the game it could do the opposite. A years worth of bi-weekly story content that you missed out on doesn’t sound very appealing. A years worth of bi-weekly content that you and your friends can explore, on the other hand, sounds like a very big selling point.

I don’t really care about the rewards I missed out on. I just care about the story related events.

Sorry, I’m bad at keeping things short ^^’

A while ago I took two months off because I really wanted to make a Game of Thrones costume and needed to dedicate ~5 hours a day to it instead of taking up time with GW2 and other video games. I had been playing the game for several hours a day – but something in my life was more important to me than experiencing whatever was going on in GW2 that I made that choice and I don’t have any regrets (why should I ?).

I had previously been participating in the LS ankitten ow. I had also missed the start of the time when the LS started – way back when. I remember coming in at the end of Flame and Frost and being like “???”. On one hand, yes I was sad that I “came back” on the last day of it and was definitely not going to be able to get all the achievements – but… on the other I had been doing stuff with my life that I wanted to do instead. If my priority was GW2 and never missing anything in it I would have to make that my choice instead – and some people do and I don’t judge them – whatever makes someone happy as long as they’re still getting by in life.

I don’t have a problem with how the LS is. You are looking at it from a pessimistic point of view – yes, you “missed” a year of content – that was your choice you were doing other things you wanted to do instead ! But since the LS isn’t stopping you can come back and play if you want to. There will be something happening. Don’t get focused on having to do “everything”. I feel like the LS has done some decent “recaps” as well throughout to try to explain things to people – and you can always look up “what happened” if it’s of particular interest (when I was gone Kiel won the election, not sure what else, some stuff ?).

I’m curious about the technical limitations of instanced areas like that. I also feel like it could easily get “out of order” and be difficult to nagivage without a new UI/system entirely. Some of the content doesn’t make sense without the others – you’re right – but having all it of available would also be a lot to sift through. And if it’s a requirement to continue on you’re going to have people who are essentially “stuck” back in time and who would be angry that they are not able to progress fast enough to catch up to everyone. It also splits players up and cordons them off – which I think wouuld be one of the bigger issues. It was great having SO MANY people in Kessex all doing the events – if you split people up, there might not be as many to do the “current” event – or not nearly enough to do past events that rely on group content (even just trying to get enough people to enter an instanced area to do a dungeon). I remember “coming back” at one point during Dragon Bash. It was cool and I had fun despite the fact I wasn’t even done my Personal Story and hadn’t actually experienced any dragons being bashed. It’s like a 24/7 party that you can join if you want to – that will keep going on without you but that you can always come back to. And if I’m going to be pessimistic, I don’t think it’s like we’re losing out on replaying something of masterwork quality. Some of it is pretty solid, but it’s largely not to the same quality as the permanent world – I’m not sure it could really “hold up” against that or be a huge selling point. A lot of the stand-out moments would be hard to offer as a “re play” and require significant work to be made able to be so – and would be potentially missing important content, et cetera. Some wouldn’t make sense to always have available, anyway – such as the fantastic Zephyr Sanctum – it wouldn’t make sense or serve its purpose if it was always accessible – but it will be back so if someone wants to make visiting it a priority they can check the releases page to make sure they jump in game when it’s back.

I don’t think your idea is essentially bad and might be able to be applied to some situations (I’m just not sure which/how) ! Not at all, I just want to think about it – feel free to address any issues if you’d like.

You reference Southsun Cove being a desolate void without any other players, and then you make suggestions that would create even more empty content that is largely unusable. Phasing, which is the WoW system that you describe, is something that is not only divisive to the community, but also counter to the idea of having a living world where things actually progress and change rather than being a boring monotone.

I am rather happy with the way that the Nightmare story arc has gone. It looks like it will have a permanent, meaningful impact on Kessex Hills from now on. This means that people who never ventured out there before this Living Story will never know what things were like before the Krait and a faction of the Nightmare Court joined forces to build the tower there. But there is no point in having an ongoing story in a game if all that it means is a month long episode that goes back to it’s stable state at the end.

I have missed quite a lot of Living Story releases because I was not playing, either because of RL or just growing bored of things. But that doesn’t mean that I begrudge others having an ongoing story to follow, even when I am not able to keep up with it. And while it is certainly not the same, there are always the recaps on the GW2 wiki to help me fill in what I miss.

I gived up on LS

its worthless small weak pointless temp and bad written content that 80% of the times don’t give anything cool…..

also if you leave for like 1 month you miss out so many that you just don’t give a crap anymore….

staying in WvW that feels more alive and interesting……..