Guild Wars 2

From the start, the “Living Story” should of been focused on GW Lore, Tyria and the story we we’re given in GW2. Not temporary content that has nothing to do with the game, each other, or Tyria. The title “Random Story” feels a lot more appropriate than “Living Story”.

Without an expansion to release some absolutely epic content that has something to do with GW Lore and Tyria, I don’t see any hope of meaningful content ever being implemented, and it is truly appalling to see great potential going to waste on the “Random Story”.

• End of the GW2 story missions has T-dog start to cleanse the corruption of Orr.

Nothing has happened since then. Orr has not changed even by 1 pixel. Why hasn’t Orr slowly began to slowly transform into something new and regenerated?

You would think the LIVING STORY which promised to change the landscape of Tyria would actually do something like slowly regenerate parts of Orr every few days or weeks, where after a few months or half a year it is a completely different place.

Simple idea: Split the Orr maps into 2 zones: 1 for people who have completed the story missions, 1 for those who haven’t. Once the story is completed, players can witness the regeneration of Orr.

• The location of Glint’s baby is still unknown.

Pretty self explanatory and a huge part of GW lore.

• The crystal desert is still an out of reach place, full of threats, yet has no impact on Tyria/The Game.

Also pretty self explanatory, we have parties and elections and all kinds of fancy stuff in LA, while the threat of the Elder Dragons is completely ignored and has no impact on the game. (PS they’ll need to be a lot more threatening than the laughable way Zhaitan was implemented (If you ever get back to the Lore of the game))

It has been a year and the other Elder Dragons have done nothing to Tyria.

You say you do not want to make an expansion, but the bi-weekly content does not even touch on the Lore or important things in Tyria, let alone change Tyria (As originally advertised).

- Molten Alliance
- Aetherblades
- Crystal Desert merchants
- Festival in LA
- Rigged Election
- Jennah gets her party face on
- More Molten Alliance and Aetherblades

While I enjoyed those for the most part, I (And every single GW1 player) crave for some actual content that has something to do with the Lore, and that will actually permanently change Tyria. The previous content releases are ill-explained minor happenings, compared to the powerful force that the Living Story truly could be.

The above mentioned content releases:
- Are not a story.
- Do not add on to the GW2 story missions.
- Have nothing in common with each other.
- Have nothing to do with GW Lore.
- Do not permanently change Tyria.

The temporary content is getting old. It has nothing to do with GW, and does not change the landscape of Tyria.

+1 for the term “Random Story”. Will use it from now on when discussing LS.

Agree. It feels very random indeed. I mentioned it in “quantity over quality” thread.
In my opinion the TRUE storytelling via personal storyline would be much better.
You can realize the “living world” idea by upgrading and filling existing areas or permanently adding new zones (zephyr sanctum, good bye** ). The whole living world content looks like a waste of work and resources, like a cheap filler to attract gamers, but it can’t go forever the way it goes now, you will just burn out dear arena net.

a restored orr huh … that sounds like a fascinating idea… that would really feel like we are actually done something in the world, new players to the personal story? well the personal stories are already instanced so why not an old orr instance for people doing the story still?

I’m pretty sure no one will miss the “epic” final boss battle with Zaithan anyways.

I also have to agree. There’s nothing wrong with the Living Story as a vehicle to deliver content, but it needs to be more meaningful content and not just random as the OP mentioned.

There are plenty of pre-existing areas of lore that the living story could have delved into that would have hook and enthralled the player base. Instead of inventing new enemies like charr crossed with dredge, sky pirates and the witch from the Bugs Bunny cartoons (a.k.a Scarlet), we could have been exploring

1. The White Mantle and the Mursaat
2. The Crystal Desert, the Forgotten & Glint’s baby
3. What happened to the 6 missing human gods?
4. Cantha
5. The next Elder Dragon (We don’t need to be fighting it yet, just seeing that the story is moving in that direction would be good enough.)

White Mantle invasion kill main White Mantle hero predicting somehitng equal to scarlet zergvents.

This game is pure redundancy, you cant create a decent LS system in pure thempark games….

YES! Please bring us to new places. This is GUILD WARS. It might be the second but what the heck! We have NOTHING that reminds me of GW. I hate to “qq” but ive been waiting forever for more story content that has to do with the story! We have so much of a map to explore! Screw Living Story and Scarlet and crap. Give us old lore. Build off of it.

I also dont understand the random different living story content….they dont seem to flow at all together. It doesnt build off one another. Some of it needs to be permanent. Why leave players out of some content??

GO BACK TO YOUR ROOTS ANET

Living story content has been and always will be about the gem store.

The faster the devs can produce crappy, untested, pointless content…the more random crap they can put on the gem store for us to waste our money on.

This won’t change.

More GW1 related Lore (with the capital letter), less LS crap. Please?
/beg
~~bangs the head against the wall~~

“You are about to experience Cantha as it existed prior to your arrival at Kaineng Center”

I mean it worked fine in GW1. I went back, did all the newbie island stuff despite it being out of chronological order, and heck, I even did it after I finished the actual story so it was just like a fun prequel with my character inexplicably there.

Just give us a historian NPC at the priory than can flip us back to “old” orr once the story is over.

PopeUrban.2578:

Just give us a historian NPC at the priory than can flip us back to “old” orr once the story is over.

THIS.

Agreed with your points about the LS seeming random & disjointed.

The only thing I’d be against is splitting Orr into “before and after” zones for characters at different stages of completion. We don’t want to split the playerbase in existing zones.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

The only thing I’d be against is splitting Orr into “before and after” zones for characters at different stages of completion. We don’t want to split the playerbase in existing zones.

We don’t have to. Players that wish to join their friends in old Orr can experience the history of Orr by talking to an Orr historian, or entering a fractal portal to a different time and place in Tyria (namely, old Orr). Players that don’t give a lick about the personal story, can taxi into the present Orr with their friends.

The only problems with this is old Orr may become unpopular. However, this is no different a problem than the mid-range zones becoming unpopular.

I feel the major reason we haven’t seen more meaningful content is based on the fact that changing Orr or adding endgame PvE content would widen the gap between the entry level players and the veterans.

If you were to tell me that this argument would be silly, I would say that I completely agree. I am only trying to approach this from ANet’s standpoint, since the “Living Joke” adds no value to the lore nor does it feel “alive.” In essence, I feel like we are all apart of ANet’s traveling circus, and the time at which we make our departure is not inherent to our understanding of the story.

Stop with the MacGuffins please and spend more time developing your story. You are basically forgoing all the work that the developers of the original game put into the franchise.

I absolutely agree with you, OP.

It’s like they had people writing the lore for GW1 and GW2, then when the game went live they fired all of them, brought new people who had never even heard of Tyria and asked them to start writing them stuff.

I agree. Sadly there wont be any drastic changes this year, and they make much more profit in gem store with rapid updates tied with “living” story.

nacario.9417:

I agree. Sadly there wont be any drastic changes this year, and they make much more profit in gem store with rapid updates tied with “living” story.

Rapid updates are not bad, if they are systematic and tell a coherent story. The stuff we have got this far has been far too disconnected from the lore that we experience when playing the game and leveling our toons.

God Of Fissures.8627:

Living story content has been and always will be about the gem store.

The faster the devs can produce crappy, untested, pointless content…the more random crap they can put on the gem store for us to waste our money on.

This won’t change.

Sad but true

I have to agree with this. There are so many other things we could be focusing on, even relating to just Tyria in particular, let alone all the things that happened in Cantha and Elona. There’s at least another “Pale Tree” out there. The White Mantle are still around (not even living, but their ghosts are), the Crystal Desert is still sealed off, the Maguuma Wastes are also unreachable, though it’s implied something is going on there, if not the other Pale Tree, than the jungle dragon. All the other elder dragons are still just doing their thing wherever they are, and we’ve got the tengu, the largos, that spot between the Grove and Rata Sum that isn’t filled, the deep water that the quaggan and krait were driven out of…need I go on?

Also +1 for the term of “Random Story”. New content is always welcome, but content that has nothing to do with the game lore and with the game in particular shouldn’t exist. Remake Zhaitan’s fight, make it epic, add something very nice for us when we beat him in terms of plot, which promotes us to find other dragons, to venture into the depths of Tyria, to the highs of Tyria. Remake other dragon fights and make their connection between them and elder dragons they represent some kind of content: like for example we just finished Tequatl, he has something when he’s defeated, we get this item, it draws us to Orr again to activate a chain of events to venture to the Zhaitan’s Rest and search clues if maybe other dragons are somehow connected with his reign and he has a hint for us to defeat them. Then venture to fight revamped Shatterer to link the chain then fight Claw of Jormag. Penultimate should be announcement of new zones to fight Jormag and Kralkatorrik, maybe even jungle elder dragon.
All that was just my fantasy, but maybe it can help with some ideas.

No. No more remakes. We need to fill the blurred out spots on the map. We need new zones – complete, full zones filled to the brim with heart quests, dynamic events, metas and all that stuff we all loved to go through when we leveled to 80.

We also need new weapons, skills, professions and races. We need new crafting disciplines and more recipes added to the current ones.

We need new, complete dungeons with three or four explorable paths on top of the story mode.

We need Guild Halls, Guild vs. Guild PvP, player housing and more emotes, animations, items and tools for the roleplayers.

We need more game modes, more maps and more custom arena options in sPvP. We also need different map for each Borderlands and more functionality for Commanders in WvW.

What we don’t need is more of this “Living Story” bullstuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the Tyria we all have grown to know and love. We don’t need more minigames no one will miss after one week from their introduction. We don’t need more temporary festivals that involve timed events with nothing more than zerging with all your server + several overflows.

Give us what we really need, and I promise we will drown you in money.

They should let Orr go IMO. We killed Zhaitan, removed its corruption, et cetera. There’s plenty of non-Orrian lore they could use and aren’t using. Instead we get to prevent another Evil Plan of an Evil Psycho who succeed at everything because she’s an Evil Genius. Yay!

Can they hire you OP? I would love to see these changes.

K thanks.

I’ve lost my faith for ANet to make GW2 a good story that compares to Prophecies. We’ve had a year and we’ve had no resemblance of great storytelling. The main storyline has some good bits and pieces and the living story is not only lackluster and forgettable but also moves at a snail’s pace. The devs keep on promising that “it will get better” and “you will learn more later” but it’s just words. I don’t care anymore.

I’m so disappointed that they keep on pushing characters we don’t want or care about when there’s a whole world of lore waiting to be explored, new zones to add and Dragons to fight.

I want maguuma jungle, charr homelands, crystal desert, far shiverpeaks, woodland cascades, Ring of fire, scavenger’s causeway … and eventually Cantha and Elona. It looks like I will never get these areas in GW2 when the updates are temporary and built around grinding achievement points.

Sorry this turned out to be a rant, but I’ve ran out of constructive criticism to give. GW2 is not the game I waited for so anxiously for so many years. And that’s what’s the most painful of all, it has/had so much potential, but it’s wasted.

hedix.1986:

+1 for the term “Random Story”. Will use it from now on when discussing LS.

It does feel quite random…

The OP is assuming bullkiten. It feels like an impatient kid complaining about not recieving gifts before christmas. What do you want, a dragon after another? that way the game’s story pillar will be done in pretty much 2 years. Christ. The game needs FILLING content like the current Scarlet saga. Crystal desert, Glint, Elona, Cantha, it will all be included at it’s DUE TIME. We’re talking about a company here, they plan the whole story AHEAD OF TIME. It’s not a crew of 10yo throwing whatever comes to mind. Use your logic.

It’s feels random because that’s what Anet wants. They’re going to surprise us by tying all the dots.
just watch this WoodenPotatos video and it will all make sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiMFEqz3GQ4

stop kittening if you don’t even have an idea of what you’re talking about.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

- Have nothing in common with each other.

When they said all the LS to date would come to a head last patch I was interested to find out how it was all linked. But all we got was Scarlet, one of the most boring villains in any game I’ve played. She comes across as some bratty teenage girl throwing a tantrum. She talks like she is insane but is she really? I don’t think her personality suits her acting. Supposedly a genius but her dialogue is terribly child-like.

I think they were going for a Kefka Palazzo or The Joker type villain but those two swtich between their playful personality and their completely ruthless evil personality. Scarlet just doesn’t measure up.

roque.5162:

just watch this WoodenPotatos video and it will all make sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiMFEqz3GQ4

stop kittening if you don’t even have an idea of what you’re talking about.

Most of WP videos are speculation, attempts to link the otherwise scattered story together (He admits this himself many times). It is his take on how the stories could be told which I think are fantastic. The writers unfortunately don’t seem to be able to do the same.

roque.5162:

It’s feels random because that’s what Anet wants. They’re going to surprise us by tying all the dots.

I’m glad you still have faith in them. I have lost that already.

The Durmand Priory has been to the Crystal Desert.
- What’s stopping us other than a guard at the entrance (and what can he do to the zerg of players who wants to go there?).

Tom Gore.4035:

Rapid updates are not bad, if they are systematic and tell a coherent story. The stuff we have got this far has been far too disconnected from the lore that we experience when playing the game and leveling our toons.

Not to mention that if they ended some of them with a cliff hanger or leaking some sort of clue as to what ties all this together it would make for a much better gaming experience, because I don’t get it and as a result of that I’ve stopped immersing myself in the Living Story.
- Personally, I think that when writing story arcs like these, the writers should let the players know more about what they’re up against. We already got Scarlet, but people are just confused and angry. It doesn’t feel professional or thorough, it feels cheap (especially with the short stories on the web page).

All of it should be in game. That is where the game is happening, not here, not on the forums. Those places are for feedback and news on the ongoings in the game or the development of it.

Yeah, I really wish they would focus more on the good lore that people like. Things like the dragons, Destiny’s edge, the races and politics, etc. I don’t get why they haven’t focused on this stuff already, it’s like it’s all just random new stuff. All new bad guys (that hardly anyone likes), rather than adding to the existing lore.

I vote they do the following:

One last event with Scarlet. Scarlet gets a dragon champion to become her ally, she attacks somewhere that Trahearne is at, the dragon champion turns on them and eats them both. Destiny’s Edge comes in and slaps the dragon silly. The end.

Veltoss.9135:

Destiny’s Edge comes in and slaps the dragon silly. The end.

I’d rather have a party (or zerg) of players do the slapping.

Veltoss.9135:

One last event with Scarlet. Scarlet gets a dragon champion to become her ally, she attacks somewhere that Trahearne is at, the dragon champion turns on them and eats them both. Destiny’s Edge players come in and slap the dragon silly. The end.

Corrected. It would be brilliant, but players should do some slapping – NO CANONS AGAIN, but some actual hand-to-hand slapping. DE drama in addition to that is welcome, but we should get recognition for at least something in this game!

And I agree about zerging the Crystal Desert gates. Just bring flame rams, trebs and omegas. Done.

Philosoraptor moment: if a dragon eats both Scarlet and Trahearne, is it just a vegetarian with our best interests at heart?

Destiny’s Edge can help.. anything to get some likeable characters back in. The important part though is that the dragon eats Scarlet and Trahearne first.

I have for the most part, been a voice (Minority as some would say) against the current style, lore, and content of the Living Story (Coined “Random Story” by the OP.)

The reason I have been against the current course is not because of the method of the two week updates, or the quanity of new features/implementations.

The issue I have had is the quality of the lore and direction of the LS. There are many directions the LS could go, but so far they have been un-related to current issues already in the game.

Here are a few I know of.

1. The state of cleansing in Orr. The Pacts next intentions.
2. The push of Jormags Minions into the southern Shiverpeaks, and the influence of the Sons of Svanir moving East & West.
3. The Unknown location or influence of Kralkatorrik minions.
4. The presence in the Depths of Tyria of Primordis. The spread of the Destroyer Corruption is massive, but underneath the races of Tyria. Their corruption covers a large mass of the Continent.
5. Malyck heading west in search for his own “Pale Tree”, and the Nighmare Courts (NC) persistence of capturing him. The NC is interesting in itself. Is it a corruption or is something else at work?

All of the above bring direct questions and threats to the races of tyria. I’m not stating new maps need to be added constantly, but new storys, and quests/events should be added directly relating to the above.

Also I would like to add some more things to keep in mind.

1. Current state of the Centaur since the defeat of Modniir Ulgoth. Can the other races try to issue a state of peace and unite together to defeat other Dragons? Are they rebuilding forces for another, stronger attack?
2. White Mantle and the Mursaat (Specifically Lazarus the Dire). There have been rumors of the shadows to the west and north of Kryta, but currently we have no knowledge of the state of the White Mantle and their “Unseen Gods”.
3. The Flame Legion and their attempt to ressurect their God. The Flame Legion are working in the background to regain power to assault and dominate the other legions and force control up them. This might not sound important, but the Flame Legion warships the Titans, which could spell disaster for Tyria.
4. The Inquests influence on other races.
5. The supposedly 6th dragon to the far west of the Magumma Jungle.
6. The Dragon who is supposedly in the deeps of the Unending Ocean.

There are many other questions that stir around, but I wanted to address a few that currently strike my mind.

The LS has also brought many unanswered questions to the table. Heres to name a few.

1. Zephyrites and their means of traveling to currently unknown locations (hints of cantha, elona, and possibly elsewhere). Their role in Glints babies (if they exist)
2. Marjory and the mysterious Mr. E

If I missed anything you deem important, please make a comment below.

Cheers

I have seen interviews, remarks from ArenaNet Developers regarding some of my above and saying the want to make those encounters as “Epic, and exciting” as possible. I agree, to make that happen, it will requre time and preparation. That doesn’t mean the Living Story should focus on entirely different content however.

I would like to suggest focusing on what I stated above and providing lore related to such. I don’t expect new maps, enemies, etc, but I would like to see the effects of the above in motion. It would connect me as a player and hero to the world. Instead of me meddling in elections and combating Pirates, I want to go back to doing what my character was promoted for; combatting dragons and their minions. I do believe that should be the internal focus and keep the game in general range.

Currently the lore is all over the place and I have no proper connection to anything after my work in Orr/Arah.

If possible, and if the following read my above posts, I would like to hear their statements and opinions.
Konig, Mad Queen, and Vayne specifically. I do welcome everyones thoughts

In the end, it all boils to the fact that this MMO world has build to be static and no amount of words of “world changing stuff” from the developers will change that.

They COULD change the world, existing areas and add new ones, but the workload put into that would be immense, plus they would at the same time remove content that some players don’t want to have removed, and that new players would then never be able to experience.

Static world, static story. The “Living Story” needs to be as detached from the world as it can be, because otherwise ANet would need to make massive changes to existing zones, which they are clearly unwilling to do.

Which brings us to the next question of why they don’t make new zones then and take the living story there? That would also require a lot of resources but by their own talks they should have the dough. It would also solve the problem of not having to remove existing content from the game.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

While I enjoyed those for the most part, I (And every single GW1 player) crave for some actual content that has something to do with the Lore, and that will actually permanently change Tyria. The previous content releases are ill-explained minor happenings, compared to the powerful force that the Living Story truly could be.

The above mentioned content releases:
- Are not a story.
- Do not add on to the GW2 story missions.
- Have nothing in common with each other.
- Have nothing to do with GW Lore.
- Do not permanently change Tyria.

The temporary content is getting old. It has nothing to do with GW, and does not change the landscape of Tyria.

Here, here!

I’ve enjoyed the Living World stuff, but it’s not really sticking together for me (Braham and Rox are likeable, at least), and I really miss the much more epic and less joke-y feel of GW1’s lore. The Aetherblades feel more funny than evil. The Molten Alliance seems faintly ridiculous and hard to really explain. Scarlet herself, and especially her clockworks, seem rather like a joke-y enemy than a serious threat.

I mean, maybe that’s intended. Orr and all that was pretty grim. Maybe this is the light-hearted intermission before TERRIFYING EVENTS unfold?

But I think they do need to start unfolding soon, and I’d really like to see more GW1-based stuff, and less “light-hearted steampunk” stuff. The steampunk stuff is there for those who want it, but how about some more fantasy and less steampunk, eh? GW1 was really awesome fantasy so…

Idea! Use the living story as a build up to the really exciting and epic content. Instead if random bosses and having a clear go here beat this guy win, next story. Why not make it like we are embarking on an expedition into the crystal desert. We could get a new map and say instead of a “this zone is closed” have like an infinite spawning wave of branded or something charging across the zone and have a boss mob like a super branded or something powering up in the background of the army that you just can’t quite reach due to being overwhelmed and say if you do get through he has a knock back tornado field around him until the next patch and you get to fight him and when you do, more map and story is opened up in a more linear fashion. – shrug -

+1 to most of what has been said in this thread. Whilst the living story stuff is ok, it’s not what the majority of players are here for. There are already so many questions that need answering about the world. Such as, what is going on in the crystal desert? why exactly is elona cut off? is the desolation still there?

I’m very surprised the writers haven’t gravitated towards these kinds of questions as i think they are far more intriguing than any of the LS stuff so far.