Guild Wars 2

My friend recently started playing GW2 again because he wanted to try out the living story. He’s been gone about a year or so. When he goes into the story journal and tells me he can’t play any of the previous episodes expect “Point of No Return” I’m actually surprised!
So are the living story episodes not free? or does he need to do something in order to unlock them for free?

http://i.imgur.com/OhNm62U.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DtZVTf7.jpg

He needs to have logged into the game world once during the time they were active. As he did not do that, they will cost the gems for full unlock.

He can experience them for free if you start the instances, but he won’t get achieves, rewards, or the ability to interact with objects and control dialogue trees.

Thanks for the help! So if I understand correctly he has to pay in order to play through the living story parts he missed.

Yes, though if he can get 200 gems with gold he needn’t spend real cash.

There are 2 ways he can play it:

1) Play the story with you (or anyone else who has it unlocked)
If you’re in the same party and you start the instance he can join you. He’ll still see his character in the cut scenes. It’s completely free but he’ll only be able to play the story with someone else, won’t get the rewards at the end and can’t do the story achievements.

2) But the story himself. He can then play it any time he likes, as many times as he likes and get all the items and achievements.

Remember it’s possible to buy gems with gold, which might help. He could even start by playing the open-world stuff in Drytop and Silverwastes and then use the gold he’ll get from doing that to unlock the episodes. It might not be enough to afford them all but it’d help.

blakdoxa.7520:

Thanks for the help! So if I understand correctly he has to pay in order to play through the living story parts he missed.

He can play through with you to see the story.

The only thing he has to pay for is the ability to do the achievements.

hmm i did not unlock the Gates of Maguuma but i unlocked the rest of the LS2 thereafter. Will i still be able to access dry top and its contents?

Yes, the maps are accessible to everyone. The LS episodes are only locking you out of achievements/story instances.