Guild Wars 2

I’m just gonna say it: the Mists. In the first game, there were limited ways of accessing places in there and they were tied to lore-important places in the world, such as realms of the gods (mainly) and Hall of Heroes, but in this game, large portions of the game (PvP and WvW) are both placed in the Mists, and they are mainly described as “forming bits of their own reality — islands of existence that reflect the histories of their worlds”, but in this game there is nothing in the Mists (excluding the Urban Battlegrounds fractal, and the upcoming fractal) that indeed reflects the surrounding world of Guild Wars, it just looks completely random, and even though most people playing WvW/PvP components of the game wouldn’t care much for lore, wouldn’t it be better if they were, even by a tiny bit, related to some of the lore of the game? ( I realize some of the arenas in PvP have names of some places/events that happened, but aside from that fact they are still random and generic since they have nothing other than that to make them related, but even so it’s better than the other components of the Mists)

(related rant) I can understand distancing from the lore of the first game, and mostly because centering on that lore, the lore of the human race, would make other races seem much more insignificant in comparison, but the bits of story we are getting now are in a minimal way related to the surrounding world, so far as I’ve seen, both the Fractals and even the Living Story (only new things added) are both completely random. Living Story aside, I believe that the lore of the first game was great, and I really applaud the conservation of lore important locations from the first game in the PvE aspect of the game (although Southsun appearing out of nowhere, even though it could be explained by the dragons, still seemed out of place, and a year later we still have no real explanation as to how the huge island appeared), and so far as I’ve noticed, other players feel the same, even those that didn’t play the first game. It gives you more pleasure to play a game if you understand, or at least familiarize some of the content added, than it just being randomly piled up, even though this way no one is left out for not being there for the first game, I do believe that getting into the story of a game is a great deal of playing the game, and it may even make a lot of players who didn’t play the first game want to play it afterwards if they like the story, as for the others, there is always a skip button… (end related rant)

This idea actually came to me while playing on the Borderlands map, and realizing that a lot of the places there are totally generic and even though they have names and such, there is absolutely nothing that even makes you want to remember places in there, no reason at all why there should even be 3 different names for identical places, and it’s why no one does, it actually makes it easier for players to call places in there generically for all 3 borders (quarry,hills etc.) to avoid confusing the other players. Also I tried looking up Stonemist Castle to try to understand a little bit about it, and all i could find was “Deep within the Mists lies the Eternal Battlegrounds, a place of mystery where worlds collide and legends are born.” No explanation at all, and I realize some of the players might actually enjoy this more.

When you look at the concept of the Borderlands map, it is clear that it was made so that most of the places on the map were strategically placed, and not placed to relate to something, which I think was the problem for them trying to fit the places into the lore, but as the explanation says: “The Mists resonate from the worlds around them, forming bits of their own reality”, so it could be a place from the lore made to fit the layout of the borderland map. So (finally) the idea is: why not make small changes to the WvW map models and fit some lore in? Imagine if we had one borderland that was Pre-Searing Ascalon, and another that was Vabbi-Kournan border, and even the Eternal Battleground map, imagine if it was the border of the Jade Sea/Kaineng City/Echovald forest? Ok I might be going a bit ahead of myself, and even out of the scope I said before about being tied only to the human race, but those places need no new lore and even the models could be the same, only thing that could be changed are the visuals, and I do believe a lot of people would love to see Pre-Searing Ascalon, among the most beautiful places in the game, make a comeback with the new and improved graphics. You could even fit it so that the Keep Lords/Camp Supervisors would be some notable characters from the lore, and instead of fighting a random sylvari every time, you’d get Aidan guarding a camp and Rurik guarding the keep, or similar, and even the “invaders” could have charr NPCs, and even if they managed to take over the garrison, the lord stationed there would be Bonfaaz Burntfur (the guy who started the Searing), and it also opens up a lot of new options if you upgrade the keep with him, he can call down searing crystals near enemies, which would double as an anti-zerg tactic, and other ideas. I know it might be late for this, but it requires only visual changes, but I am not the one who decides.

TL;DR The Mists are mostly comprised of random content. Just by making small changes to the content already in place, it would make it more enjoyable to the players that like the lore of the game (which I believe is a large percentage).