Guild Wars 2

No need for drawn out explanations, there are enough threads out there already to put your views across , just a simple – PASS FAIL or utterly DIRE

I rate it a FAIL personally, which is a shame as I have actually enjoyed LS season 1 for the most part.

dire phail .

It’s unfortunate that the finale was, well, what we got. They were going really good for nearly a year then they stumbled right at the finish line.

It’s a shame cause an extra 2 weeks of balancing and testing could have delivered something cool.

I give it a D-.

Story wise it was so bad, like the writings of a five year old. Executing wise it was just buggy like hell. But the devs tried and there was some really good content. (mainly SAB 1, Flame Frost Dungeon)

But with the two-weeks release schedule Anet cannot produce polished content. They need to move away from this schedule. But they won’t as more frequent updates generates more daily logins.

Right now the Art Department is basically carrying the whole company. Kudos to these guys.

Lessons Learned for Anet:
- Fire your current “writer” and hire some one who actually made a living with writing before.
- Form a QA deparment. You are in need of one.
- Communucate better with players.

9/10.
I don’t understand your complaints, people.

I am sick at home and could play all day long. I have not logged in for days.

Sounds like an F to me.

Aethelbert.1497:

9/10.
I don’t understand your complaints, people.

I’m genuinely curious here. Are you being sarcastic? If not, why do you rate it so highly?

Content and trying to get people to stop zerging 8+
Latency isuues that havn’t been resolved being put on a backburner..lag, chashes, bug’s etc.. -10

so a -2+ average ^^

PASS, 6.5/10

End fight was way too long and frustrating, a freaking hour of fighting with the rest of the players on the map. Also, the fight with the knights is near impossible at night during off peak hours (or at least was, haven’t tried it since they removed zerging). Still, the fight had a great epic feel to it even if it was dragging on way too long.

Outside of gameplay frustration the story was a nice end to the season and Scarlet’s arc… dialog needed some work as did delivery, but I have come to accept that from MMOs in general. Very happy to see the kiss between Marjory and Kasmeer. ANet is certainly one of the most inclusive developers with their characters and it’s certainly a good thing that I applaud, between LGB and also disabled characters I’m loving it. Just wish Kasmeer’s dialog was a little better delivered.

Ending cutscene was great though and I can’t wait for Season 2

I know I said 6.5/10 and, but 5/10 is average… 6.5/10 is above average.

2/10

Too many game breaking bugs. Too many disconnects from the server that are on ANet’s end. Too many game breaking fixes to the game breaking bugs. And on a subjective level, the story was horrible and Scarlet was an annoying, cardboard cutout of a villain. I’m glad that she’s dead if only because it means never having to deal with her again.

If this is what comes of “extra polished” content, this game is going to have severe issues reaching the next year at any kind of success.

Story wise, I loved it. Scarlet is awesome and everything that happened story wise was great.

Content wise, I hated it. Same grind as always with ridiculous requirements to craft stuff, horrible rewards and drops as always, so called “polished” content that is the buggiest content to date, more RNG gambling yet again, more achievement grinding, etc.

I quit GW2 for awhile, and now come back to see nothing has changed. Makes me regret ever reinstalling the game. But at least I enjoyed the story….

I played the content once and haven’t logged back in since. I can’t think of a better word for it than “flaccid.”

ArenaNet PLEASE fire your writers. I don’t want to believe this schlock was written a year in advance. I can’t believe it. It is utterly unbelievable.

Concept 6/10

Execution 0/10

The sheer amount of bugs gained the spotlight for this living story. If you asked me what I recalled of this patch down the line, it would be a response with about the bugs and not the experience of the content.

Story : 6/10
Plot : 3/10
NPCs : 5/10

Bosses : Ancient Karka – fail.
Canach – fail
Molten bosses : decent.
Clockworks – decent
Marionette – below decent. 4/10
Scarlet’s assault knights – epic fail
Scarlet Briar – 6/10. (Would have been 8/10) if the bugs and other fails we’re not present.

World bosses updates:
Trying to add the difficulty by just adding a timer. Which is pointless for most world boss except Tequalt ,The Legendary Wurm and Claw of Jormag.

WvW updates
Overall decent.
PvD – epic fail…..

Traits updates
Doesn’t do kittens too much…..only a few classes benefitted from it.

Overall LS rating 5/10
Decent.

Ignoring the puppets and killing champions was ok. Still a fail.Bug Bug Buggety Bug.

3/10, only because I love the idea behind the living world and I’m happy that anet tried to do something different from other mmos. However, the execution was just simply terrible:

-weak story
-too much temporary content over permanent ones. I don’t mind temporary if it’s good for the story, but the majority of the content should stay. As someone who took quite a few long breaks it felt like the game remained the same everytime I came back to play.
-RNG on temporary items (very very bad idea)
-zerg zerg zerg zerg…. anet should really stop this
-I don’t know why anet thinks that open world bosses that need 150 people to finish are epic. Maybe on paper it is, but gameplay-wise, no. It’s really chaotic and zergy… giving a boss millions of HP and put it on a timer might be “hard”, but not challenging -> it’s just a DPS check (gogo ‘zerkers). Yes, even Teq and Wurm feels like a zergfest, even though they have some added mechanics. (exception are guilds who kill them on their own overflow, that’s something I respect).
-Not to mention that 25% of the people are afk (leeching), 25% of the people are just simply bad and die, and wait for the ress instead of running back from a WP, other 1/4 of them just “play how they want” and don’t want to coorporate. So yes, open raid bosses which require a lot of people aren’t epic, they are just bad.
-bugs everywhere, and anet doesn’t really care about them – it will go away in 2week anyway…

I thought the previous living story was awesome. I’d give the destruction of LA an 8/10 because of the realistic cries of horror and physical destruction of the place, but I wouldn’t give it the full 10/10 because we never actually got the option to try and save LA – it was just ‘Scarlet is destroying LA, and by the way, she will succeed – deal with it’ sort of thing. We never even got the option to save it in the first place!

I feel Anet missed a great opportunity here to give everyone the option to save LA, and if we failed after the 2 weeks, then LA would be completely destroyed. What would be epic though is if we failed to save LA, all the races would put their differences aside and come together (human, charr, sylvari, asura, norn) to rebuild LA, and with each and every update we could see small bits of progress towards the complete rebuild of LA – heck, it could take a complete year to rebuild… that would not only be awesome, but very realistic! (and each race would add their own particular design/flare towards the building of the new LA, so you could tell that the lion that looks like it’s made out of a plant for example, was crafted by the sylvari). And likewise, if we won, hey! No need for a rebuild! Or perhaps the citizens could have decided to reinforce or even fortify LA and make it even stronger and more elegant than before.

In terms of this living story, I feel Anet really dropped the ball. Not only were the knights bugged to oblivion and the meta virtually unachievable for the first 2-3 days, but it just didn’t make me want to do it.

The potential of getting ascended cores was really nice, and the colored ascended backpieces I have no complaints towards – they look frikkin amazing. What I didn’t like with this update however was the lack of communication (what to do with the abundance of blade shards for example, and the update towards the exotic spinal backpieces where, if you had previously equipped it when it was account bound, after it was updated, you couldn’t take it off and move it to another character – you’re literally stuck with that decision and cannot change it without making a new one or upgrading it to an ascended version).

Combine this with the fact that many of us have obtained the ‘No More Tricks, Scarlet’ and ‘In Tune’ achievements simply by walking into the red, green and blue portals once during the final battle, casting a few hits on the scarlet hologram, and then hiding in the corner until the end whilst everyone else kills Scarlet and all the phases – is just wrong.

I feel like I didn’t deserve those 2 achievements, and I’m sure there are many others that feel the same way about this, but the fact that they are SO hard to achieve, literally forces players to resort to this just to get them. I feel these 2 achievements were poorly implemented, but that’s just my opinion.

On a completely different note…

Of ALL the living stories, I think the most memorable of them all would have to be Zephyr Sanctum – Bazaar of the Four Winds. THAT living story and its achievements I would give a 10/10. It was fun, it was memorable, it made me want to do it, and there were multiple ways of obtaining loot. For example, cashing in stacks of crafting mats that were in an abundance on the trading post, for a chance at some decent loot. Likewise, there were kite fortunes with awesome boost bonuses, and after a certain amount of scraps were obtained, you could cash them in for some epic Sun/Lightning/Wind catcher skins, Zephyrite helms, Rucksacks, and Rose skins. I miss that.

I wish all living stories had those aspects of the Bazaar of the Four Winds. I am glad though that Anet decided to keep some facets of Zephyr Sanctum at least. Today in Edge of the Mists for example, I realised Anet kept the ‘Spirit of the Light’ animation from the Bazaar – when players transform into them at the ‘Altar’ in the overgrowth region of EOTM.

Anyway that’s just my two cents. Take from it what you will :-)

Im going to go with Fail, even tho I really enjoyed the last cut scene.

I feel sometimes like im undergoing some lab test on human nature, can a map work together? can a 150 people that have no knowledge of each other co-exist to complete? Escape from LA brought some of the most toxic map chat I had seen apart from the aether invasions when people wanting to kill scarlet had to deal with the aether farmers.

If they still have not completed the data on human nature by now, il save them the bother, the answer is No, people will not work together unless they are part of something, be it a big Guild or a server wide event, and to do this they have to force their own private instance. Oh and people hate bugs and changing the way events behave because they werent completed the way they expected them to be played.

Anyway… omg a dragon but if its like Teq or the Wurm then 90% of the player base wont ever get to complete it.

For the finale, I must rate it pure FAIL.

Up to yesterday I always ended up in an overflow that failed the knights event, no matter how many times I tried. Today was the first time I got into the main instance … only to find out that it is now a ghost town, with nobody doing the events any more.

It doesn’t matter how great the alleged content is, if it is inaccessible because of factors beyond my control then it’s as good as non-existent. It’s not just about poor implementation, the design principles behind the LS are seriously misguided.

0/10, failed entirely

Pure garbage. Absolutly unenjoyable. Lore was abandoned. Rest of the game was abandoned.

Mechanics-wise, a dire mess with important story content/experience of the final boss we’ve all been waiting for gated behind a buggy, overly-convoluted group event or gear requirements (which forces you to skip the actual interesting final boss fight).

Writing-wise, better, than the earlier releases anyway. I feel like my character is much more a part of everything going on now and I do genuinely like most of the new NPCs in the spotlight. As far as Scarlet goes, I felt a glimmer of what a decent nemesis she could have been in the finale scenes, but I think it was still far too late to rescue her from all the bad writing that built her up. What I remember of her will always be mostly negative, and not because of what she did but how she was written and how unconvincing and tiresome her overpowered perfect always-one-step-ahead look-at-me-I’m-so-crazy-lol villainy was.

I still feel we don’t have answers to half the questions raised during the LW, which is frustrating. One thing I will praise to the high heavens is the audio direction. ‘Battle on the Breachmaker’ is an excellent fight tune. ArenaNet have some incredible talent in that department and I can’t wait to hear what they come up with next.

I’ve been pretty fond of the art design throughout, too, although I’ve always been a bit HMMMM about the oversexualised gigantoboob watchknight designs and would have been a whole lot more comfortable with them being genderless or having some male version counterparts. But, in all, the twisted steampunk aesthetic has totally tickled my fancy.

Another thing I forgot to mention… I thought the cutscene with I think it was Kasmeer? (I don’t really follow the lore so I wouldn’t know) and Jory was really well done.

The emotions were so realistic, and I thought it was extremely brave of Anet to show the kissing scene between the two females – simply because many gaming companies don’t dare to talk about or even show that other sexualities exist, so I really applaud Anet for that.

It’s a very rare sight to see LGBT people who I can identify with in real life (in fact in my whole entire life, I’ve only ever seen 2 gay couples while I was out and about – excluding television and movies of course), let alone as characters in MMORPG’s, so it was really nice of Anet to do that :-) It reminds me that I’m not alone in this world.

The way I see it, this should be looked at as a an extended trial run. They obviously love the idea of the Living Story and are determined to expand the game in this way rather than selling expansion packs. Personally, I agree with this. I feel I am more than getting my money’s worth out of my initial investment plus the modest amount of gems I have purchased since launch.

So, there is a common enough theme running through this thread that some parts of the Living Story execution could have been handled in a much better way. Season One has, for me, shown that they are going the right way in terms of the concept for the Living World, but they need to learn from what didn’t go so well in order to produce high quality, polished content updates on a regular basis.

I for one, would have been happy with less regular updates if there was a corresponding improvement in quality control in the lead up to each one. Perhaps a monthly update rather than fortnightly, and maybe – where lore appropriate – last month’s content sticks around for a little while when the new content hits (maybe a week or two of overlap) so even the most casual of players gets the chance to play the stuffing out of it before its gone forever.

Whatever they have learned from it, I think it was a success. Yes, there were problems with bugs, the content was not always of a universally high standard, but they have proven to me that they can take a relatively high concept approach to expanding Guild Wars 2 and make it work.

In Season 2, I think it will evolve into something that is much closer to what the majority of players really wanted to see. I hope so, anyway.

Aethelbert.1497:

9/10.
I don’t understand your complaints, people.

I’d give it an 8/10 due to some bugs here and there but I really liked it…

Concept-wise: 9/10

The first day of the patch was really enjoyable when multiple overflows were filled with excited people dashing around doing champions, exploring the new mechanics, learning the fights. It was fun, and more importantly, inclusive and rewarding, when the zerg developed a casual effective strategy of zerging down the knights in sync and being rewarded with 15 champion bags for teamwork. The stronger players in the group of 100-150 people helped to cover up for individual weaknesses that start showing up in smaller sized numbers.

I thought the hologram fight was nice in that it showcased the capability of the event system to create raid-like mechanics, but tuned at a level for an average casual player, with lots of room for stronger to carry weaker players (when everyone was still doing their best to contribute.)

I thought it was very clever for the final instance to be solo or small group, so as to convey the storytelling better via NPC dialogue and cutscenes, and it was immensely cathartic to FINALLY spike Scarlet. The cinematic cutscene at the end was awesome, intriguing, and provoked thought and discussion for things to come.

And I really liked that an option was provided for those who didn’t like mass group content or couldn’t manage the hologram fight but wanted a story conclusion anyway, via the purple portal at Diverse Ledges.

Execution-wise: 6/10

Unfortunately, cracks in the seams started showing in the next day or two, when trying to fix the issue of some players not getting loot from the knights and not functioning achievements lead to one patch after another with one thing being fixed and another thing breaking.

The two achievements that encourage players to not contribute their all in order to get a ‘hard mode’ achievement provoke exactly the WRONG behavior – slacking and AFKing in corners during a fight, making players hostile and threatened by each other, and thus sending toxicity skyrocketing.

Turning off loot for the knights for a day, before papering over the fight with a quick fix that changed the established tactic, led to players feeling like they just wasted hours spending effort with no reward, and produced expected backlash and frustration when a perceived “nerf” hits. Some of that online hysteria and frustration is spilling over into random overflows as very vitriolic comments from a few players, ruining the social experience for casuals and other players that just happened to end up there.

One positive is that the fixes have been very quick to come, and some of the problems (not getting loot from knights, AFKers, zerg not splitting up) have been attempted to be addressed. I really appreciate a dev team that reacts quickly and responds fast, over one that pretends not to see an issue at all, hence my score that pushes execution over the pass mark.

Hilariously, I think the fixes are coming faster than the general populace can react to and adapt, and the learning period as people adjust is not very pretty.

I do also think that some of this increased tension is due to the perception that this round of Living Story achievements are time-limited, and a very short time limit of 2 weeks at that.

In my opinion: PASS

But for the future, better organizational tools and better direction/prompting for random overflows to organize would probably be good before trying to get 150 players to coordinate again.

My experience has been overall great because I chose to join an organized guild (TTS) and work together with coordinated players on voicechat, but random PUGing it on random overflows, with no commanders stepping up and players choosing not to cooperate, leaves a lot to be desired.

Well so far as small samples go it’s not overly encouraging… as many of you preferred to score it.. ‘ll chip in with a 4/10 which I call a FAIL.. but not DIRE as I thought things like the idea to break up a zerg (no matter how poorly implemented and bug ridden it has been) as well as the cutscenes did bring something to the ending and yeah I agree the cutscenes, as with many of the LS updates was quality work…
Unfortunately the rest of it proved to be nothing more than a mess of particle effects and a DPS race with the odd dodge rolled into it… killing off condi builds because they are too lazy to implement better condi mechanics and individual stacking on bosses just for me showed a lack of time and resourcefulness in this LS approach.. hopefully going forward they will use this shambles as a pre-cursor of how not to development content… but hey that’s just my opinion.

FAIL

I still don’t know what is going on with the ‘Scarlet Briar’ LS arc. My problem isn’t with the character of ‘Scarlet’ so much as it is with the writers themselves. I can no longer trust them to write a compelling story for season two after season one’s incomprehensible plot line.

Aside from the the writing, the technical implementation has been severely lacking. A great many LS releases have suffered from achievement/event-breaking bugs or have suffered from unnecessarily strict or poorly designed event mechanics.

I loved this game before the living story began. I played for hours each day. Now, since the LS, I barely log on anymore. The LS has potential but much of that is wasted on temporary content, disengaging stories and poor rewards.

please no more mindless auto attack zerg content. put individual skill back into the game.

warbreaker.8154:

I played the content once and haven’t logged back in since. I can’t think of a better word for it than “flaccid.”

ArenaNet PLEASE fire your writers. I don’t want to believe this schlock was written a year in advance. I can’t believe it. It is utterly unbelievable.

I think this is what does it for me the most. I’ve come to terms a long time ago with how this game will always be this zergy, dps-timer, artificial difficulty type of gameplay. There’s other games I can go to for a challenge so I accept it for what it is….

However the writing for this content is so bad that I think screenwriters for mid-90s WB sitcoms could’ve done better. In comparison to how well the stories were written for GW1, this garbage can’t even hold a candle to it. It honestly makes me feel like I’m trying to decipher a 9th grader’s lit essay that they hastily wrote the morning it was due.

F

I’d say ~8/10. Maybe 7/10 when focusing less on the recent episodes.

Thing is, it started off really bad. And Scarlet as a villain didn’t work, because she never did anything to inconvenience or aggravate us.
But, back in the days I specifically posted that one thing she could do is destroy Lion’s Arch. That would kitten players off, main central hub and convenience store gone.

But even ignoring that they listened to exactly that idea, the patches improved steadily. Each new event showed direct results of player feedback to previous events. Good examples include Pavillion → Tower and Scarlet Invasion → LA Invasion, which both fixed issues we specifically bemoaned about the previous events.

And the last handful of patches, the story improved, too. Ofc it couldn’t go too far from the slow start, but really given the mechanical improvements, I’d sum it up like this:

• 10/10 for the quality of the events. It’s a refreshing difference to the glacial pace at which other MMOs implement content, even if the bursts are bigger.
• -1 for the story. Maybe -2.
• -1 for the bugginess of each release. Though it never bothers me as much as it seems to bother everyone else, and I got less time for this game than most. :P

Exosferatu.2961:

I see the first season of the Living World as experimental.

Do you want to see changes in Guild Wars 2? Give Arena Net a proper, well constructived feedback.

Firstly, experimental content is for indie games. This is a NCsoft game, they want to minimize risk, so ANet better stops fooling around.

Secondly, I have seen tons of good feedback since and even before release, that has been ignored. Not playing the game anymore at all seems to be the only language ANet understands…

I give it a PASS for being innovative and a lot more than I could have ever expected in terms of content update from a non-subscription game. That said, I will be expecting a higher quality storyline and a number of complaints that have been brought up to be resolved starting with the next season of Living Story. Please give us:

Permanent new Zones
Permanent new Dungeons
A Coherent Storyline from Start to Finish
A new cast of Characters

Up until the latest update that was truly meant to benefit larger servers(even if not on purpose) I would have said A+. But now that they decided we were having too much fun and that we had actually figured out how to beat the event regularly, D-. Close to fail.

At least I completed the content before that. Now I can do world bosses and WvW without worrying about missing an event that I once truly enjoyed.

Seriously, people actually started moving to the regularly scheduled boss fights like Jormag and Golem II yesterday.

Good job alienating casual players, small servers and making it a “Play the way ANeT wants you to play” event. I could see if there was an exploit, but the run from boss to boss method was actually fostering coordination and server unity on my server. That is all but gone now.

Heibi.4251:

Up until the latest update that was truly meant to benefit larger servers(even if not on purpose) I would have said A+. But now that they decided we were having too much fun and that we had actually figured out how to beat the event regularly, D-. Close to fail.

At least I completed the content before that. Now I can do world bosses and WvW without worrying about missing an event that I once truly enjoyed.

Seriously, people actually started moving to the regularly scheduled boss fights like Jormag and Golem II yesterday.

Good job alienating casual players, small servers and making it a “Play the way ANeT wants you to play” event. I could see if there was an exploit, but the run from boss to boss method was actually fostering coordination and server unity on my server. That is all but gone now.

Really? I kind of thought the change was an improvement. Until the change no group I was in was able to beat the Prime Hologram for some reason or other, but after the change things seemed to work out better. That, and breaking up the knights forces three groups of players to coordinate, which solved the issue of getting into the Prime Hologram area only to die from a laser path immediately (turns out Scarlet starts doing stuff a minute after the first knight is killed, so if they die at the same time, you can enter the arena without worry).

2/10

story was nice but everything else FAIL.

I’d give it a c+. The ending was pretty cool, all the bugs/changes around it were a big let down.

Pass—just —, but losing patience. If you going to write a story, cheeping out on the punch line, or in this case, total lack of, only alienates the support garnered thus far.

The content release formula currently used creates a pretty cool flavor, something other mmo’s don’t really offer. However, it feels like the breakneck release pace resulted in some design/development failures, especially in the last three patches. While great at offering a little bit of everything, the new content was usually too fleeting to build on previous content, and drew too many people from other events to experience the full picture. Its a tough problem and one I’m glad they tackled.

This most recent patch is definitely the most lackluster. Building on the previous lion’s arch events is a mixed bag here because the new event trample on old events that are secretly new events. While there are lots of new fights, there aren’t that many new rewards, and buggy content replaced with unreachable content leaves a really sour taste. In most things, unfortunately, its the end that people remember.

My suggestion for next time is to give players a break between events. Events have been so pushed the past month and a half that there’s been little time to just enjoy the world. As a content release experiment I feel that this was a resounding SUCCESS!

p.s. The very angry player in the back of mind would like to remind the ANET folks to revert or nerf Knights.

Vexander.9850:

Heibi.4251:

Up until the latest update that was truly meant to benefit larger servers(even if not on purpose) I would have said A+. But now that they decided we were having too much fun and that we had actually figured out how to beat the event regularly, D-. Close to fail.

At least I completed the content before that. Now I can do world bosses and WvW without worrying about missing an event that I once truly enjoyed.

Seriously, people actually started moving to the regularly scheduled boss fights like Jormag and Golem II yesterday.

Good job alienating casual players, small servers and making it a “Play the way ANeT wants you to play” event. I could see if there was an exploit, but the run from boss to boss method was actually fostering coordination and server unity on my server. That is all but gone now.

Really? I kind of thought the change was an improvement. Until the change no group I was in was able to beat the Prime Hologram for some reason or other, but after the change things seemed to work out better. That, and breaking up the knights forces three groups of players to coordinate, which solved the issue of getting into the Prime Hologram area only to die from a laser path immediately (turns out Scarlet starts doing stuff a minute after the first knight is killed, so if they die at the same time, you can enter the arena without worry).

My server had no problem until the latest update. We would take out 1 knight at a time and still have 2-4 minutes left on the event. Then we would go in to the Hologram fight, a few would die or be downed, but not event failure threatening. We weren’t aiming for perfection, we were aiming for success.

Before the all on one knight method we were having occasional successes. The groups with fewer people tended to fail even if we got the knights down and progressed to the Hologram.

Now you need a larger force than one single zerg(40-60 was my server’s zerg doing the one at a time method). If you don’t have 3 sizable zergs, you fail, and never reach the Hologram fight. The old method actually brought our server together, but now LA is just a champ farming zone. I’m sure if they can swing a full zone they may try the new REQUIRED method, but otherwise the event is dead on my server.

Heibi.4251:

Vexander.9850:

Heibi.4251:

Up until the latest update that was truly meant to benefit larger servers(even if not on purpose) I would have said A+. But now that they decided we were having too much fun and that we had actually figured out how to beat the event regularly, D-. Close to fail.

At least I completed the content before that. Now I can do world bosses and WvW without worrying about missing an event that I once truly enjoyed.

Seriously, people actually started moving to the regularly scheduled boss fights like Jormag and Golem II yesterday.

Good job alienating casual players, small servers and making it a “Play the way ANeT wants you to play” event. I could see if there was an exploit, but the run from boss to boss method was actually fostering coordination and server unity on my server. That is all but gone now.

Really? I kind of thought the change was an improvement. Until the change no group I was in was able to beat the Prime Hologram for some reason or other, but after the change things seemed to work out better. That, and breaking up the knights forces three groups of players to coordinate, which solved the issue of getting into the Prime Hologram area only to die from a laser path immediately (turns out Scarlet starts doing stuff a minute after the first knight is killed, so if they die at the same time, you can enter the arena without worry).

My server had no problem until the latest update. We would take out 1 knight at a time and still have 2-4 minutes left on the event. Then we would go in to the Hologram fight, a few would die or be downed, but not event failure threatening. We weren’t aiming for perfection, we were aiming for success.

Before the all on one knight method we were having occasional successes. The groups with fewer people tended to fail even if we got the knights down and progressed to the Hologram.

Now you need a larger force than one single zerg(40-60 was my server’s zerg doing the one at a time method). If you don’t have 3 sizable zergs, you fail, and never reach the Hologram fight. The old method actually brought our server together, but now LA is just a champ farming zone. I’m sure if they can swing a full zone they may try the new REQUIRED method, but otherwise the event is dead on my server.

Yeah I can see what you mean. Maybe they should make the old method possible again somehow. Say, when one of the Knights is downed, the other two lose 1/3rd of their HP? I think that’d encourage people to do it the old way, but still allow three large zergs to work at the same time as well.

5/10 for the first half or so, understandable because it was new. Some good, some bad, but not overwhelmingly one-sided like some people are making it out to be.

8/10 for the second half or so as content became progressively better and the story-telling picked up. Some people complain about the bugs, but not everyone experienced it so I can’t speak for that part.

Over all, I think Living Story was good and did a decent job for it’s first go around, but my expectations for the second season, given the “experimental” first season, is higher.

Zaoda.1653:

I thought the cutscene with I think it was Kasmeer? (I don’t really follow the lore so I wouldn’t know) and Jory was really well done.

The emotions were so realistic, and I thought it was extremely brave of Anet to show the kissing scene between the two females – simply because many gaming companies don’t dare to talk about or even show that other sexualities exist, so I really applaud Anet for that.

It’s a very rare sight to see LGBT people who I can identify with in real life (in fact in my whole entire life, I’ve only ever seen 2 gay couples while I was out and about – excluding television and movies of course), let alone as characters in MMORPG’s, so it was really nice of Anet to do that :-) It reminds me that I’m not alone in this world.

If I write a book about two women shouting each other’s name and making out for 145 pages, will you buy it? Because that’s all there was to this cutscene. Felt like one of those mainstream anime series.

Jory -> I have been hit by an explosion and now I appear dead. Such drama!
Kas -> I’m going to shout your name over and over while hiccuping instead of checking for a pulse because I’m dumber than the cast of Jersey Shore. Also, here’s a kiss.
Jory -> Well, what do you know? I’m not dead after all! That kiss woke me up and instantly cured whatever ailed me. It feels as if the writers have decided to just pull a Snow White on you guys.

As much as I complain, I’ll give it a Pass just for the attempt. I believe they need to learn to focus the Living Story as an experience. Not to try to make gameplay statements with them. All the game mechanics and obstacles put in place completely overshadowed and broke any immersion we could have had.

Honestly without exaggerating one bit and after analyzing my experience in all mmos i’ve played this has been the most shocking technical disappointment of a content i have ever experienced so far. Everything about it technically is a fail. Achievements….time constraints..event constraints (requireing 150ppl each lvl80 each correctly equiped each not being afk..each having correct builds each having food/buffs and each know what to do and what to dodge, each CORRECTLY split up into 3 groups..in order to make the 6 min buff..which means 90% of the community will never have a chance)…Bugs that should have never come out of the testing stage…the fact u need luck to get into main or first overflows created in order to finish it succesfully. The lags the disconnects.

They promised something epic for the finale…let me tell u something…they delivered an epic finale in a historical way from an mmo pov.

Story wise? what can i say…they chose the most predictable ending ever conceived…scarlet dies a dragon rises. Why did they even compare this game to Game of Thrones? Oh yea and an almost emotionless lesbi-kiss between 2 characters they did a great job in not making me care about …yay……………………….. If u want an emotional lesbi-kiss go see the ending of “The last of us”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU0qz-dJna8
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoOnqNpkFaA

Look at them it’s a few minutes..u don’t even need to know the characters and it’s still 100x more emotional then everything GW2 characters had to offer. Now please stop making that hickup scene seem like an oscar winner.

2/10 score and i am in the best mood today.

I give it a C.

The good
- Molten Facility dungeon was extremely good. Definitely the best dungeon ever made in my opinion.
- Marionette was very good as an event and for the community.
- Canthan Bazaar of the 4 winds.

The okay
- Queen’s Gauntlet
- Clockwork Chaos dungeon
- TA path 2 revamp
- Edge of the Mist

The bad
- Battle for Lion’s Arch – bug fest
- Karka Invasion of Lion’s Arch – meaningless lag fest
- Scarlet Invasion – meaningless zerg fest and farm fest
- The Bazaar of the 4 Winds minigames – nobody playing the games for the games, just achievement farming(and associated griefing)
- Toxic Nightmare Tower – a case of farm your achievements early or get left behind

The horrendous
- Ancient Karka event. If it wasn’t for the chest that gave 2 exotics, the bile that would have spilled.
- SAB World 2. Took everything fun about world 1 and left it in a box.

The actual living story as a whole? Like a 7/10. Solid effort after a rocky start.

This patch? Like a 4. I love the game, not gonna cry foul and threaten to quit or anything but this patch has been bug after bug after bug. The final bossfight, once it got fixed, is fantastic. I love the holo fight, I love the music, and I don’t even mind the knights.

It’s just there’s been SO many bugs.

Slowpoke.2749:

Zaoda.1653:

I thought the cutscene with I think it was Kasmeer? (I don’t really follow the lore so I wouldn’t know) and Jory was really well done.

The emotions were so realistic, and I thought it was extremely brave of Anet to show the kissing scene between the two females – simply because many gaming companies don’t dare to talk about or even show that other sexualities exist, so I really applaud Anet for that.

It’s a very rare sight to see LGBT people who I can identify with in real life (in fact in my whole entire life, I’ve only ever seen 2 gay couples while I was out and about – excluding television and movies of course), let alone as characters in MMORPG’s, so it was really nice of Anet to do that :-) It reminds me that I’m not alone in this world.

If I write a book about two women shouting each other’s name and making out for 145 pages, will you buy it? Because that’s all there was to this cutscene. Felt like one of those mainstream anime series.

Jory -> I have been hit by an explosion and now I appear dead. Such drama!
Kas -> I’m going to shout your name over and over while hiccuping instead of checking for a pulse because I’m dumber than the cast of Jersey Shore. Also, here’s a kiss.
Jory -> Well, what do you know? I’m not dead after all! That kiss woke me up and instantly cured whatever ailed me. It feels as if the writers have decided to just pull a Snow White on you guys.

So when will the guys be making out? No? Why they felt to go down this road I am not sure, but 10/10 for bravery. If the right wing press gets hold of it, hold on for a storm, corrupting morals etc etc

2/10

Terrible scaling on knights
To many stupid bugs still around

Boring mechanic, too many bugs, lots of waiting around… C at best. Spoon

Fail 4/10

To me the only thing that keep me playing “living story” are the ap and the sometimes good skins to earn in the meta achievement like dragon bash back was really good and the flower from the bloodtide coast.

But like 80% of all the skins that has been released from living story start until the end is trash. (They even kittened up the tormented weapons from gw1 LOL how hard is it to just copy paste a weapon from the original game?)

I would rate 0/10 but since i get my achievement points and a few good skins I rated 4/10 other reasons to play that content are not existing standing around bosses and press 1 for 10 minutes doesnt seem like a revolutionary gameplay mechanic to me.