Guild Wars 2

I rate it 2/10 only thing i really enjoyed was “Flame and Frost” rest was poor and full of bugs…

Just wondering has anyone done the 6 minute achievement since the patch of patches hammered down on us – I am guessing a couple of server have but also thinking its not many.

No MMO with a sub would ever let a mess like this go live. They would lose customers.

The fact, that ANet released this abomination of a patch shows, that they do not play in the same league as successful AAA titels.

This is just another F2P game, that thinks its customers will accept anything because it is for “free” anyway.
“You get it for free, be happy you get something!” And some people even repeat this mindless mantra on the forums…

I wanted more “one-on-one” time with Scarlet. She’s been my nemesis (before I even knew) for a year+. Braham interrupted my chance to backhand/trade quips/make out with Scarlet. 6.5/10

Lets see…

Months and months of repetitive content, an enemy with the personality of a potato, NPC’s which only virtue is being lesbians, endless zerg-fests, rush-or-lose content and all to end with “press F”? I mean, really?

Marjory apparently dying and her lover broken into tear and the other guy with a broken leg and his pet doing the overused cliche “I won’t leave you alone” and our character just there, in the background playing the idle animation, not even looking at the camera or paying attention to said NPC’s? Really?

How mediocre someone must be to think this is a well writing and worthwhile ending is beyond my comprehension.

And about the rest, lets just say that saving citizen for 50 minutes every hour for 2 weeks was ten times more funny than the whole “Grand Finale” had to offer in 1 day (which was what it take to complete the meta).

I didn’t expected absolutely nothing and somehow ArenaNet managed to disappoint me.

0/10

daimasei.4091:

Lets see…

Months and months of repetitive content, an enemy with the personality of a potato, NPC’s which only virtue is being lesbians, endless zerg-fests, rush-or-lose content and all to end with “press F”? I mean, really?

Marjory apparently dying and her lover broken into tear and the other guy with a broken leg and his pet doing the overused cliche “I won’t leave you alone” and our character just there, in the background playing the idle animation, not even looking at the camera or paying attention to said NPC’s? Really?

How mediocre someone must be to think this is a well writing and worthwhile ending is beyond my comprehension.

And about the rest, lets just say that saving citizen for 50 minutes every hour for 2 weeks was ten times more funny than the whole “Grand Finale” had to offer in 1 day (which was what it take to complete the meta).

I didn’t expected absolutely nothing and somehow ArenaNet managed to disappoint me.

0/10

i noticed the idling in cutscenes too , i made a game of trying to get my character into different poses every time i was forced to watch that cutscene, while doing the stomp achievement..Havn’t tried using tonics yet.. XD

Fail, two-weeks releases are really BAD option!

I like it. Finally seeing LA trashed is and having a new non boring way to level up alts.

Initial release bugs were frustrating but it’s ok now.

8/10

I thought it started it off alright but only enjoyed it from the Frost and Fire story till the Twisted Clockwork. Granted I loathe Aetherblade retreat and Twilight Abor Aetherblade path (far too coordinates is require when I’m more of a PUG dungeon player).

Other than that I started to hate it when they start shoehorning in Scarlet involvement in the living (I dread to think how she would of been involved if Evon had won the vote and we got the Abandom fractal).

Seriously the last living story we had that Scarlet was not involve at all was Winderday (I’m glad Scalet wasn’t it it and playing as the Grinch) as I don’t see why she was somewhat involve in the Edge of the Mist living story when Mai has not been located in there at all.

So overall I have not been impressed with the Living Story as a whole (Fail in my book).

Also how about the other characters and enemies that appeared in the living story? I had some expectations for them at least.

Canach. He was there in Lion’s Arch until the attack, and I sincerely expected him to become an ally and help out against Scarlet’s minions, since he wanted so much to be the hero.
So what happened to him? If I was the one writing the living story I’d have given him a last role in this.

Mai Trin. I expected her to make a last stand before Scarlet, who allowed her to live only if she protected her up until the end.
Instead it seems she’s just gone who knows where…

Ellen Kiel. She hasn’t appeared once during the final attack. But that still may be plausible, as she’s probably busy commanding the Lionguard, while sending Magnus on the field in her stead.

daimasei.4091:

Months and months of repetitive content, an enemy with the personality of a potato, NPC’s which only virtue is being lesbians, endless zerg-fests, rush-or-lose content and all to end with “press F”? I mean, really?

Wow.
Someone sure is angry.

I wonder though, what would you like to see instead? As in, be a bit of a realistic minded gamer (Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written, who still use their sex scenes as rewards for the player clicking the right answer in a chat wheel), and what would you think ANet should have done LS-wise?

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written

Can not compute.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written

Can not compute.

He’s allegedly claiming that the affair between Kasmeer and Marjory is better script than anything Bioware’s writers could come out with in the Mass Effect series.

Hermes.7014:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written

Can not compute.

He’s allegedly claiming that the affair between Kasmeer and Marjory is better script than anything Bioware’s writers could come out with in the Mass Effect series.

Fatal Error in 10

Hermes.7014:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written

Can not compute.

He’s allegedly claiming that the affair between Kasmeer and Marjory is better script than anything Bioware’s writers could come out with in the Mass Effect series.

And he’s clearly stoned, because dear weeping baby Jesus, can we talk about Garrus Vakarian for a second? And Saren, let’s not forget Saren and basically the entire magnificent plotline of Mass Effect(although I saw a post elsewhere comparing Scarlet to Saren, which is cool.).

Anyway, I for one am very much in favour of lbgt representation in gaming, as was done (not badly, it’s got to be said) in this game but absolutely slammed out of the park in Mass Effect (although am I the only one who’s still sad that her FemShep couldn’t romance Ashley?)

To get back to the point, I rate the content a qualified pass because while the patch to the knight event made it very very hard to get to the final content (and I really hope you’re looking at that, Anet) the actual content is still fantastic and fun to play, which is really all I want from GW2.

all living story 1/10

all content is made for autoshot afk bots and feels like arenanet think this game is played by monkeys

only liadri was good (SAB ok but displaced in this game somehow)

most ls storys i played just to get the meta archievement and was watching series on other screen

everything toooo easy

dont know what testers they have on arenanet but not all players are braindead clickers with 5k latency

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written

No, it’s not… And Portal has way better puzzles than GW2 as well. Man, where are these expectations coming from? Compare it to Thrall and his wife in WoW. It definitely IS better than that.

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written.

A couple whose sole purpose is to bombard us with their awkward display of love is somehow better than characters like Zevran, Anders, Thane or Wrex?

Yeah, no.

The Kasmeer + Marjory romance is on the level of Twilight. Good enough for an MMO as it caters to a wide audience but not something I would praise.

From a mechanics POV:
The Marionette and initial LA battle were good, IMO. The re-taking of LA was fairly buggy, and the final hologram battle was initially un-doable. But by now it’s ok, if not great.
The complete re-making of the LA map is probably the most amazing part of the final episodes.

Storywise:
The story doesn’t really make sense to me, I have to admit. The narrative from Scarlet’s lair to the final cutscene and the info in the drill control panels seems to be full of plot holes, although I admit I could have missed some stuff.

Slowpoke.2749:

Carighan.6758:

Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written.

A couple whose sole purpose is to bombard us with their awkward display of love is somehow better than characters like Zevran, Anders, Thane or Wrex?

Yeah, no.

The Kasmeer + Marjory romance is on the level of Twilight. Good enough for an MMO as it caters to a wide audience but not something I would praise.

Fenris….

also, yeah, that’s something I wanted to point out too. It’s not fair to expect the same level of depth and complexity from an MMO as from a single player game like ME or DA.

Not for any other reason than that there are only so many resources to go around. While making a game like ME or DA it’s easier to focus on storyline because you’ve got the resources to do it – you have gameplay and mechanics and QA and all that off doing their own thing, and nobody is messing with your kitten before it’s done. In GW2, you have to work on the storyline while keeping in mind gameplay and mechanics and bugfixing because you have a hundred thousand gamers running around your world trying their best to break everything, as well as making sure that the game actually continues to run.
In order to have a storyline as complex as Mass Effect’s, let alone DA:O (we shan’t mention DA2 here) they would need twice or three times the staff of BW, at least.

So no, the story isn’t fabulous, but it’s pretty entertaining and doesn’t suffer from any too-terrible plot holes, and really, that’s all we can expect.

The only other game I know of that attempts even close to the level of output of GW2 is EVE Online, and they don’t even bother with story at all, it’s just basically ‘Here, have a new ship. Go, have a monocle that costs more than your entire salary. Walking in stations? What noooo.’

Story 6/10
Achievments 1/10
Game Mechanics 0/10
The story is interesting, killing scarlet was actually the best part of the living story.
But like always the developers kittened up the game part. Some achievments are actually impossible to do or depends heavily on luck. Example: To get the achievment “No more tricks Scarlet” u must not get hit by the laser in the hologram fight. Jokes on you, there is a 80% chance that you get hit instantly after you use the teleport. Only those who enters first and got a fast pc are able to dodge the laser which is targeted at the teleport zone. Or “Sixminutes until Knightfall” , it was already hard before they buffed the knight but now its impossible. You already rammed the condition skilled people from behind and now only 50 players are able to fight 1 knight. Now we are barely able to kill them. Mostly we manage to bring them down with 1 or 2 min left even at the prime time.
And the fight with the heavily injured Scarlet. Why dont you let us skip this sequence before the end fight???? There are some of us who needs several attempts to kill her before her shield pops up.
And after you fought the holograms and watched the sequence over and over again, lost at least 6 months of your life because of the stress, frustration and rage and you finally manage to get all achivements. Guess what you get? A fancy title, a nice armor or weaponskin, maybe some gold? Nope! All you get is a bag filled with crap they grabbed from the sewer and a mask so ugly that you need to hide it under a paper bag.
That killed the last motivation I had to play the last chapter of the LS.

I really enjoyed many of the updates like the Sanctum of the Winds. But please implement more permanent content instead of this poorly made throw away thingie like the scarlet saga.

Jaggedrain.6923:

So no, the story isn’t fabulous, but it’s pretty entertaining and doesn’t suffer from any too-terrible plot holes, and really, that’s all we can expect.

Indeed. While I don’t agree with the poster elevating the Living Story above such RPG masterpieces as the Dragon Age games, Guild Wars 2 has good enough writing to serve a massive audience. On the flip side, it’s still better than WoW. That game has numerous books dedicated to its lore and yet the writing is still so bad that all characters could be successfully played by Kristen Stewart if they ever made a movie.

Jaggedrain.6923:

Fenris….

- I found this Book of Sartan. It’s about a great elven hero and I thought you would like it.
- How dare you insult me like this?
- Wait, wha-
- I was a slave! Do you think Danarius taught me to read? DO YOU?!
- But I just-
- I WAS A SLAAAAAAAVE! (+60 rivalry points)
- I should have romanced Anders…

Overall, I liked these final events. Granted, the bugs and what-not disappointed, but still I give it 7.5 overall.

As far as overall Living Story, it started poorly and lacked proper plotting. Only in the end did it make some sense. Because of that, I give it a 4 . . . maybe a 5 if I’m generous.

I like the little hints, but I think the story was off-times too subtle to follow.

Still, to be fair, it’s a thousand-times better than anything World of Warcraft ever put out as far as plotting. So much so, Guild Wars 2 has kept me interested more than any other MMO since.

So, overall, I’m still happy with the game and will keep playing.

Miroe.2054:

Did you ask any girls to try out your game? I ask because they are blissfully less logical the us guys. I am very logical myself but also very emotional, so it was easy for me to find the LS annoying. What happened is that the LS frustrated me.

Uh, girls already can and do play this game in numbers that I suspect would surprise you, but thanks for the outdated sexist stereotyping I guess. Blaming the LS on testing by girls with their rampant emoshuns is definitely one I’ve not seen before on the forums. 10/10 would read again.

4.5/10

Spoilers Obviously

Good points;
Good use of heal-o-tron, elder dragon reveal, chance to take back lions arch and be a hero. Scarlet is removed from the living story at last.

Bad points;
Unskippable cutscenes, unlikable characters the main focus yet again, little character interaction compared to previous living stories, quite surprisingly the buggiest living story of this year. Yet another Scarlet focused living story, still too zergy and substantially unrewarding completion of the meta achievement.

Slowpoke.2749:

Jaggedrain.6923:

So no, the story isn’t fabulous, but it’s pretty entertaining and doesn’t suffer from any too-terrible plot holes, and really, that’s all we can expect.

Indeed. While I don’t agree with the poster elevating the Living Story above such RPG masterpieces as the Dragon Age games, Guild Wars 2 has good enough writing to serve a massive audience. On the flip side, it’s still better than WoW. That game has numerous books dedicated to its lore and yet the writing is still so bad that all characters could be successfully played by Kristen Stewart if they ever made a movie.

Jaggedrain.6923:

Fenris….

- I found this Book of Sartan. It’s about a great elven hero and I thought you would like it.
- How dare you insult me like this?
- Wait, wha-
- I was a slave! Do you think Danarius taught me to read? DO YOU?!
- But I just-
- I WAS A SLAAAAAAAVE! (+60 rivalry points)
- I should have romanced Anders…

-Oh, honey, look, I blew up the Chantry for…what do you mean you don’t like exploding buildings? HOW DARE YOU! WE DEMAND FREE- dies

Solid C, some of the story/battles have been a lot of fun, others were not so much, but for a non-sub MMO IMHO it was ok, a few of the events I skipped altogether others I couldn’t get enough of, every one that I liked I got the meta achievements, the ones that I found boring I went and did other things. If I was paying a sub I’d probably be kittened off about some of the events, but then again I’m not so as far as free content it was about average.

The end of season 1 does give me hope that Anet is learning from their mistakes and will fix some of the issues like scaling, for now I’ll just go back to WvW and wait for account-wide WxP.

I’d give the whole Living Story a 5/10. There were a few highlights that I thoroughly enjoyed (Bazaar, boss fights in Queen’s Jubilee, SAB), but I feel like it took a turn for the worse once Scarlet became more prominent. I’m not sure if this issue was because of the focus on her character, the stagnant story development, the rise of PvE zerg content, or a mix of the above.

Also, as someone already said, the achievements for the Living Story have been rather lackluster; instead of earning them through play that is actually meaningful and challenging, they’re essentially just farm-fest laundry lists. To me, that’s a huge turn off.

My main grievance is that ANet has placed so much focus on their Living Story patches and Gem Store updates that the game has become rather stale. Pushing back balance updates (it’s been… three months?) in order to focus on Scarlet was a huge mistake in my eyes.

I’m also disappointed that the only new full armor and weapon sets that have been released since the game launched (aside from Ascended items, which is another topic that I won’t even get started on) have only been accessible through the Gem Store. Even then, these items are for one-time usage only. For a game that has an end-game that focuses largely on cosmetics, I’m amazed that so little has been done to update the shallow pool of sets that we have available to us outside of the Gem Store.

That being said, I’m looking forward to what ANet has in store for us with their big feature patch. However, if it’s the same-old-same-old, I can’t say that I’ll be sticking around.

I can’t give the entire Living Story just one score, since the quality overall differs so much from release to release. So instead I’ll boil it down to various elements:

Story telling – 7/10 – The storytelling started out poor, but has gradually improved with each release (especially leading up to the Tower of Nightmares, and with Cutthroat Politics). The characters that we were introduced to however, are very good. They are quite likable, which is probably the hardest thing to write. So that raises my rating for the writing. However, many questions still remain, and Scarlet’s motives remain vague and a bit cliche.

Game play – 6/10 – The abundance of zerg-content really drags the rating down, along with a lot of the repetition. However, there have been a few releases where the game play brought us something new and refreshing. The puzzle in the Tower of Nightmares for example, or the investigation at the Dead End bar. The Zephyr Sanctum and Super Adventure Box really raise the rating for me. But I cannot the deny the countless zerg-fests that were the other releases. Then again there were the Aetherblade and Molten Facility dungeons, which were pretty good.

Boss design – 8/10 – Boss designs have really improved. The Twisted Marionette especially was a great boss, but other bosses such as in the Queen’s Gauntlet, the Molten Duo, Mai Trin, King Frog, and Scarlet, show that the devs really found the right direction to fix GW2’s utterly terrible bosses (Lupi excluded). I’m hopeful for future boss encounters.

Polishing – 4/10 – The quick release schedule leaves a lot to be desired about the bug testing and polish of these episodes. Many releases were plagued with bugs. And there are several achievements which I was unable to get, simply because they were bugged throughout the entire release of that update. The Edge of the Mists being inaccessible on release was bad. But not being able to get some of the Marionette dodge achievements because they simply didn’t work, that’s unforgivable.

Scaling – 3/10 – The scaling of Living Story releases is utterly terrible. Many of the encounters are designed for very large and active servers, making some events futile for smaller servers. Tequatl is manageable, though he really should scale better. But the Wurms are atrocious, and will soon be abandoned if they haven’t been already. Did anyone still bother with the Scarlet invasions? Those invasions were impossible to do without several zergs in the same map.

Cinematics – 8/10 – I like the new cutscenes much better than any of the Personal Story cutscenes. Much higher quality, better animation, better music, higher coolness factor.

Music – 9/10 – The new music for all releases is outstanding. Many tracks, especially those of the Marionette, The Clocktower, SAB and the Tower of Nightmares, have found their way onto my playlist.

Rewards – 5/10 – I think the rewards for the Living Story could be a lot better. Many of the masks and armors are really not that well designed, and I’d never wear any of them. Plus there’s still the issue of not being able to wear townclothes in battle, which renders a lot of towncloth rewards useless. What drags the rating down is the atrocious grind required, and all the gemstore purchases. Plus all this junk is starting to clutter up our bank space. Without a proper way to store these rewards, I’m just not that happy to receive yet another mask to fill my bank with.

4,5/10

It might seem a bit harsh, but I’m reluctant to give this Living Story a passing grade, so I won’t.

First of all the story itself was horrible. After a Personal Story that was mediocre at best, Anet really missed out on thé opportunity to give players a story worth experiencing. I never really grasped what made Anet think that Scarlet was well written Nemesis. She mostly acted like a cartoon villain, throwing unbelievable amounts of equipment and personnel to push her “evil secret agenda”, which wasn’t all that secret after all. The Guild Wars universe has a ton of lore which lends itself to excellent storytelling, but apparently Anet simply chooses not to make use of all this. On top of that, players were simply footsoldiers in the wake of a horde of cliché NPCs. I like a good story, and this was definitely not a good story.

Secondly, it sits bad with me that after a year and a half of “living story”, very little has been actually added to the game. Most of it has been lost in the treadmill of biweekly updates, never to return again. This fast-paced schedule is most likely to blame for any rushed/bugridden content that was released to the players. Game updates are great, but updates that are only temporarily available aren’t. They give me a sense of “play it now, or never play it at all”, forcing me to chose between what i’d like to do, and what I won’t be able to do anymore in the near future.

And finally, Anet should simply do away with massive open world events. Sure, leave Tequatl for people that enjoy “epic open world raids”, but don’t continue to add fights that are effectively based on the same core mechanic. Events that require (almost) the entire map population to actively participate, are bad in an open world game.

All in all, I still like playing this game, but I’ll pass for a second season of this type of “Living Story”.

to the OP I’d say last part was just a pass, there were some good things but most of it was overshadowed by the bad.

I was lucky first day of BFLA I was on an overflow server and we did 3 knights together and I got to see Scarlet etc. It was a good fight everything worked against the knights, then I fought the hollows and it was a bit of ehh? whats going on? but then I got into it and it was a long slightly more complicted fight. So for the first atempt I thought it was good. Then everthing went down hill, lag, dc, loot, mechanics!! It’s the first time I’ve been so put off by the LS that I’ve only been back to la for the dailies, so I’ve got my la chest and helm etc.

Pt1 Battle For la – great job by the art team fab atmospherics excellent design there was some good things in it. Never got to rescue everyone because most players weren’t that interested, but hey each to their own style of play. I know people have complained that we didnt get to fight of Scarlet and her troops but I looked at it, that it was a surprise attack just happened as we entered la so the first thing you’d do is evac the survivers.

Pt2 – Battle for La now we take back the city. mmm well not quite what I thought would happen. I thought we would lead groups from all 3 orders into the city (1 from each entrance) and battle across the city taking key points. Sort of a mini WvW (which I dont play, but wouldnt mind for a 1 off event) take some locations, meet in the middle fight a super boss then tackle Scarlet.
What we got wasn’t really about taking back the city kicking out the bad guys, but 3 zerg fights and then if your lucky you get to move onto the last mega fight, (there’s been enough said about the poor mechainics and changes to repeat here) and a so so story.

In general I like LS, but monthly updates might be better so things can be a bit more polished. Loved Bazzar of the 4 Winds, really enjoyed playing against the Marionette some great team efforts even when we didnt win it was fun, liked the Molten Alliance & dungeon.

Some of the stories need to be improved I remeber GW1 stories being better.

But most importantly no matter what ANet do in future big or small they must first fix the terrible lag, disconnecting and broken mechainics. If you know there’s going to be a big event then make sure your servers can cope with everone wanting to be on together. Because no matter how good the content players will only be fustrated and disapointed with a game that keeps letting them down.

I’m a pretty big fan of GW2, but honestly, I would rate this final LS update as a 5/10.

The bugs really hurt them. Some of them it really makes it seem like they didn’t check this stuff thoroughly beforehand.

Also not a fan of the new change to the Knights. Decent idea, but just isn’t practical. You absolutely need all 50 people, which is not guaranteed, and in actuality, becomes less and less likely with each passing day as players lose interest. The Knights just don’t scale properly with less people. Not the way to approach temporary content.

What I did like was the actual story line, the Enemy Controlled LA, the hologram boss fight, the final cutscene.

The average score so far seems to be 6.

If a game got 60/100 on metacritic it would be seen as quite the failure, I would not consider this a good result for Arena Net.

Aedelric.1287:

The average score so far seems to be 6.

If a game got 60/100 on metacritic it would be seen as quite the failure, I would not consider this a good result for Arena Net.

You know, they will tell you, that the people that actually like the game are playing it and all whiners are on the forum.

Then you go online, and the whole LA chat is full of rage. GG.

putridturd/10

Bugs, bugs and more bugs.

Rehashing old areas over and over again must be the cheapest way to produce “new” content.

It’s pretty long time for MMO to go 1½ years from launch without any significant new landmass.

I wonder if we ever see Crystal Desert, what’s behind the Tengu wall or Underworld…

Fail

It’s a fantastic idea that was turned into a gimmick to get around producing permanent content that would need to be maintained and potentially contain bugs that can’t be ignored like they’ve done with so many this past year.

It’s also a gimmick to throw more stuff in the gem store and into RNG boxes.

The Living Story is a classic example of a great idea being destroyed in the name of money.

Sure, I loved Escape from Lion’s Arch, but a stopped clock is right twice a day too.

Aedelric.1287:

The average score so far seems to be 6.

If a game got 60/100 on metacritic it would be seen as quite the failure, I would not consider this a good result for Arena Net.

Well in fairness to the law of averages my OP was predominantly asking how players rated the finale of Living Story Season 1.. to which I think the average is likely much lower.
However its interesting to see the mix of views when considering LS S1 overall.. I would be inclined to agree with many of those who have posted here.. in saying LS s1 overall has been an up and down ride with some decent patches (Frost & Flame), Atherblade Dungeon and even some of the story had some interesting hero/villain plot but too often things were just too buggy, too laggy and to easy to farm or forget.. lacking the depth and substance to really bring servers together as it was intended.
I commend Anet for attempting to breaking up zergplay this time round (even if it was after the horses had bolted) but what they have actually done is force the map to split into 3 zergs smashing the 1 key and dodge key, which isn’t really to revolutionary a concept.. and to top it off its scaling and lack of appreciation of server pops throughout the day not just 1 hr during primetime, made this a real tedious and frustrating ending. I just hope as many as possible were able to grab as many achievs like 6min to Knightfall before the fire engines and band aids were thrown in cos I sense those things are wildy beyond us mere mortals now… and I wont even start on trying to get enpugh power cores now to even do 1 back piece let alone those for alts…. especially as the RNG Gods have never liked this poor mortal.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Aedelric.1287:

The average score so far seems to be 6.

If a game got 60/100 on metacritic it would be seen as quite the failure, I would not consider this a good result for Arena Net.

However its interesting to see the mix of views when considering LS S1 overall.. I would be inclined to agree with many of those who have posted here.. in saying LS s1 overall has been an up and down ride with some decent patches (Frost & Flame), Atherblade Dungeon and even some of the story had some interesting hero/villain plot but too often things were just too buggy, too laggy and to easy to farm or forget..

I’m coming to the conclusion that some of the buggy and laggness is caused by the LS updates, the constant adding, patching, and removing content can’t be a good thing for the system files, yeah they seem to work out bugs after a couple hot patches, but the underlying damage might just be plastered over by the patch and then the content is removed leaving what? It is a novel idea but in practicality it might be more harmful to the game code then a full on expansion.

Of course this is JMHO

I love how you’re all quoting the first part of what was in the Jory+Kas parenthesis only. Way to rip things out of context. :P

Because yes, character-wise Bioware has good – if very cliché – writing. But their romance-writing makes me cringe to a degree only Twilight can compare with. Partially the issue is that they don’t want to commit to either not writing about the romance (basically what ANet does, even in the last few patches Jory’s and Kas’ relationship is hardly ever a point of focus for the character), or writing about it properly.

Instead we get a handful of very short scenes – at best – which try to sell us the idea that our character is dating someone. I can buy this briefness for people I don’t continuously see (hence Jory/Kas is better-written, IMO), but not for my own char. I should see everything in full. Let me roleplay the romance in a roleplaying game?

Alas, going off-topic, sorry.

Even though is certainly getting better that still doesn’t save it from being an overall fail.

Its the writing. It’s certainly not what I expected when I purchased GW2. I wanted a high fantasy story set in a high fantasy world. We have the high fantasy world filled with gods, dragons, magic and they deliver this nutty cabbage character with side stories of elections and trade disputes. BORING. Sure the last two chapters picked it up a bit but that final cut scene reminded me of why I dislike the writing so much. We want answers! So much of this entire story is a mystery, its just a confusing mess and I know I’m right because there are NO answers in the game, there is a lot of speculation on the forums but that’s just people desperately trying to get a grasp on how this all happened.

Hopefully the in the next story arc they will learn that constantly keeping people in the dark about the story just leads to a bunch of confused players guessing what the hell is going on. Nothing wrong with a little bit of mystery just to lead people on, but don’t make it last the entire arc, instead make us think we know everything and have plot twists. There wasn’t one plot twist in the game, maybe Mai Trin being an Aetherblade but was that really that shocking to discover? The dialogue was so transparent.

You know what is a plot twist? when you deliver the Chosen to the White Mantle thinking you’re doing good, (inc plot twist) only to find out you’re delivering them to be sacrificed upon the bloodstone.

As for the Anet sound/design/art departments – they are amazing. 100% PASS.

Story – Pass 9/10. They did a pretty good job of tying up most of the loose ends, while still leaving questions to be answered in the next season. They also set up a good group of NPCs to follow as we continue in the LS.

Events – Fail 4/10 The Prime Hologram fight was really fun. A cool laser light show boss with a bunch of mechanics. My only problem with it was too much health during the first phase, making it rather boring.

The knights on the other hand started out okay, if a little zergy, then moved to annoying when they did drop loot, to just plain frustrating when groups rarely even get past them to Scarlet. That one change of stopping the zerg basically ruined the whole event because the knights don’t properly scale to small numbers of players.

complete kitten

garbo knights bugged like 3 times on the first day and i have no motivation to grind this dumb meta achievement

fire the writers and release a good expansion pls

Carighan.6758:

Wow.
Someone sure is angry.

I wonder though, what would you like to see instead? As in, be a bit of a realistic minded gamer (Jory and Kas are still worlds above anything Bioware has ever written, who still use their sex scenes as rewards for the player clicking the right answer in a chat wheel), and what would you think ANet should have done LS-wise?

You… I mean… really? Are you serious o_O??

You mean, the bioware of Dragon Age?
Where you can love or hate every single main NPC?
Where the voice acting is so good you can actually feel what a NPC is saying?
Where you can choose to befriend or antagonist every single of them?
Where you can learn or ignore their back-story?
Where you can’t wait to kill them or get laid?
Where your character is THE HERO of the story?
Where you can choose to be a valiant hero in shining armor or a son of kitten who kill people for the lulz?
Where you made decisions that matter?
Where your character is unable to say a single word and still be the center of the universe?

And you come here to say a necromancer that is a necromancer only because wiki said so and her mentally challenged friend is above anything bioware has ever done?

What ANet should have done LS-wise? Simple, what they did in GW1 (yes GW1 had a LS know as GuildWars: Beyond).
Everything in GW:Beyond was permanent and more important: it didn’t affected the rest of the game. You could ignore all the new content and know you could play it afterwards whenever you want.

They should have dealt with problems like the bandits, the inquests, the flame legion, the nightmare court or the sons of Svanir and not invented a potato-like villain who was able to do things just because the writers say so.

And everything for what? A new dragon some random NPC is going to kill while our “hero” is in the background looking at the void wondering if he/she left the oven on?

Story – fail
Content – fail
Rewards – fail

Fail

When will they stop with this LS bullkitten and make some serious permanent kitten to play?

Faowri.4159:

thanks for the outdated sexist stereotyping I guess.

Sexism isn’t outdated. And the post is a troll.. read it to the end or click the link. But what of a troll am I if I explain this anyway.. ^^

I’ll give everything before the last few weeks a 4/10, and the newer implements a solid 1/10. To me if this is sort of content that Anet is going to bring to the table for free I would rather pay 60 bucks for an expansion where a proper story teller could be hired on.

I felt the content to be dull, characters predictable or very well rounded, and the story itself to be rather half expressed. I was never expecting the content to be something of a great novel but this was barely better than a colouring book in my eyes.

I found the items and loot bits added to be rather poor as well. GW2 will shortly end up on my shelf again for another 6 months to a year because at this point I don’t find the content fulfilling or interesting enough to tempt me from other games. I’m am hoping these rumors of an incoming expansion are true because I personally feel that will be the only hope for this game of having any longevity. There just isn’t close to enough content in the game for being out for such a long time.

Zerg and more Zerg it reminded me of edge of the mists really I give it a C the story was alright but the fight with Scarlet had a few bugs and I happen to run in with one of them if they given a choice of Solo instances vs Zerg I would take the Zerg and I taken to note that the overflow did a better job over the main

The ending cinematic was epic.

I legitimately care about the Living Story NPCs. (Unlike Destiny’s Edge, who generally manage to be irritating at best.)

The Scarlet hologram battle is decently enjoyable. It’s also nice in that it requires some group cooperation.

But the Knights event is just utter failure. Especially after the patches.

The Knights event drags the entire ending down greatly. (Add to it the fact that the only real “new” reward is cores to color the spinal blades, which are RNG rewards after beating a knight.)

5/10 because of the Knights.
(Oh, and I don’t know why they think we’ll care about the Sylvari more than the Tengu.
Angel McCoy tweeted something along the lines of “Why are you so interested in the Tengu?”
Probably because, I don’t know, they’ve existed since GW1.)

Minos.5168:

(Oh, and I don’t know why they think we’ll care about the Sylvari more than the Tengu.
Angel McCoy tweeted something along the lines of “Why are you so interested in the Tengu?”
Probably because, I don’t know, they’ve existed since GW1.)

No, the proper response to that is: “Why aren’t you more interested in them?”

The end of LS S1? 8/10. I thought it was great, the ending really redeemed the rest of what I thought was a pretty bad story. The content actually required some level of coordination. It had a good balance between not asking too much of an open world pug zerg (like Wurm does) and just being a mindless zerg (like Queen’s Jubilee was). I thought the final confrontation with Scarlet’s holograms and Scarlet herself was well done. It was difficult to make that “worth” the journey, and I think that they did an admirable job. The fight required you to pay attention and work together, definitely not something that felt trivial (though it was easy). I felt like we earned the defeat of Scarlet, not just some pointless tank-n-spank.

The beginning to middle? 3/10. Completely uninteresting story, took way too long to get to why Scarlet was bad and who she was. Prior to the reveals that gave her some more character depth (which technically occurred in the “end” of the LS so don’t belong here) Scarlet was a very contrived character, and she felt very forced. The content itself was mindless and zergy. The best part was something that didn’t really have to do with Scarlet at all: The Queen’s Gauntlet. Loved that.

I didn’t experience many bugs at all, and the couple achievements that were messed up don’t bother me too much. I’m a total sucker for achievements, but I play enough that I have time to get them on my very populated server any time throughout the 2 weeks of each release. I appreciate that this isn’t the case for everyone, but it’s my review not yours!