Guild Wars 2

0/10, boring zergfest baptized in low FPS. Story was as cheesy as ever, i’d had preffered to see a Male gay romance just to see how much the general community would probably hate it, but a lesbian one was ofcourse a safer choice and therefore a new low… I would’ve loved to be able to skip the “kiss” cinematic but now sadly it’s burned on my brain, it WAS that lame. Lions Arch is just gonna be the same after its over and the game continues like nothing ever happened…

-10/10

*I think one of these LS was lasting 2 DAYS or something like that! which was a joke.
*Temporary and bugged achievements were the reason why I started to do only these achievements rewarding a title.
*There’s no even information in the game from where season 1 started so I dunno which particular LS’s I’m rating but they were equally bad with similar issues anyway.
*Overflow bullkitten poured the cup of bitterness.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Story was as cheesy as ever, i’d had preffered to see a Male gay romance just to see how much the general community would probably hate it, but a lesbian one was ofcourse a safer choice and therefore a new low.

I take it you’ve never played a Sylvari, or did you forget about the gay relationship in your Personal Story when you choose the Knight story?

(technically, the Sylvari are genderless, so gay or lesbian has no meaning to them. But you missed the uproar about it during the first few month in beta and release)

Honestly I don’t see the big deal. I kind of saw it coming and was actually hoping it would happen since Jory and Kas were first introduced. They just made a great couple. And I’m straight and it doesn’t bother me one bit. I mean, come on, you had to of seen it coming after reading all the story and hearing all their dialogue and witty banter back and forth throughout the whole season. It was right there and it was cute watching their relationship build throughout the whole story.

As I was a returning player, I have only seriously consumed the LS 1 beginning with the marionette event. I did some toxic tower, but that was minimal. It would not be fair to rate the whole LS 1 based on the short experience I had. But if I would rate what I had experienced individually:

toxic tower downfall – 2/10 zZzzZzzz
marionette event – 8/10, a little bit tweaking it’s perfect
escape from LA – 7/10 8/10, I did have some memorable moments with this update, bumped up after reviewing the content
battle for LA – 5/10, too little to do, not as epic as I expected, introduced new gameplay and storytelling elements

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Story was as cheesy as ever, i’d had preffered to see a Male gay romance just to see how much the general community would probably hate it, but a lesbian one was ofcourse a safer choice and therefore a new low.

I take it you’ve never played a Sylvari, or did you forget about the gay relationship in your Personal Story when you choose the Knight story?

(technically, the Sylvari are genderless, so gay or lesbian has no meaning to them. But you missed the uproar about it during the first few month in beta and release)

Honestly I don’t see the big deal. I kind of saw it coming and was actually hoping it would happen since Jory and Kas were first introduced. They just made a great couple. And I’m straight and it doesn’t bother me one bit. I mean, come on, you had to of seen it coming after reading all the story and hearing all their dialogue and witty banter back and forth throughout the whole season. It was right there and it was cute watching their relationship build throughout the whole story.

I’m not making a big deal out of it, i’m just pointing out its a low way to score points. I want to see the community react to a male on male relationship. And you’re right, none of my characters are sylvari (i just don’t dig them) and personal story even less since it was so abysmal.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Story was as cheesy as ever, i’d had preffered to see a Male gay romance just to see how much the general community would probably hate it, but a lesbian one was ofcourse a safer choice and therefore a new low.

I take it you’ve never played a Sylvari, or did you forget about the gay relationship in your Personal Story when you choose the Knight story?

(technically, the Sylvari are genderless, so gay or lesbian has no meaning to them. But you missed the uproar about it during the first few month in beta and release)

Honestly I don’t see the big deal. I kind of saw it coming and was actually hoping it would happen since Jory and Kas were first introduced. They just made a great couple. And I’m straight and it doesn’t bother me one bit. I mean, come on, you had to of seen it coming after reading all the story and hearing all their dialogue and witty banter back and forth throughout the whole season. It was right there and it was cute watching their relationship build throughout the whole story.

I’m not making a big deal out of it, i’m just pointing out its a low way to score points. I want to see the community react to a male on male relationship. And you’re right, none of my characters are sylvari (i just don’t dig them) and personal story even less since it was so abysmal.

You want to see the reaction, time-travel back to beta.

Aedelric.1287:

Boneheart.3561:

It’s introduced likeable characters and you can connect with them since this is the beginning of their legend

Really? Can you point them out? Because personally I have not found any likeable characters in the Living Story beyond Evon.

False, Evon has not been introduced, he is a personality. We do not know him as a character, yet.

Just because you don’t like them doesn’t make them unlikable.
SCARLET, is unlikable.

My overall thoughts on BfLA;

meh/10.
The story of BfLA was good, but only if you ignore the underlying structural problems which built up to this climax, like ‘how did Scarlet build a UFO without anyone noticing?’. It’s more or less a foolproof ending in that it finishes up LS1’s story arc and sets the stage for LS2, so in that regard, it did more or less the best that it could have possibly done. There are still a few holes, like how we can breathe without dying horribly in this miasma-soaked ruined city.

The actual content/fights… Hoo boy. I’ll say that generally speaking, the Prime Hologram fight itself was pretty good. It’s fun, has mechanics, and has really cool music. However, the rest of the patch is not quite so good. There’re the bugs, the watchknights being immune to conditions half the time, incomplete design (apparently we were supposed to split up to kill the watchknights), a few more bugs, champions which you don’t really have the time to kill (which also have bugs)…

So yeah. I’ve more or less stopped playing this LS content because, while it’s supposed to be PUG content, the average PUG can’t really get past the watchknights. Why it couldn’t be left as it was, I don’t understand.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

I take it you’ve never played a Sylvari, or did you forget about the gay relationship in your Personal Story when you choose the Knight story?

There are gay dudes in the Knight storyline?

There’s a big big difference between content which 1/15th of players see and content which 100% of players see. There’s a big difference between content at the start of the story and content at the climax of the story.

I’m on an internet forum, so naturally I hate everything. It’s like, a 10/5.5

4 out of 10

I only really loved Bazaar. And the payoff for a year was ehh.

I haven’t done this finale thing yet, but because so many people said it is bad, I think I will stay away…
But the relationship between Marjory and Kasmeer sounds great. I knew they would end up being best friends.
I give them 10/10. But the Living Story as a whole and Scarlet? I cannot judge that yet.

Content every 2 weeks isn’t good in my opinion, because there’s so many bugs and it seems like it was rushed.

I got this game for cosmetic stuff. In this living story they have released only rng weapons, (I will not count the ascended stuff cuz that doesn’t feel living story related to me) pieces of armor and sold full armor sets only in the gem store.

So i’ll give it 0/10. In the next living story I hope they put effort into only releasing full sets of armor (in and outside the gemstore) and no rng weapons.

i rate it utterly junk and bad

why ?

bicous its temp and i not saw half of it

i dont even know what the hell im fighting for now………

7/10 for innovation

9/10 for story (why? the only reason why people would say otherwise is because we only got bits and pieces every 2 weeks. If you look at the whole story it is a good original story)

6/10 presentation and scenarios/events some releases it was solo content , but along the end it forced players to run zergs which I really did not enjoy after the first 10 mins.

Living Story has come a long way. Every 2-4 weeks since Janurary 2013??? That is a lot of content! I don’t see it as temporary content. In a living RPG there will be things that can’t be there forever.

Living World is trying to be like reality and that is what makes it exciting. Why care if the content you are getting only last no more than 4 weeks? You will always be guaranteed more content every 2 weeks! I just don’t understand the problem.

You just aren’t role-playing hard enough if you are mad that it is temporary content.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

6/10 presentation and scenarios/events some releases it was solo content , but along the end it forced players to run zergs which I really did not enjoy after the first 10 mins.

They did listen to that feedback, though. Marionette, Escape and Battle all forcibly break the zerg up into smaller groups.

Content-wise the final was ok, although the whole zerg-events lose their appeal very quickly.

But the achievements, especially this last time round….oh my god, they are the worst.

Just made me hate the whole overflow BS system ANet has designed.

i give it a 7.8

sure there were bugs and a couple of game breaking glitches. though they patch them pretty quickly. i enjoyed scarlet and her tricks throughout a lot of these events even though people don’t like her at all, i did enjoy her.

I generally enjoyed the LS up until queens jubilee. There were ups and downs, but the content had some nice things going for it, particularly the F&F dungeon, the Aetherblade dungeon and the entire Bazaar release. After jubilee launched however, the LS degraded into a never ending zerg fest where the solution to everything was follow the zerg afk until you win. That was literally the only mechanic for the last 6 months and it was TERRIBLE.

First half of LS i’d give a 7/10. It wasn’t great, it was growing, and it had some really fun parts, I thought it would get better.

Second half of LS i’d give a 3/10. The characters had no depth, the stories were cliche, the content was buggier and buggier with every release, and worst of all the “content” was just zerg zerg zerg.

Unfortunately I think the game is past the point of no return for me. The type of player who is making Anet money on this game is not the kind of gamer I want to play with. I don’t want to mindlessly spam 1 for my reward and then spend $100 in the gem store to get the actual rewards. I want to be challenged and earn my rewards in the game. At least I know for the future to avoid F2P games and stick to ones with monthly fees where you actually get to play the content instead of buying it.

The story was just so bad……… Really bad.. 1 out of ten ( for effort).

Honestly.

Story: 3/10
Too disjointed. No closure. No subplots explored.

Execution: 3/10
No cohesion between releases.

Content: 6/10
Most of the content were zerg fests but they were better and more ambitious than the other aspects of LW season 1.

Characters: 4/10
Only reason it’s not lower is because of Tiami and Rox. Mainly Tiami.

Making a lesbian couple be the defining characteristics of two of the main NPCs is kitten character development. I really don’t care about their sexual orientation stop shoving it in my face and give me some real character development.

Overall: 4/10

Not particularly impressed that 90%+ of the new character customization options are gem gated through trading post RNG. More should have been worked into game-play rewards. I’m particularly put off/insulted by the introduction of tormented weapons via black lion chests. Seriously? Kitten off.

-1/10 would not recommend

Mondo.5029:

Making a lesbian couple be the defining characteristics of two of the main NPCs is kitten character development. I really don’t care about their sexual orientation stop shoving it in my face and give me some real character development.

This is curious to me, because the reason I like Marjory and Kasmeer as characters is because until the Marionette story part (and only once there, and again this time in the sequence, so twice total), their relationship was never the focus of their characters.

That’s the very part I like about it, that it wasn’t their defining characteristic.

Granted, they dropped the ball a bit on that with the Marionette instance (because I think in the context of the final mission here, it makes sense to be so focused on), but overall I think that’s the well-handled part.

6/10

The story itself could have been better. It was drawn out, and some of it didn’t make sense. From the beginning of the refugees migrating to town, it should have been much more interwoven instead of “go to X and slay Y” and then “go to the other end of the map and slay Z.” On the other hand, I think I was one of the first who saw an overreaching arc to the story and realized it was all related (except maybe the Zephyr Sanctum…not sure where it fit into the story except to give us a break.)

Scarlet, as a villain wasn’t the worst I have ever seen, but darned near. I would have loved to see her from Day 1 as Ceara, and then witness her evolution into a villain instead of just having her show up one day. I think I would have accepted her a bit more if I had actually heard the Asura talking (in Rata Sum before the LS) about a salad that was allowed into their courses of study. A simple case of giving her a believable backstory.

As for the events themselves, there were good and bad. I did think Anet was getting better at them toward the end, as far as design and implementation, BUT… I think the zergfest mechanics need to stop, and the other end of the scale (needing 80+ people to coordinate exactly) needs to be mellowed out.

Overall, I think I enjoyed most of it, but there were parts I simply ignored because they were horrid for me.

If this is all we get instead of proper expansions, then it’s a FAIL.

If I have to make peace with the fact that this is the best that Anet will ever provide, then ok, barely a C.

Good points: LS1 developed cool new NPCs, we (briefly!) explored new mini-areas, we’ve had grand scale events, new megabosses, the story got really interesting when they put in Scarlet’s Lair and we got some clues about the plot (but that was at the very end).

Bad points: all new areas were either small scale, without hearts and temporary (tower, mini-dungeons, Sanctum).
- Ascended gear was implememnted without any story / lore explanation. Instead, suddenly!, we have these über weapons that took epic quests GW1… but here just require mindless grind.
- Story was very poorly presented, so that players had no incentive and didn’t realise what was going on for most of the time.
- The main villain was also very poorly introduced, to players’ annoyance. There was no progress in dealing with her, everything, including the final scene was very deus ex machina.
- Biggest FAIL point: LS barely ties in to the plot of GW2 main story (PS+dungeons). LS also largely ignored all the unanswered questions and issues left over from GW1, GW2 PS, GW2 open world. See: random alliances. All while Orr is still unchanged and our main driving forces in the game came to a halt. And players, who formed a Pact to deal with big issues, ignore that Pact, ignore the big threats like dragons, but go on a merry tour of festivals across Tyria.
- New events requiring zergs without addressing the issue of overflows. Players want to play with their friends, not afk / no-build randoms. Waiting for hours is also bad.
- Most of new skins being introduced only through the gem store.

Bloodstealer.5978:

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.

I give it a PASS based on innovation. But it failed to be fun for me. Hoepfully they learn and improve, but never stop trying new things.

The Great: It was a new experience for me as a gamer, I can appreciate at the very basic level of trying new things, and i can honestly say I gotta give anet and NCSoft credit with the constant patches and updates. It came with new weapon skins, new armor, new back items, amazing gameplay balance when it comes to fairness between all classes. Ultimately, from a content aspect, it was great.

The Good: This game is highly about the exploration factor, and they added new places for us to explore, the Halloween Mad Realm (First Appearance) Flame & Frost’s Cragstead/Instance and Bazaar of the Four Winds being my personal favorites.

Oh and the music finally got good and engaging at the final battle. That Leif guy needs to do the entire OST of Season 2 or the expansion whenever that happens.

The Bad: The Characters. This really stood out for me as the story went on. Too many female characters that are mostly not relatable. And as for the fella’s (what few there are), poorly represented due to poor writing.

The Ugly: The writing in general. Played out like a Fan Fiction written by a 13 year old boy who has just noticed girls.

The Worst: Everything else. Oh, and Scarlet.

Conclusion: To be fair I am not sure what’d i’d rate season 1, but it would be negative overall.

Improvement: Either fire the current writing staff and hire a new team or hone dem’ writing skills, because this story was so bad it makes the FFXIII story seem likable, and that is saying a lot since the XIII saga’s story is lackluster at its best.

As I see it, the LS Season 1 was a great way for ANet to try different boss mechanics, different ways of trying to organize zergs in the LS events (such as the Assault Knights and the Marionette), and basically try out their system against different content and different gameplay mechanics altogether.
- Definitely not the most polished and awesome work from ANet, but I can appreciate the effort and idea behind it – it means that revamping dungeons, Open World Bosses and all that permanent content will be done after a “The players really digged this kind of mechanics and gameplay, so lets go with something along those lines” kind of mindset, or so is my understanding.

As for LS Season 1, I’ll give it a 3/10
- The Story was poorly presented, in my opinion. On paper it might’ve looked better, but the execution lacked.
- Introduction of characters were weak. I like Rox and Braham, and I enjoyed the Razing, but I’ve no idea why my character was there, and why we really teamed up.

- Scarlet as well. I think spending a release tracking her background and whereabouts before setting her on us would’ve been a better way of getting to know her.
We’d also travel around the world and to the different cities in doing so.
A missed opportunity, ANet, I’m sorry to say.

Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how the feedback will have affected the future releases, and I’m also looking forward for the epilogue of LS Season 1 tomorrow.

In short it’s a “COSMIC DISASTER.”

Carighan.6758:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

6/10 presentation and scenarios/events some releases it was solo content , but along the end it forced players to run zergs which I really did not enjoy after the first 10 mins.

They did listen to that feedback, though. Marionette, Escape and Battle all forcibly break the zerg up into smaller groups.

Dear heavens, 50 people is still a horrible zerg, breaking up gigantic zergs into hudge zerks is really innovative. It is like putting a zerg into a zerg.

Calling 50 people a smaller group is sort of failing the point…

We seem to love lots of new content as often as we can get it, and demand it be good, but it kinda looks like the LS isn’t the way to accomplish it. Would we accept serious bug fixes, new areas, and updates of old bosses/events as readily as the LS?

Please let’s try it!

Oh, and if you’ve seen map chat, you already know why so many ignore it. Is it so hard to get it through to players that “say” is for your friends nearby, and “map” is to talk to everyone on the whole map (most of who are not interested in your chatter, which is unrelated to what they are doing).

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Dear heavens, 50 people is still a horrible zerg, breaking up gigantic zergs into hudge zerks is really innovative. It is like putting a zerg into a zerg.

Calling 50 people a smaller group is sort of failing the point…

Ok ok, this one is actually famous!

So, suppose we have an event where 150 people all clump together. We agree it’s a zerg fight, right?
Now let’s assume for a moment that the event is modified to be aimed at 149 people. We removed one, say a single player has to constantly use a switch at another spot, and only one can do it. We would ofc both agree that it is still a zerg fight, right?
Now let’s modify the switch so two people need to press it down. We’ll get 2 people standing there, leaving 148 for the main fight. Still a zerg fight, right?

In short, removing one player from a zerg agreeably does not make it stop being a zerg.
But, at what point do you go from zerg to not-zerg, then, when any individual player removed doesn’t do it?

(this is known as the sorites paradox , btw)

The entire season was a dire fail because the content was awful, the story was awful, and we still don’t have good events or fun dungeons or more skills or a bunch of other crap that should’ve been fixed LONG before Scarlet just waltzed in and made the only pleasurable moment being her end.

Carighan.6758:

But, at what point do you go from zerg to not-zerg, then, when any individual player removed doesn’t do it?

At the point where individual skill becomes significant enough to make the event succeed or fail based on the performance of all the participants and not based on the overall damage output of the group. When I can go AFK in the middle of the fight knowing that it doesn’t matter unless I’m one of the top DPS kids, it means that there are enough people to compensate for the loss and so we win the fight through outnumbering instead of outclassing the opponent.

The AI of even the hardest enemies is cheap and relies on one-shot skills as the sole saving grace of the challenge aspect. Without them, people could kill bosses while being alt-tabbed to their Facebook farm.

Zerging eliminates even that danger. When someone goes down there is either a rezz incoming or the person remains on the ground with no one noticing their lack of contribution. As the mechanics are so simple, more than three people against a lone champion already constitutes as a zerg in this game.

Anet tried to eliminate the zerg by putting a hardcap on the knight fight without tuning the fight to be completable with even eight people but then those eight would have to use well thought out, difficult to pull off tactic. Kite it around, transfer aggro back and forth, make it lose a buff or gain a debuff through the use of environmental weapons, etc. What we got is 50 instead of 150 people auto-attacking a knight’s shin.

Cheers to all that read and commented on the thread.. some interesting scores and opinions…. and off topic stuff from certain posters that couldn’t just rate and be done.
Roughly looking at it appears from the small sample to lead to a thumbs down kind of ending for many of us but when considering LS through the whole season some decent attempts at something a little different were made.
From just my own observation the main killers to the LS season 1 seems to weak story at times, consistently poorly implemented temporary content and achievements often linked to zerg/grp success rather than individual skills and achievement (not great when the whole overflow system more often than not works against organised groups/map numbers, which puts success or defeat at the mercy of the poor scaling system – lots to learn I think ANET .. I suggest taking a break, rethinking it all and …. well, we’ll just have to wait and find out wont we

The main issue is temporarily content should never have a Story.
I think they should expand the Personal Story to deliver good missions and story execution so players with limited time wont miss out on what’s happening while enjoying the content they play for.

Living Stories however, should just evolve into complex Dynamic Events that changes and shapes the world overtime, but keep story away or limit it to just NPC talking a few lines.

I would HATE to see the new elder dragon to be part of a Living Story where new players who started after the dragon is slaying would miss out.

Slowpoke.2749:

At the point where individual skill becomes significant enough to make the event succeed or fail based on the performance of all the participants and not based on the overall damage output of the group.

In that case, solo content is “zerg fight”. And not just in GW2, and most dungeons and raids in other MMOs are also “zerg fights”.

Definition does not make sense.

7/10. Started pretty poorly but kept getting better and had a pretty satisfying ending. (so the 7 is for the ending, not for the LS as a whole)

Followedbyrocks.8751:

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?

Why would a high rate be sarcastic?

The delivery wasn’t brilliant but the story really came together at the end.
I’m guessing a lot of people didn’t quite get it and are here complaining about it.
I wouldn’t blame them because like I said, it was poorly delivered specially since some of the best bits weren’t even in the game.

Can we fail it because of that? I guess, but shooting down a high score of someone that did got everything is just wrong.

4/10

The story was lackluster and failed to deliver a stirring narrative. The content moved at glacial speed despite being released every two weeks. Gamebreaking bugs plagued the entire year and a half right up to the end with Six Minutes to Midnight. The rewards made grand promises but ultimately rewarded the lucky few. There were very few patches which introduced permanent content, which ultimately devastates the longevity of the game.

In the end, The Living Story: Season One failed to live up to expectations and the hype and didn’t provide enough content for players to keep playing Guild Wars 2 for the long term.

I gave my rating a while back 4/10, but after the last Aftermath patch I thought I should rate it all again.

3.5/10

The quality of writing suddenly got worse again and currently I dread what trash the living story team have cooked up for season two. The team needs to go back to the drawing board and start over fresh, these characters, the plots lines, the gameplay, it just is not cutting it.

5/10

The 5 is entirely for Bazaar of the Four Winds, parts of Dragon Bash, and the actual Teq fight from Tequatl Rising (screw that scavenger hunt sideways). I enjoyed those immensely. As for the rest, I’d rate it considerably higher if nothing concerning Scarlet had ever touched the game.

The whole plot involving Scarlet herself? That gets a 2, if even that, and those points are for the new Elder Dragon waking up and getting to give Scarlet herself a good stomping.

And the end? If we’re talking Dead End meeting here, stone cold 0.

And by the way, yes, I “get it.” I get it and I find it asinine. Bazaar of the Four Winds was the crowning achievement of the entire LS season 1, and was actually pretty spectacular. I’d give just about anything to go back there.

Egon Vidar.9125:

The 5 is entirely for Bazaar of the Four Winds…

As for the rest, I’d rate it considerably higher if nothing concerning Scarlet had ever touched the game…

And the end? If we’re talking Dead End meeting here, stone cold 0…

I just have to say these are very good points I agree with, especially Scarlet. If she was not in the Living Story and all events forcibly tied to her, it would perhaps not been quite so horrendous.

Still, it was unsatisfactory and that can not change, the Dead End itself was hilariously bad. Tedious is a kind word having to endure it and as for the party, we did not even get a single drink, the bartender himself does not even sell any!

I get a feeling that the story the Living Story writers come up with lack peer review. Much in the same way the Mass Effect ending had no peer review and as such they created and released utter trash that was universally hated by fans.

hmm…for some reason my post was deleted.

I gave it 4/10 Mainly because I had high hopes for the LS all the way through the bazaar of the four winds. We had already gotten southsun cove and now bazaar….I really thought that ANET was using the LS to bring us regular new content and that by the time a year had gone by the world that we could explore would be much larger! I was so excited….and then the bazaar went away…not just the zephyrite ships (I actually had argued that only the zephyrites were going away, that the docks would be staying…since it would be silly to remove the docks, its not like they would just disappear after a two week event.)..boy was I disappointed and wrong…the whole area disappeared…followed by the disappearing acts of almost every living story after that point until a lot of us started complaining loudly…so I give them back points for starting to make some content permanent again, but no new zones….that is still disappointing…not to mention the fractal level reset…that just outright angered me.

So because it started strong and finished strong I give it 4/10…but I hope they learned a lot from this year and that the next year truly does bring us an expansion level of content during the LS.

Well my 5/10 from the long post I made in another thread is essentially a failing grade. 50% is an F for most classes yo, no curving.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

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

This is pretty much the position I’ve had for months now. Music is also well done in my opinion, and from what I can tell there’s a lot of Anet staff involved with the community a lot as well.

There is a lot of good things that came about in at the end of LS though. Despite bugs and criticisms from players, both Escape from LA and Battle for LA were a lot of fun as what reflected by loads of players participating in them until the last day.

My biggest criticism of Living Story as a whole is that it is temporary. Not for the sentimental reasons one might suspect, but because:
1.) Any new players or players who level alts will never have the ability to experience this content. We don’t lock people out of Shadow Behemoth or Ascalonian Catacombs just because they kill Zhaitan do we?
2.) Achievements, vanity items, recipes and specific crafting items are lost or only obtainable through RNG means. With emphasis on the prior two for obvious reasons.
3.) Content will never be polished and tuned to account for any remaining bugs or event scaling for varying group sizes. While Tier 1 servers may not have had this problem there’s a lot of less populated servers that just stopped doing Tower of Nightmares, Marionette, Assault Knights among other encounters days before the content was even finished.

From the Nightmare Within patch and on I thought it was pretty interesting and fun. The taking LA back had its issues, but was good enough. Loved the Marionette and the attack on LA.

The epilogue however, was extremely disappointing. It answered very little and much of it was inappropriate I think. I have more to say, but had a post deleted for “infraction” already about it because apparently I was too mean (sorry, didn’t intend it quite that way). So I’ll leave it at that.

Frankly, I found most of it insulting. It’s insulting that someone was actually paid (and not fired) for this writing. It’s insulting that Anet hyped up every release as if it was going to be something mind blowing (when it was shallow and predictable).

That about sums up how I feel about the LS: a year-long, bi-monthly offense to both my intelligence and my cultural taste level. It was so profoundly bad I still find myself in disbelief that TPTB thought even presenting this tripe to the audience was acceptable. Other than that, there’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said.

The only exceptions were SAB, Zephyr Sanctum, and elements of Queen’s Pavilion.

deepwinter.9015:

Gamebreaking bugs plagued the entire year and a half right up to the end with Six Minutes to Midnight.

Serious question:
Do you realize, while typing it, how whiney your comment comes off considering you’re calling a completely non-rewarding, optional and not-promoted achievement bug “game breaking”?

To the devs, this is very easy feedback: Hey, the biggest issue is a bug for a trivial achievement! Seems the game is fine all around then!

Thought about that?
Sorry if this sounds aggressive, but it just annoys me sooooo much that people do this. This isn’t game breaking, this is the type of bug filed under “trivial”. The loot not awarding properly, that was medium or so. Still far from game-breaking. Game-breaking is when you cannot load the game, for example. Happened in the second LS story patch or so, if you were in LA. That is “game-breaking”.

I could give a lot of feedback, but just to keep it short, here are some highlights…

Positives:
-It was nice to have something new to experience on a regular frequency.

-I liked the Rox and Braham part towards the beginning of the season, it was the closest thing to like doing a Personal story.

Negatives:
-Story for season overall was not cohesive enough. It was hard to follow the plot. It felt like every 2 weeks or month, we were starting a new book, not just moving on to the next chapter.

-Way too much zergy events and content, fail rate often too high.

-Many rewards were not so interesting, meta achievements involved too much grind, get burned out of you tried to do them all every time there was new content.

Suggestions:
-I personally would enjoy more content and game play similar to Personal story in the future.

-If more people are needed, I would like to be able to have content I could do with a smaller group of persons from my guild.

-Give us more interesting rewards that include some choice. Example, maybe if I don’t want the new back item skin, then let me select a Black Lion weapon ticket instead.

Thank you

Personal opinion of course…

The Good
-New characters (Braham, Rox, Kasmeer, Marjory, Taimi). Destiny’s Edge 2.0, as people say, but I feel like I’m on a new adventure with these guys. As if I’m helping create the lore for future generations. With Destiny’s Edge (original), their story had primarily been told already, I was just there to help repair them and get back together. In the personal story, I didn’t really feel like I had a crucial part in anything.
-Something to do every 2 weeks.
-Getting to see more challenging content being developed/evolved, and interesting mechanics being applied. (Liadri, the Marionette fight, etc.)

The Bad
-Promotion of selfish gameplay due to the group based, temporary achievements.
-Moderately grind-y achievements at times.
-Bugs

I’m not a huge fan of numeric rating. But I give it a pass / C for average. It has many points it can improve on, and considering they’re treading unknown ground with this type of thing, I think they’re doing pretty well.