Guild Wars 2

How many people actually find the Story (Personal/Living) and the Lore of GW2 interesting?

Note: This does not include the content (dungeon mechanics etc.) it includes the background to the content, context, and lore.

Excluding the Lore created from Guild Wars 1 and the Book series, this would include any Lore and Story created within the 250 years (in-game), and anything after (present).

1 – I find the story engaging and look forward to seeing the lore based on the current setting

2 – The story is interesting at times, but not enough to follow consistently

3 – The story is forgettable, disconnected from current content and uninteresting.

4 – Your own opinion, please specify

1

Because there is lore in Guild Wars 2 that I genuinely find interesting, such as about …

• The Elder Dragons
• Eir’s relationship with her son, Braham.
• How Rytlock managed to get Sohothin
• Why Tequatl got more powerful
• What the Genie of the Box was
• Where the steam creatures come from
• What happened in the Thaumanova Explosion
• Why the Tengu fled Cantha
• Why the Sylvari are immune to elder dragon corruption
• Whether Zhaitan is truly dead or not
• What the bandits at Fort Vandal are doing guarding the entrance to the Maguuma Wastes.
• What Bubbles’ name is.
• What caused Scarlet to go insane.

Just to name a few.

Sorann Peace.9056:

1

Because there is lore in Guild Wars 2 that I genuinely find interesting, such as about …

• The Elder Dragons
• Eir’s relationship with her son, Braham.
• How Rytlock managed to get Sohothin
• Why Tequatl got more powerful
• What the Genie of the Box was
• Where the steam creatures come from
• What happened in the Thaumanova Explosion
• Why the Tengu fled Cantha
• Why the Sylvari are immune to elder dragon corruption
• Whether Zhaitan is truly dead or not
• What the bandits at Fort Vandal are doing guarding the entrance to the Maguuma Wastes.
• What Bubbles’ name is.
• What caused Scarlet to go insane.

Just to name a few.

Alot of this is just questions you want answers to…so technically this lore isn’t in the game. That is the issue I am having, is that they have opened alot of opportunities for good stories, and lore options…..but give us nothing.

I am torn because there is alot of very un-interesting pieces of lore they are trying to cram into the game, for reasons they won’t tell us about, adding terrible canned characters and not adding any substance or purpose to the established lore that is built into the background of the Guild Wars universe.

The GW2 game world and the portrayal of the world through events is great.
The GW2 lore with the elder dragons and Orr rising from the depths is fine.
The personal story fits well into the game world and game lore but it is weak as a story.
The living story is awful and has no connection to lore and little connection to the world.

Stooperdale.3560:

The GW2 game world and the portrayal of the world through events is great.
The GW2 lore with the elder dragons and Orr rising from the depths is fine.
The personal story fits well into the game world and game lore but it is weak as a story.
The living story is awful and has no connection to lore and little connection to the world.

This is true, although I might point out that the personal story, stops being personal at around lvl 30, and becomes a canned hunt with your sidekick trahearne making an appearance shortly after. The story starts out interesting, then becomes lackluster when it “merges” with every other possible story arc.

The elder dragons could very well be a great place to go lore-wise, but I almost feel that it should be saved for more worth-while content, such as an expansion pack.

The living story, should have simply improved on already existing lore, instead of trying to introduce new characters and factions constantly. Established lore with enemies such as the White Mantle and Mursaat are still loose ends when looked at in hindsight, and are possibilities. Canthans, and Elonians would make a good segway into new content as well.

Really what they should have focused on, was the already existing lore.

Old Lore:
-Mursaat
-White Mantle
-Cantha
-Elona
-EotN era (primordus/jormag/chaar/human/norn/asura/dungeons)
-Realm of Torment/Gods
-Tengu

Newer Lore:
-Racial stories (Norn, Asura, Charr, Human, Sylvari) not single characters.
-Elder Dragons
-Destiny’s Edge
-Orr
-World areas (Each zone could have a story for itself)

What we got:
-Sylvari mary sue
-a dredge/flame legion hybrid
-krait/sylvari hybrid
-a sanctum of traders
-lots of parties
-a couple norn and charr characters that are actually interesting

2

The hype of the stories make them interesting, but the actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve only been back a few months, but so far the “Living story” updates have been nothing but achievement grinds.

ie. Twilight arbor. There was almost no story anywhere. You were told to go to this dungeon and it was just another railroad dungeon, where you had no idea what or why you are doing this. The end boss you had to fight was somehow connected to a lock on a door and you needed to open that lock to allow Lionguard to rappel down. The boss was sealed in forcefield, until you deliberately opened the field and thus forcing you to fight the boss. Why?

ie. Halloween (not LS content I know). Start was a mini dungeon with a start of amazing story. Then you had to grind the achievements and magically you were then given the elemental you were asked to search. How did you acquire that elemental? By opening bags and doors? Where was the story and quest to search for that elemental?

ie. Nightmare tower. Again the start looked promising, you were asked to help search for antidote for the new poison. What that was? You had to do nothing, as the next content was coming anyway to allow you in to the tower.
There was that collecting spore samples, but those only gave you access to the store. Sure you could say that was the way you helped, but it could (and should) have been done much more interestingly. All the other content was just you trying to stop the spread of the corruption. Sure that was important, but why then was it advertised as helping to find the cure?

There has been very little actual story given, just a bunch of events on larger scale and achievements to go along with them. There has been no progress on finding explanations to the things, you are forced just to react to things and given no way to find anything about them.

So, please Anet, stop giving us achievement grind updates and if you keep calling them Living Story updates, then give us a story to follow. The update should be more about the story and not about achievements. The update completion gift should come from completing the quest/goal of the content update and not just doing the achievements.

3

I feel the latest living world update is so disconnected from the lore of the game. Not to mention easily completed within a day or two, which is about 4-6 hours of gameplay for me. I love the idea and concept of living world updates, but more time needs to be spent on content development, items, drops, dungeons, and more things to do in the world, then just these sole single line living world updates.

As its been said before, this last one felt completely disconnected from the surrounding world story, one day it just popped into existence, and you went in, did your thing, and went back to business as usual, grinding for that single legendary weapon that you want which will take a year to get.