Guild Wars 2

As far as the living world goes, the Wayfarer foothills and Diessa Plateau are alive. For new players, even in a year, there’s a very nice story chain to be uncovered. Something is going on there, it really feels like that now.

Bar the fact that the entire region will be killed again in two weeks. Why? No one knows, no one understands. Exploring magic tricks and mentalism made me a pretty good mind reader but right now I’m drawing blanks.

So you basically want the living story to not be a living story but simply adding more and more and more and more and more stuff on top of each other?

Life has a cycle, for once an MMO is trying to incorporate that fact.

It’s called Living Story for a reason. Other parts of the game need some liveliness brought to them too. If all the content stayed sandwiching on top of each other then all the regions of the game would be “alive” and subsequently dead because the jam for this metaphorical sandwich would be spread too thin.

lordkrall.7241:

So you basically want the living story to not be a living story but simply adding more and more and more and more and more stuff on top of each other?

Actually, yes. A ‘Living’ story implies growth in the overall amount of content. What’s truly needed is a combination of the temporary events, and actual, permanant content related to it.

At the very least, it would be nice to have Rox and Braham continue to exist as wandering NPCs in their home cities. Talking to them would provide the options to a) Get a synopsis of the whole Flame and Frost event, so players new to the game can learn about it long after the event), b) Get sent to a version of the Cragstead or Hatchery instances (with the content edited to show that this is a similar visit, not the initial one from the actual event—the idea is that this is yet another similar attack by leftovers from the event), and c) Get sent to a Molten Factory dungeon instance (again edited somewhat to explain that this is another Factory that had been found).
Given that all the code and assets already exist (the functions I’m thinking of were in the SAB, after all), this would be a great way to keep the content in the game.

McSlaughter.1567:

It’s called Living Story for a reason. Other parts of the game need some liveliness brought to them too. If all the content stayed sandwiching on top of each other then all the regions of the game would be “alive” and subsequently dead because the jam for this metaphorical sandwich would be spread too thin.

True enough—on the other hand you have the situation we have now where the ‘Living’ content Is nothing but transient—the world at large is still entirely static, and remains unchanged when the event ends. There needs to be both transient events and permanant additions for things to be ‘Living’.

Vulpis.8063:

Actually, yes. A ‘Living’ story implies growth in the overall amount of content. What’s truly needed is a combination of the temporary events, and actual, permanant content related to it.

At the very least, it would be nice to have Rox and Braham continue to exist as wandering NPCs in their home cities. Talking to them would provide the options to a) Get a synopsis of the whole Flame and Frost event, so players new to the game can learn about it long after the event), b) Get sent to a version of the Cragstead or Hatchery instances (with the content edited to show that this is a similar visit, not the initial one from the actual event—the idea is that this is yet another similar attack by leftovers from the event), and c) Get sent to a Molten Factory dungeon instance (again edited somewhat to explain that this is another Factory that had been found).
Given that all the code and assets already exist (the functions I’m thinking of were in the SAB, after all), this would be a great way to keep the content in the game.

So you are basically talking about stuff that might actually be coming? Why not wait until the event is actually over before assuming they won’t add stuff like that?

McSlaughter.1567:

It’s called Living Story for a reason. Other parts of the game need some liveliness brought to them too. If all the content stayed sandwiching on top of each other then all the regions of the game would be “alive” and subsequently dead because the jam for this metaphorical sandwich would be spread too thin.

That might be true, but I felt this really developed those zones. It’s really cool what a few scavenger hunts can do to the underlying feeling of a zone. When this goes away, it’ll just be DE and hearts like usual.

Not everything should disappear imho, but a.net probably has plans. We’ll see in a week.