Guild Wars 2

Dragon Bash? Southsun Farming? Molten Alliance dungeon? Battle for Lion’s Arch? SAB? etc.

Whatever updates you liked the most since Flame and Frost began, please share. I tended to like a lot of the updates and have seen a lot of criticism, so for those who played through the LS, what stuff did you enjoy the most, was anything special, what would you like to see more of?

I liked the Molten Alliance dungeon quite a bit, and while I didn’t run it every day for two weeks like I did with a lot of the other content, it still stands out in my memory as being pretty good.

SAB was pretty good too, I liked that I could pop in with my friends and enjoy, I could go in with randoms, or I could just go in myself. Not to mention how fun the presentation was.

Bazaar of the Four Winds or Super Adventure Box, the quality and standalone nature of the releases are the aspects that really make them good.

BOT4W. Being able to zip around the entire map like that was amazing. All the different little things you could interact with to spawn events, and the entire map was one big jumping puzzle. The attention to detail in that update was amazing and I hope we see more of that quality.

Also I made the same thread and like 7 people responded to it so may you have more luck than me.

Queen’s Jubilee (First part), Bazaar of The Four Winds, Super Adventure Box, Windersday, Halloween.

I too prefer the standalone type of living story parts, because it feels more engaging having a ‘realistic’ (Hear me out a sec) structure made out of small things happening rather than having one huge thing:

In your life there probably isn’t just one huge event; but rather many smaller (but still big) events, which make life interesting… unless you have a repetitive job. That ‘realism’ (Very loosely using the term realism) in games gives in-game life variety and keeps it engaging, I feel.

I’m trying to put this in a way that doesn’t sound like jibber jabber, but I still sound like a pillock when I read it over.

Aedelric.1287:

Bazaar of the Four Winds or Super Adventure Box, the quality and standalone nature of the releases are the aspects that really make them good.

THIS

Bazaar of the Four Winds, I loved the new area, the design and aesthetics. The gathering quests were nice (exploration yay), but the dynamic events were so so.
Frost and Fire the final dungeon was pretty good, nice build up if somewhat anaemic content wise.
First Holloween was the best holiday event (back when we had holiday events… seems holiday events and Living World have been combined into one).

Bazaar of the four winds was the only LS release i could get into 100%. The others i did some of the content but found it got too repetitive and grindy too quickly so left it alone afterwards. I just ended up doing the story bits and leaving the gameplay and AP grinds to others

Bazaar of the four winds for many reasons but 1 in particular is the feel of leaving the cage of the normal map.
Yes the world map we have now makes me feel caged and being able to leave outside its walls was so refreshing.

Everyone is saying the Bazaar. Its pretty clear people are itching for new areas to explore.

It is hard to not have fond memories of the place, lets hope when it comes back it is not just a copy paste event from last time, like the disappointment of the second Wintersday.

I would be utterly shocked if we did not get at least one new region this year.

Yep, BotFW by a long shot and in every respect.

I really really liked the Queens Gauntlet- I loved the fights
I liked most of the LS though- my least favourite was probably the invasions

I really liked the Molten facility Dungeon, (bossfight was one of the best in game atm) , secondary I enjoyed the bazaar and the queens jubilee.

Thobek.1730:

Everyone is saying the Bazaar. Its pretty clear people are itching for new areas to explore.

It’s not necessarily that it was a new area, it was exploring an area in a different way than normal. It’d be ok if they didn’t have the aspects, but it wouldn’t have been as amazing as the map wide scavenger hunt with the new mechanics.

Just like the first halloween or the original SAB. It was something different and unexpected.

Top three in order:

1) The Nightmares Within. I had a blast leading zergs up that tower every night. Great atmosphere, good challenge, nice contained instance, fun content. I’ve got guildies who didn’t get to see it; I’d love to have a dungeon of this content so I can run it with them

2) Bazaar of the Four Winds. What a beautiful area. Not only that, but the wind/sun/lightning aspects were a ton of fun, as was Sanctum Sprint. This entire release was a big breath of fresh air and I can’t wait to see it again.

3) The Origins of Madness. Despite the trouble we had beating Mari in the final two weeks, I did enjoy fighting her quite a lot. It’d be great to see this fight returned as a scaled-down instance (maybe 25 total, one full party per lane.)

Kalarchis.8635:

Top three in order:

1) The Nightmares Within. I had a blast leading zergs up that tower every night. Great atmosphere, good challenge, nice contained instance, fun content. I’ve got guildies who didn’t get to see it; I’d love to have a dungeon of this content so I can run it with them

Probably be getting a fractal for the tower. Would be nice if we had another world dungeon that was heavily inspired by the tower, maybe some toxic alliance decides to do their own little tower now that Scarlet is gone…

Bazaar of the Four Winds without any doubt, it was the most innovative and it felt…special.

2nd place for SAB, innovative in its own way, fun and rewarding.

I liked the queens Jubilee, first the arena and then the invasions. I loved it!

1) The Origins of Madness. The Twisted Marionette Battle is probably my number one favorite moment from the Living Story. Hearing your hero shout to you in the lane, the nervousness of being teleported to the platforms to fight maybe solo… it was incredible. Plus all the character interactions in the Lion’s Arch instance that flowed so well and Kas’ moving talk about her father along with Rox saying she wanted to basically abandon Braham for a warband. Just. Right in the feels.

2) Bazaar of the Four Winds/Cutthroat Politics. Beautiful new area you had to learn new ways to fully explore, fun movement skills, collecting crystals was a non-frustrating mini game because there was no real time limit or pressure, and there was a sort of carnival feel with the side attractions (Zephyrites singing on their boat/GLINT LORE OMG, the performing quaggan, blecher’s bluff, artifacts ). Plus, they added Cutthroat Politics and it was fun wearing those support badges and then voting to determine the outcome of something in the world. Very cool.

3) Queen’s Jubilee. The opening ceremony was good fun to fight through/watch Faren’s heroics/(re)meet Hobo-Tron and Marciello, the arenas and their events were challenging but rewarding, the new skins were beauuutiful and uniquely Krytan (I wish I could have afforded more than 2 at the time). I regret feeling like I didn’t have enough time to challenge the bosses up above. The whole thing had a real “Queen’s Tourney” feel, like I was fighting to gain prestige with humanity, too, and not just loot.

Technically, the introduction of Labyrinthine Cliffs (the zone that’s a jumping puzzle) was my favorite. But what inspired awe was the Tower of Nightmare.
While in the Cliffs, there wasn’t much for me to do, but I refused to leave the area because the atmosphere was perfectly beautiful. The Tower of Nightmare was what I wanted for combat: a single zone dedicated to a gauntlet of varying enemies, peppered with micro-dungeons. Unfortunately, the Tower was easily corrupted by mob mentality.

Bazaar of the Four Winds. The high amount of puzzle and scavenger hunt in that area is simply amazing.

Bazaar of the Four Winds!

Bazaar…because:

1.) It had a well designed vertical zone worth exploring, that didn’t punish the player with mobs everywhere.
2.) Plenty of instanced and non-instanced story elements that were enjoyable to experience.
3.) interesting items to try and obtain (backpieces were nice…helmets were odd)
– Note: That they were not pigeonholed Gemstore cashgrabs like the current ones either.
4.) Activites with new mechanics and enjoyable atmosphere.

So much about that update I enjoyed

1. Bazaar – Music, the atmosphere, the looks. Outstanding
2. QJ – Solo fights with gambits were an amazing experuence. Probably first time since release I had to buy specific food, change utilities in major way and learn the bosses without exploiting to beat the arenas with couple gambits on.

3. Southsun – While maybe not perfectly introduced, I loved and still love this island. Again, looks, atmosphere. And Karkas! I loved the challange they provided, but now there’s too little people to actually have fun with them and not get smashed because of too frequent respawns

4. Flame&Frost – Good introducement into the story. While mostly sentimental, I liked the whole mystery around “refugees” and the ending boss fight.

My favorite was the the Tower of Nightmares and the Nightmare Within. The sheer size of the tower just inspired a huge amount of awe. Just looking at it from the outside I said to myself, “Where going into that!?”

Molten facilities, with Mari as a close second.

I really like the smaller group instances, as most of the zergy stuff feels really silly to me. The MF was an amazing instance in its own right, but the way that it bookended what came before it, the reams of unique and useful loot, and the utter finality of the ending (blowing up the facility) coupled with the fact that yeah, you eventually did destroy them all… it was just a great update. Never once did I feel like I was grinding achievements. I was in stead making runs for loot and blowing up bad guy lairs. It was awesome.

Mari, on the same front, was just a masterfully designed fight that took the best parts of zerg fighting (zergs of players versus zergs of mobs) and small group instances (pockets of players versus boss enemies) and blended them together in a way that was really fun and just felt… right… like what a GW2 world boss fight should feel like in stead of 80 people ranged attacking a giant bag of HP.

Special mention for SAB though. I LOOOVE me some SAB, but it’s its own little world and that fact makes it slightly lower than the above content.