Lion's arch in the personal story
It’s intended. Just the way it is. /shrug
I don’t think should be that way at all.
Instanced content should reflect how the zone was at the moment when the action took place.
Recycling current maps and zones is pretty convenient but i believe using a copy of the original Lion’s Arch for thoses instances is not out of question, right?
Anyway, a new player would probably think why the npc bother so much about an upcoming attack from Zhaitan’s minions on Lion’s Arch if the city is already ruined
While I absolutely agree that instances in the past should use a version of the map appropriate to that time, this is something that ANet is aware of, and they are looking at ways of preserving the sense of immersion while not also having multiple copies of maps in the game client. (Personally I think that wouldn’t be a big issue, but maybe there are technical reasons behind it.)
Yes, it has been reported before and the reason is that instances share the same map as the normal areas, as obviously seen.
I don’t see how it could be an issue to have copies of maps for that purpose. We wouldn’t have more than 2 “copies” for each affected map and afaik not many maps involved in PS hava been affected. I don’t think it would increase too much the already huge size of the game client.