(edited by Abygael.4805)
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I think ArenaNet added the Living Story Atlas so that the content wouldn’t ever go away completely.
For example, PsiQss, after a 3-month hiatus, could return, flip through the atlas, read the release notes, look at the pictures and the annotations, and be mostly caught up. Then jump into the wonders that await them with the latest chapter.
I would also like to address the point of being “told when to play.” I can’t say I’ve felt this. I missed a living story release because it didn’t appeal to me (but it’s the Aetherblade path of TA, so I can still go back to it). I’ve regretted not having enough free time to play through content to my liking. But I’ve never been told by the game that I should play.
Reasons:
1. No subscription fee. I paid for the game, and all the added content is bonus. One of the reasons I don’t play sub games is that I feel like any time I spend playing something else is wasting money. No sub fee, no problem.
2. The remainder of the game (minus LA now) is available at all times. The living story content, in the grand scheme, makes up at most 5% of the content available at a given time, if that. And that’s just PvE. Were the LS 50% of the entire game, I think there’d be more of a point to complaining about temporary content.
3. Achievements are a treadmill of points. I’ll never have as many as the people who do nothing but play, but there’s an unlimited supply of them via dailies. Yes, some people do them just for the points, but I find they also help guide me through the content by pointing me towards activities, locations, encounters, etc.
4. Every living world release I’ve seen can be experienced in about 5 hours. Please don’t mistake: you can’t complete the achievements in that time. But you can wander around the new areas, talk to NPCs, browse the merchants, fight the baddies, dabble with the activities, read the new mail, go through the instances, and generally see what there is to be seen in detail. If you don’t have 5 hours in two weeks to spend, then you probably shouldn’t be playing MMOs.
5. Approximately every month they’ve given us something that sticks around: a grip of new jumping puzzles, Cragstead and the devourer hatchery, Southsun, fractals, some more fractals, Belcher’s Bluff, Crab Toss, Southsun Survival, Sanctum Sprint, the Aetherblade Twilight Arbor path, evolved Tequatl, the Great Wurms, the Edge of the Mists, several PvP maps, and that’s off the top of my head. Not to mention recurring content like the Mad King, Wintersday, Super Adventure Box, and I assume Zephyr Sanctum. You may not get the instances, the cutscenes, or the cheebs, but plenty of content remains.
TL:DR The temporary Living Story content is not enough of the game to call it all of the game, and there’s no pressure outside your own motivations to play it.
Not only can A-Net do a Living World story, they can do a Dying World story.
All the NPCs who fell during the Zhaitan storyline…well, they can be re-experienced on another character. Sad, but impermanent.
For the continuing story arc, those people are gone. The places are gone. The consequences are “real,” as much as they can be in a virtual world. We’ve seen this in miniature form already with LA’s fountain: Mad King Thorne broke it, the community helped rebuild it, and it took months.
As much here as in the real world, death makes all that remains more precious. I know that, for future Living World updates, I really don’t want the opposition to succeed. It’s not a matter of “saving” some respawning nameless NPCS. Anyone in the game world may be a target, and this update has underlined the impermanence of virtually anything. I’m fighting for the Tyria I’ve known and loved.
If the game were headed by sadistic maniacs, I’d be too afraid to go on. But A-Net is in charge, and they’ve done right by the community for years. I trust them.
Well done, devs.