Guild Wars 2

Personal Story Restoration
Some updates to the Personal Story are coming. I’d like to take this opportunity to give you some details on what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what to expect in the future.

Background
Back in 2014 we released the September Feature Pack, which introduced a number of changes to the game. Among those changes were revisions to the Personal Story, including a reorganization of certain story steps. The “My Greatest Fear” story steps were deactivated for many players, and three steps from chapter 8 were moved into chapter 7. This prevented some players from accessing certain content and also introduced some continuity errors.

What We’re Restoring
To put it simply, we’re reactivating the “My Greatest Fear” story steps and putting chapter 8 content back in its original position in the overall narrative. We’re also making some minor improvements to the content, like writing and recording new voice-over for a few key characters, tweaking some camera moves, updating select art assets, and more.

What This Means for You
When the update goes live, it will restore the Personal Story steps in chapters 7 and 8 to their original order. This will affect a small number of users who currently have characters in certain states of story completion. You can check your current story completion status by accessing the Story Journal in your Hero Panel. By default, you can access this inside the game by pressing H and then clicking on the Story Journal tab and selecting My Story.

• If your character has not completed “A Light in the Darkness,” (chapter 6) you should not encounter any issues. You will be able to experience the Personal Story in its restored order along with the minor improvements that begin with this story step.

• If your character has not completed “Forging the Pact,” you should not encounter any issues. While you will not be able to replay previous story steps to see some of the minor improvements that were made, you will be able to play the “My Greatest Fear” story content (based on the choice you made at the end of “A Light in the Darkness”) and also experience the restored chapter 8 story steps.

• If your character has completed Forging the Pact and skipped ahead to “The Battle of Fort Trinity,” then you will not be able to play the “My Greatest Fear” story steps with this character.

• If your character is currently playing “Against the Corruption,” “Cathedral of Silence,” “Romke’s Final Voyage,” or “The Source of Orr,” you must complete your story steps through the Source of Orr to begin chapter 8. If you do not complete “The Source of Orr” before the Personal Story restoration goes live, you will be advanced to “Victory or Death” upon completion of “The Source of Orr.” “Victory or Death” is the final Personal Story step (and you will miss out on most of chapter 8 with this character). This is due to these steps being moved back into chapter 8 and the successor steps being restored to their original state.

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

aspirine.6852:

Either the writers got some help, or they gotten a lot better. Whatever it is it’s working

We’re focusing a bit more on the presentation of the writing now. In the past, we wrote and voiced a number of scenes that never got built. There were story and character moments for planned instances that, unfortunately, got cut. What was especially difficult for the writers and narrative designers was that feeling of “I wrote all this stuff that would make the story more cohesive but nobody can experience it.” We learned a lot over the past year about how we could do a better job of conveying the story, so we partnered with a number of designers and learned some basic implementation skills.

Really, the root of the issue was communication between disciplines. The changes you’re noticing are a direct result of the increased collaboration between narrative, design, art, and audio. The story moments in the past three releases came about through many meetings where we’d all talk about character moments and plot points, and how we can best portray them with our tech.

We experimented with using instanced and open world scenes, and tried to place those moments in and around gameplay such that they were in the direct line of sight but weren’t heavily gated. This is all basic game narrative stuff that is common in development, but something we’ve had to experiment with due to the unique nature of our platform. And yeah, we’re also trying to seed more ambient lore that ties back to the current episode plot because it makes the world feel more alive. The fact that people are noticing these changes makes me incredibly happy.

I’m sensing a recurring, somewhat creepy theme here.

One of our goals in using existing characters in Living World content is to strengthen connections to the player. We intended to include a conversation option for players who spent time with Lord Faren in the Personal Story, but this fell off the radar as the release neared completion. It’s on my list of things to watch out for when we’re developing upcoming releases. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Glad that people like these. We’ll do more in the future, perhaps.