The Living Story so far was interesting and I did enjoy playing parts of it. Here are my 2cents:
- “It’s your story”: This is how the game is advertised it is not how the living world story content feels. The “heroes” are the NPCs (some of them recurring) but not the PCs. To change that make player actions matter. NPCs whom you have helped/met in the past who don’t remember you when you interact with them again later on in the living world feel lifeless. At least the dialog-options should therefore be different in regards to previous actions of the player.
- Player actions in events feel meaningless if they are not integrated into the story. This doesn’t involve just dialogs though. The main villain of the main storyline so far was/is Zhaitan. The living story doesn’t even include that and it therefore feels detached from the rest of the game / game world.
- “Enter an Ever-Changing World”: When event’s are over the world doesn’t change much. Even e.g. seeing the Lion’s Arch Fountain destroyed after the first Halloween event (and later rebuild) was nice even if it was just a small thing. Please do expand on that! It has been over a year now and permanent changes introduced via the living story so far don’t number many.
The main villain in the game seems to be Zhaitan the main villain in the living story so far seems to be Scarlet. And Scarlet seems to be more difficult to kill than an Elder Dragon, which doesn’t feel right. So to show this is an ever-changing world what about:
Showing Orr after Zhaitan; Showing Pact research endeavours into other Elder Dragons; Letting players actually kill Scarlet; Bring more “Guild” into Guildwars with living story for guilds (like guild missions to build those guild “housing” – which could be guild airships incorporating Pact technology).
I am quite a fan of your starting to incorporate the home instance of the players more into the living storyline!
