Guild Wars 2

Shun.9475:

I think what makes Guild Wars 2 weaker than Guild Wars is that the world might too big with multiple stories to actually build everything forward, therefore the enjoyment of the plot is overall weak. In Guild Wars, the stories may have been linear, but they were explored fantastically.

Guild Wars 1 had a lot of stories that were left without conclusion. Though equally as many were told from “start” to finish via side-quests. Without quests in GW2, they must tell side stories either in the main plot… or in the open world. And if it’s in the open world… it cannot be concluded without removing it.

THAT is the issue GW2 has, when it comes to the side stories: they either cannot complete it (because open world), or they put it in the main plot (side-tracking main plots, “woo”).

Chrispy.5641:

(I will say the Bazaar of the Four winds update was terrible, and some of that writing had holes in it with some pretty arbitrary explanations) not all was terrible. Tower of Nightmares was S1, and it wasn’t too bad, and I think that was better than a lot of the quests in GW1 (especially every quest ever that was named after a pop culture reference. Those got old real fast)

Every update in Season 1 had its own issues.

Delivery and asthetically, Tower of Nightmares was on the top. However, lore continuity wise and in regards to proper storytelling, it was horrendous. Like much of Season 1, it left too many intentional unknowns with no proper clues to guess about it (“we want players to speculate!” as Anet puts it, paraphrased, results in them not giving us anything except unknowns), it created lore discontinuities by not establishing a clear reason in-game for why the xenophobic enslaving krait would ever trust or work with Scarlet and the Nightmare Court, let alone let them alter their bodies.

Anet’s lore is astounding if what they say to quell the forum outrages was there the whole time (it’s happened so many times I have become doubtful). But they intentionally leave so much unknown, without even hints to it. This is the biggest difference aside from the lack of side-quests from GW1.

And it changes EVERYTHING.

The quality of presented lore and writing in GW2 is vastly inferior to GW1; the aesthetics, music, and even voice acting in GW2 is vastly superior to GW1. The background lore is, questionably, the same quality – sans situations like Scarlet’s alliances.

And just to note: I recently replayed GW1, and found it far more enjoyable than GW2. Despite the fact I played through it countless times. And I’m usually a “I can only enjoy a linear plot once regardless of how good it is” person.

saye.9304:

i think Caithe`s Secret is wynne, she is going to kill wynne for faolain, she committed MURDERER.

Nice thought, but I’m doubtful.

Scarlet hinted that Faolain didn’t know – and that even the Pale Tree may not know.

Sounds to me that Caithe found out Wynne’s secret, but Faolain failed to.

The question is, what is that secret? Most likely the cave of seeds that Ronan found.

Final note:
Episode 8 better be even bigger than Episode 5, with these two small filler episodes. And I mean story steps quantity that are on par to Chapter 8 of the Personal Story (pre or post feature batch kitten-up) – meaning either double or triple the standard story step amount e.g., 8-12 story steps please), and a nice big open world boss (the flower).

Earlier today I was running through the Durmand Priory to Fort Trinity and I heard some dialogue I’ve heard several times ago, but today something clicked in my mind about it. Here is the dialogue:

Priory Novice (human): What brought you to the Priory?
Priory Novice (sylvari): In my Dream, I saw dragons, and a spire of light drove them off.
Priory Novice (human): You really think we can defeat them? Do you really believe we can reclaim our world?
Priory Novice (sylvari): Maybe, but there may be too much that even time cannot erase.

You can find these two (well, the sylvari patrols) near the ramp that leads to the refuge camp. Literally hidden by the thing. This has always been in the game, but it didn’t really trigger anything until recently. It’s the sylvari’s first line, about her Dream, that is most curious to me.

In Arah explorable, Forgotten path, the ritual to give a dragon minion free will results in pillars of light.

In Season 2’s final instance, divine fire – related to the Forgotten – causes the mordrem to flee.

Truthfully, ever since Season 2’s finale, I had been wondering about the nature of divine magic (held by the Six Gods and Forgotten – possibly what powers the Foefire and thus explaining why Foefire ghosts weren’t affected by Kralkatorrik or why Ghostfire burns risen and sylvari exceptionally well) and dragon corruption and how they seem incompatible to the point of immunity with each other (or rather, Forgotten magic is immune to dragon corruption, and divine fire causes harm to dragon minions).

If the Foefire is related to divine magic – and it resulted in a spire of light and white fire – and if the Forgotten ritual is powered by divine magic like Ascension…

Could this line be hinting at the conclusion of the Elder Dragon arc? Using the power of the gods (divine magic) to defeat the Elder Dragons for good?

It’s work with the Orders that we leave the warband for, and we don’t leave the Orders, just the Pact.

It does not come up for Whisper charr, but it may for Vigil charr. Or it may be a huge oversight that didn’t get mentioned.

Unfortunately I don’t think it will get mentioned because now the storyline is so unified, and the way they set up the story journal seems to be no longer able to do story splits like the PS was without massive bugs in replaying the content.

@Tornupto: When we leave the charr story, for some reason (never explained to us), we’re Centurion rank. The only rank higher available to most is Tribune and the situation-based Primus Centurion. So we’re fairly high ranked too. Then again, there aren’t many ranks in charr society…. soldier, legionnaire, centurion, primus centurion, tribune, imperator, Khan-Ur aka primus imperator.

Incidentally enough, this does nothing to really answer any of the questions or concerns poised before.

And I even see some conflicts with the lore in this response. I’m about to start a Arah dungeon run atm though so I’ll respond in length later.

I’m going to have to give a slight rant about the pricing of HoT’s pre-purchase. But let me start by saying that the deal is good…. if you’re a new player. For $50 you can buy the core game and HoT all-in-one; for an additional $20 you can buy a bunch of cosmetic stuff and an extra character slot; and an additional $30 adds $50 worth of gems. And if you’re a new player, that’s great! I think the Deluxe is a total rip – $20 for a mini, glider skin, guild hall item, and character slot basically – but that’s personal opinion as I only see use for that character slot and maybe the guild hall item. The Ultimate is pretty good – it’s basically buying the base game and HoT for $50, then $50 worth of gems, and the rest which is given in the Deluxe free.

But to existing players, the deal is total kitten. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the argument that there’s so many new features and that most MMO expansions are a little cheaper but they have subscriptions. But that’s just it. Many new features. We’re being charged the price of a full game for features – most of which are copies of GW1’s features that were available upon Prophecies’ release. But there’s the CONTENT? We have seen a single map with promises. Promises of a good story – hard to believe with the crap that was the Living World – and promises of plenty of content per map. But not even a guesstimate on how many hours of gameplay the story itself can give; no guesstimate on how many events per map we’ll be seeing, or how many maps we’re getting. For all we know, HoT is that single map in PvE content with a single Living World episode’s worth of story instances. I doubt that’s the case, but at this point – six months after reveal of HoT’s existence; six months after a content update, and we don’t know any more on the content of HoT than we did by the end of January. We’ve only learned about features.

I am willing to pay $50 for an expansion. The price isn’t the issue. It’s the price-for-content that’s the issue. Most expansions are priced at half of the initial game’s cost because they only give a third or half of a full game’s content. Factions and Nightfall were full priced because they were stand-alone and full campaigns.

I will not pay $50 for access to guild halls, elite specializations, revenant, a single map, Stronghold, and new WvW borderlands. And I’m fairly sure that the latter two will end up accessible to all (certainly the new WvW borderlands). I will pay $50 for a full game, like GW1’s campaigns were. I will pay $30 for half-a-game like most expansions are. But I will not pay $50 for guild halls, elite specializations, a new profession, and a single map.

And let me go a little bit into the purpose of pre-orders and pre-purchases. Such a thing came about when games were mainly sold in stores rather than online, because the more expected titles can sell out fast. Pre-orders became a thing to ensure a customer got that game on release day. Via online, all it does is allow a customer to pay sooner rather than later. But the issue is that we have no indication on whether or not that game is good or not. Nowadays, companies are exploiting the pre-purchase aspect with all these pre-purchase-only gizmos and promises that in the end don’t matter much (or shouldn’t). And this pre-purchase is no different – only the character slot is really all that useful, but I don’t need to pay $20 for that. And still, I know nothing about what I’m paying for beyond ‘features’.

Features used to be free updates. They tend to be in most games. Content is what you pay for, more often than not. HoT is not content – not what they’ve showed at least.

Sorry Anet, but that incentive is not incentive. You need to tell me that I’m getting my money’s worth.

I find little to no difference in terms of personality between male and female norn. I certainly wouldn’t call female norn “extremely resilient” and male norn not. Both male and female norn are independent in relatively equal quantities, so I wouldn’t say that female norn are more independent either – heck, you got female norn NPCs desperately looking for company and refusing to live alone…

Alright, I’ll toss my hand into this frying pot as well and state my view of the Living Story in the most complete form possible. To do this I’ll divide it by subject, as there are IMO a lot of failing points and even more places for improvements.

And to note, I only discussed the Living Story in how it is and how what there is can/needs to be improved, rather than what I feel could be added in new motions.

(Side note: ANet, please increase the character limit)

Pacing of Story
I’ll start off with what I feel is the primary problematic crux in the “Living World” – the pacing of the story. In short, it’s too slow. Now don’t misunderstand me! I’m not saying “produce the udpates faster!” I’m no fool, I know such isn’t possible. In fact, I’d say the opposite.

Please bring the updates back to once-a-month. In my opinion, every two weeks for an update is too fast, especially with so much temporary content that can disappear either in two weeks or four weeks and you just don’t ever really know. Even if you improve communication for how long content lasts, how long the temporary stuff lasts still is too short in too many cases for its amount. And it’s even weirder that the Living World achievements can never be achieved after they go into Historical, despite old promises of otherwise. Giving an extra two weeks for development and testing would, I hope, also improve the quality of the content – as things stand, it feels like ArenaNet’s stance is “quantity, not quality” and that stance has to go out the window and into the sewers. It just isn’t healthy. While more things to do is never bad, sacrificing quality for that is no good – you destroy any memorable feelings the story or content can have.

Back to the point though – pacing of the story. It isn’t that the updates come too slowly, but rather that we get too little per update. Take, for example, the month of September and October – the combined content of SAB:Back to School, Tequatl Rising, and Twilight Assault. What did we get for story? Moto was pretty juicy story, but with Tequatl Rising we just got three points (“Tequatl got stronger for unknown reasons” “Rytlock told Rox to hunt Tequatl down” and “Bobby Stein promises there’s more to the story”) we didn’t even get a short story to it, and then with Twilight Assault? What did we learn? Caithe knew of Ceara when she was in the Grove, Scarlet made a deal with the Nightmare Court (which you’d only learn via the short story), and Ceara knows a secret of Caithe – oh, and somehow she can capture the sylvari best known for her guile and stealth…

We got next to nothing in-game about Scarlet in Twilight Assault, just like with Clockwork Chaos (what we got in-game then was "Scarlet’s behind the Molten Alliance and Aetherblades, and is norn-, charr-, hylek-, and asura-trained). If you want people to be invested in the story, you have to give them more than these miniscule breadcrumbs, and they must be in the game itself somehow.

TL;DR In short, what I’m saying here is that you need to produce more plot points in the game itself each update. It doesn’t matter how, just that it’s done. Make it come out of a grumbling skritt in the sewers of Lion’s Arch if you must, just get it in the game.

Mechanical Content Updates
I feel that too much of the content that’s being pushed out is catering to the higher-tiered groups of players. Tequatl, champ loot, Ascended gear… these are all high-end stuff or stuff that – intentionally or not – promote farming. To paraphrase a question I saw in Queensdale the otherday: “Remember when Guild Wars 2 was more than a ’where’s the zerg’ game?”

If you think about it, too much of the content favors big groups, and is rather harmful to solo play. Tequatl’s obvious here, but look at the champion loot bags – while they don’t outright promote farming, champions aren’t meant to be solo’d so it’s pretty much moot to those who like playing outside of the large groups. Mad King’s Labyrinthe – the place is full to the brim with crowd controlling enemies. Go to fight one enemy, and you’ll soon be fighting ten more because you’re getting pushed, pulled, or immobilized at the wrong times in the wrong places. Best way to survive? Zerg! The Crown Pavilion – place was full of Veterans with Legendary bosses. Good luck solo’ing in there. Best way to survive? Zerg!

On the flip side, it feels like there’s a power creep that’s happening too fast. A lot of the game is rather a joke with Exotic gear, and now Ascended gear is being added in faster and faster. Soon enough, content’s going to be either a peace of cake, kittenly because you’re intentionally not getting top gear, or will have to be made harder to compensate for the power creep. Slap in the new limited-time skill we’re getting and the fact we’re likely to be getting even more of such skills and… well, power creep happens. And when you make these things time-gated or worse, limited-time only? New players will be left in the dust.

Suffice it to say: not a fan.

Please give some stuff for the non-zerg, non-hardcore players – like you did when you added Vexa’s Lab.

It’s Not A “Living World” Story, It’s “Scarlet’s Story”
I’ve heard on the forum in the past that it isn’t a “living story” but a “random story.” I disagree with this. But I will say it is not a “Living World” nor a “Living Story” – it is a progressional story where earlier chapters are removed (thus leaving new players questioning what’s going on).

In my opinion, a “random story” would probably be preferable to what we have. A Living World would have multiple plots ongoing at once, in often unpredictable sequences. There are four cases I’d like to point to where a Living World was done… somewhat accurate.

• Shadow of the Mad King – in this update, we got the Modus Sceleris and Skritt Burglar events, the Forsaken Halls and Vexa’s Lab mini-dungeons, and the main plot of Halloween. You had the main plot, but you updates a large number of maps with stuff unrelated to the main plot – this has been lacking since, more or less.
• Flame and Frost: Retribution/Super Adventure Box – in April early this year, we got 2 updates only days away from each other, unrelated and though the second was initially an April Fool’s joke it became part of the Living World and even had some open world alterations when it was viewed by the community as just a joke. Two event plots, unrelated, occurring simultaneously.
• Cutthroat Politics – most of this update was extremely lackluster, with nothing but repeated content throughout. It was overall sad for an update. But there was one thing it did good: the preview to Queen’s Jubilee, with the tent over the Great Collapse.
• Blood and Madness – same as Cutthroat Politics, it was rather lackluster in content, probably because most of the team’s focus was on Twilight Assault, but one thing it did great was the preview for the Tower of Nightmares content.

The good points I listed are needed more of:

• We need more unrelated and permanent, open world activities to do being added. Events, jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, ambient dialogues – doesn’t really matter what. So long as they’re 1) permanent, 2) affecting areas of the world unaffected by the main plot, and 3) not related to any plot. They’re just additions for the sake of expanding the world’s story, not the “living story.”
• Previews to future living stories. And these previews don’t have to be only happening one update before the preview’s release. Imagine if we had that tent over the Great Collapse back with Dragon Bash? Or if we had Cragstead added in The Lost Shores with Braham present there, us not knowing who his mother is. but perhaps with him saying something about his mother fighting dragons. Things added months before they become relevant? THAT makes an interesting trail of intrigue, because we’ll start looking at anything and wondering “will that lead to something new?” And when you have a steady of the first point in, we’ll be wondering if it’s just a stand-alone addition, or something to further the story.
• And lastly, multiple activities happening at once. What if both Tequatl Rising and SAB:BtS were happening all month long, added at the same time? Two unrelated things happening at the same time. It would feel more like a living, breathing, world that is so sought after.

Season 1 is not available now as it was made as temporary content. ArenaNet has stated the intent to rework Season 1 after HoT’s release. Until then, we have a recap cinematic of the important parts for S2 and HoT in-game (it’d be under “Scarlet’s War” in the story journal).

Season 2 will never be removed, as it was made to be permanent. I have seen no indication it will be packadged with HoT.

And it’s PS – Personal Story – not LS – Living Story. Living Story was given in seasons, Personal Story predates the Living Story.

The only thing that comes to mind that the above link doesn’t talk about would be the possibility that Aesgir had an ancient jotun scroll with information on the Elder Dragons when he went south. (from this gal )

Personally, I think that the cost and inflation is a bit silly. Are we to be perpetually stuck with 214 spare hero points?

Would have been better, IMO, if they required unlocking the elite spec to be a part of HoT gameplay (outside of WvW and PvP of course), such as a unique non-story instance in the open world or something akin to the second trait unlocking system (doing a particular event to unlock it), but the costs to be even managable as just doing core content – e.g., 100 points, with HoT only providing 50 hero points.

But what’s done is done…

Scott McGough.6897:

Canach’s look has indeed undergone a major change since The Lost Shores, and I regret that there isn’t more background available regarding how it happened, but let me address the question here: his change in appearance is almost entirely due to the hardships he’s endured since he escaped Lionguard custody. He’s a fugitive from justice, he’s had Noll’s freelance decommission teams trying to kill him, and he’s utterly alone, so it’s been a tough couple of months for the sylvari fugitive.

Being on the run, fighting for his life, and killing the killers sent after him have weathered Canach; plus, he made a concerted effort to change his look (hairstyle, etc.) so as not to be recognized and arrested by the Lionguard. It’s quite a come down from the high position and status he enjoyed as a secondborn (even if that status was never as high as he thought it should be), and his new, grimmer look is meant to reflect the psychological toll he’s had to pay as well as the physical one.

As for the flaming gauntlets, remember that Canach is a seasoned combat veteran and an experienced guerilla fighter with a fairly twisted sense of what’s right. When he heard about the Molten Alliance refugees resettling on Southsun Cove, he saw a chance to help other Consortium victims and get even with Noll. But like a good soldier, he wanted to understand the situation in which he was about to involve himself, so he made a point of seeking out one of the Molten Alliance weapons facilities and clearing it. He obtained the gauntlets from that escapade and wears them now as a symbol of his newly adopted (and so far poorly executed) role as a champion of the weak…right before he set out for Southsun Cove to settle things with Noll.

Hope this helps,

Scott, I do hope you intend to add this information into the game somehow. There’s so much lore that’s not presented in-game itself, so many behind-the-scenes explanations that would solve unanswered questions for players that bring confusion.

Please, can you find a means to put at least much more of these background aspects into the game? Not stuff that’s in your face, but still somehow determinable so that you wouldn’t have to come to the forums to explain these confusions and oddities that, with the explanation, makes a lot more (if not perfect) sense? And even just more filler background lore.

And I also realized:

• Tonn is talked about a few times, and even has an Ascended stat named after him. Now new players won’t know who the heck he is. Or that the Ascended stat description is inaccurate in calling him a charr…
• The Blue Orb is important in The Battle of Fort Trinity, now it has zero context, because the entire process of obtaining the Orb is cut apparently.
• The Source of Orr had credits and played Fear Not This Night – is this still true? It also had a gathering of all your allies throughout Orr’s adventures, now you don’t meet any of them, so… who’s defending the entrance now? No one?
• You fight a major Eye of Zhaitan in The Source of Orr, but the Temple of the Forgotten God’s ending is all about meeting two powerful risen: the Eye of Zhaitan and the Mouth of Zhaitan; the following two steps are about finding out there’s more than one Eye. So… how’s this work now?

Honestly, I don’t get it. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. It has to have a dialogue overhaul else it makes no sense. But that’d cost money for all that new voice acting (mostly Sayeh and Trahearne I think though), and there was no real need to “fix” this. Why spend time, effort, and potentially money to fix something that doesn’t when we have the blunder of Season 1 that needs to be made permanent and hopefully have its plot improved greatly too?

This… just makes no sense to me. And this is becoming one of the last straws for the game’s story. Despite the rest of the Feature Batch, I’m highly tempted to just say “kitten it, I quit” after all of the clusterkitten of inconsistencies in Season 1 and 2, and now even the PS (arguably on a greater scale).

HoT gave too little lore. The most lore came from explaining the Exalted. Everything else felt scrapped together, and the blog posts explain more about the hylek and mordrem guard than anything in game that I’ve found.

Topics that should have been brought in but didn’t or got so little screen time that it might as well not exist:

• Elite Specialization origins
• Druids
• Malyck
• Dream/Nightmare/Mordremoth and their relations
• Nightmare Court
• Sylvari can turn at any moment (there’s one or two events in Verdant Brink, that’s about it afaik)
• Mordrem Guard being smarter than other dragon minions (they felt the exact same as Orrian risen except that they had fancier skill sets)
• Revenant origins
• The egg and its purpose

The biggest disappointment is the lack of Malyck and his tree, and the lack of explaining the difference between Nightmare and Mordremoth since they seem so similar.

HoT was good but it was missing out on too many things.

1) Overhauled underwater combat and content.

Honestly, underwater content is one of the largest original selling points of GW2, taking it away from the typical aerial combat. But it is seriously undermined. I personally quite enjoy underwater combat. But the issue is how little attention it got. A few simple things can, IMO, vastly improve it:

• Adding aquabreathers to armor crafting classes, so that they even exotic and ascended can be obtained. This includes multiple models of such.
• Full rune set alterations on underwater gear.
• Unique traits set for underwater, even more plausible to be done with the free trait refund. This is needed because most useful traits are only good above water.
• Underwater-only traits and skills. These are too few in options for what us available underwater, so increasing the variability will help.
• Lastly, improve AI movement so that they do more than just go in your face.

With such changes, I think the underwater combat would be greatly improved.

2) Replayability of Personal Story and Living Story content

My second biggest complaint personally about the Personal Story is their one-time-ness. And for the living world content, the temporary-ness. Simply having a means to replay this content permanently would be a great, but far from only, improvement.

I would also love to see boss fight overhauls throughout the Personal Story because you go from epic tutorial to un-epicness until Blightghast but even that falls short due to the slowness of the story step feeling. And after Blightghast, it is again un-epikittenil you reach the invasion paths, but only if you go with Whispers or Priory, except possibly the Mouth if Zhaitan fight. The Sovereign Eye fight was IMO the only proper fight in the whole personal story, though Commander Seretine was enjoyable.

There’s many more that don’t go with the typical complaints I see, and some that do, that I would like to see improved. But those two are the big ones. A short list of other things:

• Charr tail/horn and asura ear/foot clipping fixed.
• Less reliance on RNG. Makes the game too Grundy feeling.
• More jumping puzzles and mini-dungeons added in manners like Vexa’s Lab. More events too.
• And being able to push NPCs off of edges and make them take falling damage.

I’m a bit unsure what to think of this.

On one hand, this implies better and faster content that isn’t scavenger hunt to do what we’d be doing anyways (like 95% of the current legendary collections are anyways).

On the other hand, this leads to false advertisement and more promises not kept when players pay money, which feels like a backhanded slap to our faces.

Honestly, not sure what to think… but I feel more insulted than anything at the moment. ArenaNet, you’ve had a habit since Season 1 of changing your mind every few months. I could go on and on about lists of these kinds of things, if you feel like you don’t show this. There’s been far too many promises never kept, and promises is what most of HoT was – and now they’re not being kept either.

I’m sure whatever content the legendary team will work on will be good and fun, but do you really want the name “ArenaNet” to be synonymous with “those who cannot keep their promises”?

Next time you make a promise, fulfill it before moving on, please.

I know this may sound weird coming from such a lore lover like myself, but I hope they never do the Abaddon Fractal.

Face it, as epic as the thoughts behind it is – five gods versus one who’s as strong as two – as a Fractal which are very short, it would be incredibly unsatisfying. You would either be shown just one small part of the war, or you’ll have an entire war condensced into 30 minutes.

And it’s not like it’d be entirely lore accurate. The whole point behind the Fractals is that it’s not completely truthful history – at the very least, our own appearance will alter the events that happen. So we’d never know where accuracies begin, and inaccuracies end.

All we could hope for would be an epic feeling to the fractal, and as they say the audience’s expectations will always be greater than what they receive.

To be perfectly honest, I’d much rather have more novels on the history of Guild Wars published, with one focusing on the fall of Abaddon (not just the final battle, but his years-long descent into evil).

Side note: Anyone else think that Kasmeer and Marjory are lovers? I say so because of:

Marjory Delaqua: I’ve been thinking about Scarlet.
Kasmeer Meade: She can’t have you.
Marjory Delaqua: She’s behind all these crazy alliances. I’d rest my reputation on…wait. What did you say?
Kasmeer Meade: (laugh) I think you’re right. She has all the landmarks of a blooming psycho hag.

Marjory Delaqua: You did your bit, Kas. Go on back to Divinity’s Reach where it’s safer.
Kasmeer Meade: You’re sweet, but I couldn’t leave you here alone.
Marjory Delaqua: I’ll be fine, cupcake. Go on now.
Kasmeer Meade: Mmm, I don’t think so. I would, but to be honest I’m itching to see what’s in that tower. I think I’ll stay.
Marjory Delaqua: Hm. If you insist.

(Marjory calls her “cupcake” – though Jory does seem quick on endearing nicknames, she only calls Kasmeer such, as well as “Kas”)

(less so)

Kasmeer Meade: Marjory?
Marjory Delaqua: Yes?
Kasmeer Meade: If we don’t make it out…
Marjory Delaqua: We will. Promise.

Then there was how Kasmeer says the final line in:

Kasmeer Meade: The moment they break into the tower, we should head down there.
Marjory Delaqua: What’s your hurry? Let them clear it out a bit first.
Kasmeer Meade: This whole place has mesmer magic woven through it. I don’t want to miss a single thing.
Marjory Delaqua: I see. Curiousity killed the cat, you know?
Kasmeer Meade: Meeeow!

And just their overall conversational tone. Kind of makes me wonder if there’s more than just “business partners” and “friends” between them… Which would prove to be an interesting plot development with potential.

“Sea Dragon”

The S documented by the ancient races and Six Gods wasn’t the beginning of a name, but a description – Sea Dragon – called such because this final dragon is so great, ancient, and powerful compared even to the other five Elder Dragons that it has long ago shrugged off the identifying nature of a name. After all, when one rules the unending depths of the ocean unrivaled by karka, krait, or other Elder Dragons (note how not a single one has spread into the ocean despite having navies (Zhaitan) or having assaulted floating iceberg cities (Jormag)), what is a name to such a beast? A name is but a limitation to describe its power. It gives it a label that makes lessers think it can be brought down.

Thus it is simply nameless. The Sea Dragon.

With the exception of drying out, though, the Maguuma Wastes was more or less unaffected by all known lore upheavals. So that makes it hard to believe.

Changes aren’t unexpected, obviously, due to a change in game engines and the like. But one would still expect at least the remains of a lagoon.

Though I suppose one can argue that the Far Silverwastes is just the inside of the lagoon, all dried out, and the cliffs surrounding it was where we walked in GW1.

Demented Sheep.1642:

Canach doesn’t follow the professions. He uses a sword and shield , bombs and landmines so is he a warrior or engineer?

He’s the one…

The only…

WARGINEER!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

In the case of this content update:

The pollen can be seen in the air all the way across the zone, and there are offshoots in all bordering zones even. Yet the only people who care about the situation are those who were added this update.

Why are there no folks hallucinating in Fort Salma? Garrenhoff? Claypool? Why do the centaurs and bandits just simply ignore the life-threatening… threat to them that’s not even a mile away?

These things break immersion. I hear you guys say something along the lines of “if we’re going to do something awesome, we don’t want to half-kitten it” (my own words but same meaning). But that is exactly what Tower of Nightmares feels. Nothing old currently feels affected by the content. It may or may not be when it’s done, but right now no one reacts but those added to react.

Not much was really needed. You could even use old VO in most cases – having civilians cough or scream in terror shouting about monsters, and attacking each other while calling them enemies. Hell, you can practically strip the VO straight from Into the Woods and it wouldn’t seem out of place.

But the only reaction we get is that NPCs – allied or not to the PC – will fight the Toxic Alliance if in aggro range.

Imagine how much more immersive the updates would feel if we get a single simple dialogue in Claypool about the giant tower seen in the distance to the south? Or how the air feels tainted? Imagine what it’d be like if the Champion Ancient Rotting Oakheart which is so close to one of the offshoot events is given a new model with new lines from an NPC talking about the Toxic Alliance’s spoors altering it? Or if we had Toxic Courtiers trying to negotiate with the Nightmare Court in Joy’s End or with the Sinister Triad? What if we could get idle dialogue between krait and NC – or krait and krait or NC and NC – about this alliance and why it was formed and what they think of it?

I’m rather disappointed.

The awakening scene paints a good picture for Ceara, aka Scarlet Briar (why the name change?), but the rest just diminishes her character a bit:

1. Apparently from the pictures, she awoke in her magitech armor…
2. So she learned from the best modern norn blacksmith, just to wave him away? Then all the other things on top if it? So she’s some sort of prodigy that can do everything and anything. Right…
3. Perhaps the most xenophobic and territorial hylek tribe to ever exist goes and gives Scarlet refuge? Seriously?
4. Oh, and apparently she’s now the cause for all asura players’ problems in levels 1-10, perhaps even some 10-20 as well, storylines.
5. And here’s the biggest issue of mine: okay, so she sees the purpose and fate of all sylvari. Fine, I can go with that. And seeing this makes her go insane – a warning was given to her but her lust of knowledge makes her avoid it. That works great, even. And now she wants to change the fate of sylvari, to let them chose their own destinies rather than live out pre-determined lives. I can relate to that. But… how the hell does assaulting Hoelbrak, Black Citadel, Lion’s Arch, and Divinity’s Reach fit into all this exactly? Why must continents burn and nations fall, exactly?

Her goal and her actions have no relation.

And this stuff should be shone in the game. I enjoy these short stories a bit, but come on now. This stuff should be shown to us in the freakin’ game. And it wouldn’t be all too hard either.

But I guess her being able to do everything and anything is little different from the PCs (which isn’t exactly a good thing either).

BobbyStein.2315:

I just wanted to provide an update since it’s been a while.

• We are currently working to restore the Greatest Fear storyline to the live game. I can’t provide a release date at this point.
• In addition to restoring the Personal Story steps to their original order we’re making some minor improvements where possible (e.g. recording new VO or updating certain conversations, etc.).

We’ll provide additional details closer to release. Thanks much for your patience.

Thank you for the update, and I would like to state that I HIGHLY recommend two things:

1. Lock out Chapters 7 and 8 for the time being. This should have been done a long time ago, tbh, because you just receive a larger influx of new players going “wtf” over the storyline everytime there’s a game sale. This has happened already for both game sales sense September. Thus, no grandfathering in when the new system comes in. It’s not a great move – the best would be to put the update in ASAP – but it’d help players from missing out on the proper story and thus becoming exceedingly confused.
2. Please, please, please make this update happen before HoT – same goes for the trait system update that Colin mentioned. You will see another influx of players during HoT, no doubt, and as such it would be best to ensure they get the proper experience they can.

I do have a question, though:

Will the “minor improvements” include a revamped Zhaitan fight?

And for that matter (yes, I know more than ‘a’ question now): Will the improvements span more than just the final two story steps and, if so or even if not, can we make suggestions on where improvements are needed?

I see a lot of people complaining that the PS writing is bad, but whenever I ask them to explain why, they are often talking about the scripting, not the writing, of the PS (I hope I’m using the right term; by scripting I mean when things happen and how, whereas writing is the words). And the scripting of the game improved drastically with Season 2 (most apparent in Episode 1 and 4, 5, and 8, imo). So if you make “minor improvements” to the scripting (and in some cases -coughTrahearnecough- the voice acting), I think that the PS can become as best as one can expect it to be without unreasonable workload added.

BobbyStein.2315:

The Personal Story was never designed to be replayable on a single character, so making a change like that would involve a lot of revision (updating and testing hundreds of story steps). It’s simply out of scope.

The updated story steps will start with A Light in the Darkness.

So… revamped Blightghast fight? Please say yes, that fight is dreadfully boring (as is the last portion of The Battle for Claw Island before the retreat – that seemingly 5 minutes of holding the line… without end in sight… -yawns-). Especially compared to fighting the Shadow of the Dragon.

Shame the PS will never be repeatable. I rather hoped it would be. Even if choices are locked in place or it is a 100% reset beyond biography. Still would be nice to be able to have a one-time choice to reset to A Light in the Darkness so that people who don’t want multiple characters and only experienced the botched storyline can experience the fixed storyline.

Shud, Peter, Kiel, and Magnus are most likely to not get kicked.

Peter isn’t lost, despite his nickname, but was helping citizens like the other three until he ended up trapped in there.

But what what I got to wonder is…

How the hell did he survive that miasma!?

Is… is he immortal or something? o.o

Fafnir.5124:

Char should replace Char for all races to be represented on the console.

It would be funny if the pirate quagan entered the running.

Uh, it was Theo Ashford who died – a human.

The charr that died was merely a representative from the Legions for the ceremony.

And I agree. Suwash for Captain’s Counci!

lordkrall.7241:

Confirmed in the live-stream that the Fall of Abaddon refers to the battle against the gods, NOT the GW1 mission.

Well I’ll be kitten ed.

Personality wise, I’m Kiel all the way. But the god kitten ed fall of Abaddon and not death?

kitten YOU ARENANET GIVE US BOTH FRACTALS! DON’T BE LAZY NOW!!!

Gaile Gray.6029:

May I ask why you feel that way? Why have two conflicting or competing things going on in a time period when many people have a lot going on in their lives — family obligations, travel, parties, events — which leaves them with less time to log in to their favorite game? Why not have each release get the spotlight and the player attention that each so richly deserves?

Two reasons (as I see it):

1. Wintersday content has nothing new – and this was announced at the same time that no new Halloween content was announced. Recall the feedback about Halloween. Very little I saw was positive. There is new decorations and new rewards (I presume), but no new activity. This will only satiate those who enjoy returning content and those after (virtual) material reward, not those who want brand new things.
2. Episode 8 will be fully permanent (sans some changes to the open world if such exists). So if people want to enjoy all content in the update, they can do Wintersday and come back for Episode 8. While those not interested in Wintersday can skip to enjoying the brand new content.

And not everyone has those obligations you mentioned. Some just want to sit down and enjoy new games. Sometimes with friends and family.

I would argue that the situation would be different if Wintersday promised new content that would take up all players’ time. But that’s not the case.

It would also be a different situation if Episode 8, as a singular release, is the finale – and there is no Episode 9 to follow and Episode 8 isn’t split into multiple releases (which would seem odd).

Well, we learn from the first (and only) story instance in the demo that Rytlock is not blind at all. The blindfold was so he could sort out the voices in his head from his new revenant powers.

As for the actual topic: it’s hinted (but not confirmed) that Balthazar lost his divinity, perhaps in the same way as Dhuum who survived being usurped (unlike Abaddon). We know he’s been weakened either way, and aside from imprisonment the only form of weakening a god we know of is an incomplete succession ala Dhuum.

That said, however, it’s well established in Malchor’s story (and that we fought full-fledged god Abaddon though this could be attributed to the blessing the five avatars gave us just before) that going blind from looking at a god is not instantaneous, but is comparable to staring at the sun or directly into a powerful flashlight for too long. Though some NPCs call it “eye ball melting”, as far as we know it’s just going blind from staring too long, not glimpsing a single glance. Or fighting for ~10 minutes.

Dott.5672:

Ash is likely the smallest. They have four known tribunes in Ascalon, and I’d assume they kept at least one back at home, so let’s say they have five tribunes in total, netting them 11,250 soldiers.

I can’t imagine that Ash would have all but one tribune in Ascalon, tbh, and none in the Blood Legion Homelands. I’d imagine 1 in Blood lands and 2-3 in Ash lands. I just can’t imagine Ash or Blood sending in half – or more than half – of their forces to Ascalon. Even if that’s the main area of conflict (Flame, Branded, Ogres, Ghosts, and formerly, Humans), and even though two of the Ash tribunes (if their names aren’t mistakes – it seems weird for two tribunes to be in the same warband, operating in the same location with the same task of taking down the Flame Legion) aren’t really sent to assist Ascalon so much as on the assignment of fighting the Flame Legion.

However, to me, those numbers seem a bit slim. I’d imagine that – in total – the number of the three legions would be in the 100,000s.

Dott.5672:

but because they churn out so many cubs and because they grow up so fast

Charr actually have the same maturation rates as humans – give or take.

Nike.2631:

Those numbers are comparable to some larger clans/alliances in feudal Japan, so they don’t seem too out of whack to me.

You’re talking about Japan – a relatively tiny series of islands – and comparing it to the great unknown to the east on top of Ascalon and what’s marked as the “Blood Legion Homelands” on the in-game map.

I think charr lands are bigger than Japan, tbh.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Hm… not really comfortable with that Ash figure, honestly. I don’t know if it’s stated anywhere, but I’d always assumed the other two legions sent a minority of their forces to serve under Iron’s command. 80% seems very high. This figure is also working off the assumption that we’ve seen all the tribunes Iron has. Between the two, I’d say the estimate probably falls somewhat short, but it’s still a very interesting result. Good work!

For how many forces are in Ascalon, all we have to go off of is this:

Although the three legions bicker and occasionally squabble, they have managed to maintain the general state of accord. Each legion is independent, but all three send troops and support to Ascalon to eradicate the human threat. Smodur knows full well that Malice’s troops are there not only to aid, but also to spy for their imperator; however, the two leaders respect one another. Bangar is the true wild card, distrustful and prone to rage. Still, his hatred for humans overcomes his suspicions about the other imperators, and he has committed a great number of troops to the Black Citadel’s command.

As far as I know at least. Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Legions_of_the_Charr

And technically, only two Ash tribunes were sent to Ascalon – the other two we meet are sent to fight the Flame Legion on their front doors specifically, not be part of Ascalon’s forces.

As for the Iron tribunes – we’ve actually only met 4 of the 6.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Humans have caste system, off which many just try to increase their own power at the cost of others, Bandits and White Mantle cult.

I think you should look up what a “caste system” is. Because that’s not what humanity has.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Sylvari have the problem of being dragon minions.

Player speculation that is still fully unsupported.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Norn have the problem of their philosophies of life, this drives many to join Sons of Svanir cult, cause the most common interest is to gain more strength.

The norn’s culture doesn’t drive many to join the Sons of Svanir – the norn’s culture promotes the self, obtaining power through the self, becoming a legend through the self. The Sons of Svanir seek power through Jormag, that is the opposite of common norn culture. And it isn’t all about strength, it’s about renown. You can have the weakest norn ever become a proud symbol of the people if it had the most well-known legend out there. It’s just that most norn seek their legends through the preys they hunt and kill.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Charr have the issue of group that want to keep warring with humans, the renegades, to which some Charr defect into.

There are far more issues with the charr than one measely group of renegades. Flame Legion, a culture built upon war and conquest, a militant hierarchical system imbedded throughout the entire culture (an issue because it’s easily corruptible – one evil Imperator and a whole quarter of the charr race must follow his orders or risk death/becoming gladium).

FrostSpectre.4198:

While it might be bad that Charr reclaimed their homelands, it wasn’t justified for humans to do what they did since their arrival on Tyria…

You should read The Ecology of the Charr and not believe the modern charr’s biased sayings. Specifically this line: “No longer clamoring over the same territories, the unified Charr spread throughout the northern reaches of their homeland, and down into the lands east of the Shiverpeak Mountains. The Charr subjugated or destroyed any and all who dared defy them within their territories; they were masters of all they surveyed.” which proves that Ascalon was conquered by the charr. The original inhabitants arem ostly unknown, but there are heavy hints to dwarves and it’s known that grawl are native to Ascalon and were subdued by the charr.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Five out of six Gods directed humans to wage war and genocide against the Tyria’s original races, what a kitten move from the gods.

Please read this and this – you will find that you’re pretty much stating the opposite of what’s the case. Only Balthazar is outright stated to have wanted humanity to wage war. Melandru – the one you don’t count in that five – wanted peace. Dwayna, however, also wanted peace for humanity. Abaddon is known to have given magic to all sapient races, including the charr, equally but uniquely. The stance that Lyssa and Grenth/Dhuum had is unknown. It’s far from 5 out of 6 wanting to wage war.

@Wookie:

If they can disable it in certain sections of maps then there’d be no issue, as they can disable gliding in JP and dungeons (including fractals – which is the spot I would consider the biggest hassle since most jp go upwards, not downwards – gliding would allow shortcutting the ‘climb down cliffs’ part of Snowblind and Volcanic and trivialize some of the jumps in Solid Ocean). It won’t be a big deal to glide elsewhere, except for breaking out of the map – and in those cases, ArenaNet will fix when they’re found.

It’s no doubt going to be a bit of a patchwork job unless they put a lot of their overtime working on it, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be bad.

It wouldn’t surprise me if, over time, they intend to add updrafts, speed mushrooms, adrenaline mushrooms, and bouncing mushrooms to the original maps. It would make sense, in fact, for them to add such over time.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re waiting on Season 3 to release such.

But honestly, all I want is gliding in cities. And fewer invisible walls in the Grove and Rata Sum. Give us more to explore there…

Leah Hoyer.9382:

Hi folks! Now that I’ve settled in a bit at ANet, I wanted to check in again on this thread. The first Living World episode that I was involved in, “Echoes of the Past,” has now been live for a few days. We’ve all been really pleased that people seem to be enjoying the story and content a lot. But I’d love to ask you all for more specifics. What were your favorite narrative moments? What did you like about the content? About the way it was told? And of course, I want to hear what you think we can still do better on.

Thanks in advance to everyone for their comments. I’m very excited to be part of such a great game, and to work with such an excellent team of creative people.

Perhaps I’ve just become very jaded but I don’t feel much difference between E5 and E1-4, for the most part. But the things I think were improvements:

• There’s less focus on the biconics overall. The previous episodes had at least one biconic and a huge focus on character development on them or Scarlet in almost every story instance, which gets smothering. We don’t need character development, we need plot development.
• There’s a lot of GW1 references. People have been feeling like GW1 has been more or less forgotten by the devs, and some GW1 lore has been called into question. The veterans would lop this up. I would argue that there’s a big case of overhyping because of this.
• Lore. Bloody. Overdrive. This episode was a lore dump of lore dumps. People enjoyed The Edge of the Mists update in Season 1 because it had a huge lore dump on Season 1; similarly, Season 1 had a heavy like for – aside from the return of new content (which E5 also had) – the lore dump in the final instance. Same thing with the E2 ending.

People enjoy lore dumps, people love continuity, and people love it when the plot doesn’t focus on the character, but the plot – it feels less drawn on then. The last being the reason behind the arguments of “the biconics cannot carry GW2”.

You know what would have made it better? If the Priory’s Special Collection were in the instance The Durmand Priory – so that it could be accessible at any point outside the story step, perhaps completing E5 as a requirement.

Some things I disliked:
Ghosts at Fort Salma The instance felt forced into the plot, irrelevant overall with no purpose. It felt like a GW1 side-quest that would have a hero requirement to do.

Canach Can we please drop the forced utter hatred on him? It’s making my character look to be a complete kitten to be continuously suspicious and down right giving death threats to someone who has openly stated to be attempting to repent for his crimes. Yes, he was a criminal, but the world isn’t black and white – and our PCs know this, given that they may have done something to result in people’s deaths. Oh wait, that storyline no longer exists because you guys removed it. Nevermind, I guess. (Side note: Please, for the love of god, tell us what’s up with the fear storyline?).

Rather than forcing our characters to be complete jerks to Canach, give us a multi-dialogue tree that gives players a chance to be forgiving. Because in all honesty? I hate my character whenever I interact with Canach. I want to just kittenslap my character and shake them furiously and shout in their face “HE. IS. TRYING. TO. REPENT. STOP. THREATENING. HIS. LIFE. YOU. PSYCHOPATH!”

Yeah, sure, he talks about lopping off heads and planting bombs. He has a dark history. But he’s sad for his dark past, and remained in jail when he could have escaped, and is now working to help us against the Elder Dragons. It’s reasonable to be leery but lines like:

“I’ll be at the front of the hunting party if you mess this up.” followed by “We can always put you back.” the next time we see him, feels like I’m playing a Renegade Shepard – rather, like I’m forced to play a Renegade Shepard in the Mass Effect series, when the image I have of my characters is less brutish and threatening.

As Canach says: “I do wish you’d get over the past.”

So do I Canach, so do I.

Jamais vu.5284:

Konig, as the king of GW lore, your honest assessment: do you, personally, even perceive GW2 as having a real connection to GW1 anymore lorewise? (Question also goes to all the other loremasters in this thread)
I think it doesn’t. They changed practically everything between the last “independent” GW1 installation, Nightfall, and GW2. Even between EotN and GW2.
E.g. the role and cultural diversity of humans, the downgraded gods, the extremely innovative races and enemies like Forgotten, Titans, Margonites, etc pp. which were all removed for more High Fantasy typical ones, the questionable new lore behind magic due to gameplay, the sheer geography of the world (Kryta not tropical anymore for example).
I was willing to humor them at release, but 2 years on it’s clear they don’t want to retread any facets of GW1 lore.

In a general sense, yes, Guild Wars 2 has a real lore connection to Guild Wars 1.

But this connection is as strong as, say, Quake 2 and Quake 4 for those who’ve played those games. For those who haven’t:

Quake 2 is based on an alien homeworld in retaliation to them attacking us first, the planet being called Stroggos and the enemy being a cybernetic race called Strogg; Stroggos had a variety of landscapes from volcanic to jungle to arid. Quake 4 is based shortly after Quake 2 – same planet, same enemy – except that despite traveling large terrains, you only ever see a blasted arid landscape. Some manual facts were ignored, as well as a full expansion of Quake 2 which ended with “Congratulations you ended the Strogg threat.” (which could mean Quake 4 is based before said expansion); said manual fact forgotten is that the Makron (Strogg leader) is just the strongest of several warlords, and in Quake 4 it is taken with supreme surprise that a new Makron came into being (Quake 2 ending with the death of the Makron, and this fact fueling the plot of Quake 4).

In short: Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are set in the same universe, but are stories that aren’t really tied together, and has seen some alterations for narrative purposes. Because the stories are not tied together, GW1 fans are disappointed because there’s not a lot of call backs to GW1, and those that are are typically call backs designed to fuel the new story. This never bothered me… until Season 1. Because to me, Season 1 is yet another completely different story in the same universe, and at the end just suddenly ends up being the same story as the second of three stories.

Honestly, I never see why folks expected a return of Titans or Margonites. I loved the Titans but… they’re a threat which has come and gone. The place of their creation – the Foundry of Failed Creations – has been taken over. The Margonites explicitly stated in Nightfall to be wiped out or imprisoned. Same goes for the Forgotten – wiped out or left the world.

Even if GW2 was about the same exact plot… we would not see more of them, I am certain.

The downgrading of the gods, however, is something downright silly. But doesn’t dislocate the two games into being two different lore universes. IMO.

Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324:

sAdam.5876:

One question, was that mentioned in-game when Firstborn emerged? Maybe they just move timeline few years back?

According to some NPCs, they’ve been around for twenty-five years (?1300 AE). But, honestly, I’m not the most reliable when it comes to Sylvari.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eistoir -> Our character say this : Even the Firstborn are only twenty-five.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grough_Heartless -> Ha. “Sylvari.” Fancy name for a talking weed. Did you know they’ve only been around for twenty-five years? They just appeared, poof. That’s suspicious.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Battle_of_Claw_Island -> Trahearne: I have studied Orrian creatures for twenty-five years, but I rarely engage in combat with them. It’s terrifying.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kasmeer_Meade/dialogue -> I guess I thought they were all goofy, childlike beings. I mean, their race is only twenty-five years old, right?

ArenaNet LOVES to round their numbers. It’s like saying that Zhaitan awoke exactly 100 years ago, or that Mad King Thorn and the Six Gods stopped interacting exactly 250 years ago, or that the Foefire happened exactly 250 years ago. ArenaNet rounds. Almost all the time.

Take for example that last quote from Kasmeer. That was said at the end of 1326 AE. The others are said in 1325 AE (or however ArenaNet wants to treat open world comments). They couldn’t have been born in both 1300 and 1301 AE.

I’d argue that it is completed, that’s just the aesthetics of the charr. To have something that’s more bare bones but solid of a structure than something that’s all pretty looking.

Reason to vote for Kiel:

Thaumanova Reactor is pretty much tied to all things Inquest. Including being the precursor to the Crucible of Eternity. In other words, Thaumanova Reactor is the precursor facility to Inquest’s primary research facility on the Elder Dragons (which also exploded and also exhibits chaos magic).

So in the end, you pretty much get this with the Fractal choices:

Gods lore vs. Elder Dragons lore

I say to Anet, why not both? Like Ghost.3208 said, bring the other one later! Evon would be interested in revealing this either way and has the money to it.

#VoteSuwashthePirate

All three situations you presented could not be more obviously portrayed by Anet. At some point, people are going to have to realize that they cannot be holding hands their entire life without the blame of their idiocy brought to them.

On matter 1: There’s big green letters in the top right corner. You really cannot blame anet if your story step wasn’t the same as the one you’re entering. There’s little more Anet could do – if anything – that wouldn’t be obtrusive to 99.99% of the playerbase.

On matter 2: There’s notifications of this both in the achievement panel and the story journal which you go to in order to activate the episode. There’s little more Anet could do – if anything – that wouldn’t be obtrusive to 99.99% of the playerbase.

On matter 3: There’s a nice large pop up box in the center of the screen upon story step completion. If you miss this, and it is your story step, then the only thing that can help you is a big slap in the face. There’s literally nothing Anet could do that would make this more obvious.

I’m sorry, but these complaints fall upon you and your groups shoulders, not ArenaNet’s.

lordhelmos.7623:

For new players the story journal is incredibly hard to understand. I’m trying to work with players who have only been on for a few weeks and its an absolute nightmare.

I cannot see how it’s hard to understand. The story sequences are in order. If it’s locked, it’s all grayed out with an option to buy. If it’s unlocked and active there’s a marker saying such; there’s also a marker per episode showing whether you’ve completed it or not (on top of one at the lists themselves for locked, completed, and all achievements completed).

What exactly is so gosh darn confusing about it? It couldn’t possibly be any more straightforward than it is.

lordhelmos.7623:

Sure, you could hold a seminar and how to get a broken car to get to the finish line but that is just obscuring a much larger design issue.

If the car is broken, you broke it. The system works more than fine, and making it any more straightforward and obvious would end up resulting in obtrusive manners that the vast majority of players which don’t have this apparent baffling conundrum over the system would find annoying, tedious, and potentially aggrivating.

Like the pop up box to confirm using a tome of knowledge, when it’s so easy to get a stack of them within a week.

Given that the “special skins from living world events” were continuously back to back and always temporary, I’d honestly rather have the masteries that, while only obtainable in a small amount of area of the game (that will grow over time as new maps are added), is actually permanent.

But in all honesty, I would not do farming if I prefer – and since I can go after masteries at my own pace, I don’t have to farm them; I would have to farm for the skins, since they’d be temporary as a true “living world” would be.

I prefer their current set up – Season 2 styled living world that fills in gaps of otherwise no-content between expansions. It just needs to be more content in future expansions than what we got in the rushed-feeling HoT.

Too Many GW1 References In all honesty, it felt like you guys were at a point where you were stuffing GW1 references for the sake of stuffing as many GW1 references as you could. Regardless of relevance and logic to them.

For example, how could Vekk know that the Elder Dragons consumed and leaked magic? If this is true, then he had theorized long ago Gorr’s own theory and then some, things that were only realized in 1325-1326, would not have been jerred and lauded at! Vekk was a renown member of asura society, so it’s hard to believe he could make such a theory and it not be commonplace in asura society.

Another example, would be Nick’s book about the Bloodstone – how could Nick know this stuff? I mean, the Priory had to learn it from somewhere, sure, and it’s plausible Nicholas Sandford could know the Seer’s ties to the Bloodstone and the truth of Abaddon’s gift of magic, but the chances of that are so unlikely even given his travels and ties to Durmand.

And what’s with the charr myth on the Elder Dragons? Up until now, we were told that the knowledge of the Elder Dragons came solely from the ancient races – but suddenly in Season 2, the norn and Six Gods have knowledge, and now the charr do too! Yet the Elder Dragons “wiped out nearly all races”, despite so many surviving myths of them, despite no races to exist for them to spread them.

Leah Hoyer.9382:

Thanks to everyone for the great feedback! I agree with the overall sentiment that the team did a really good job with this one. And better story takes a great effort from not only Narrative, but Art, Audio, Design and others as well. We really do have a great group of developers here.

Art and audio has been doing an excellent job since day one. Any dislike does not fall on their shoulders.

Siobhan.6027:

Why is Kasmeer even part of Destiny’s Edge 2.0? She’s absolutely useless all the time. Downed during the final boss fight. Typical.

This felt like an opposite to Scarlet’s End instance, where Kasmeer was fighting but Marjory was knocked out.

I read the tablets thanks to a poster on reddit. Link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/53pduh/spoiler_tablets_of_the_unseen/

This is a complete blatant and terrible retcon, or the tablets are 100% lies. But if there is no point for such HUMONGOUS lies to be written for themselves.

• First off, every piece of lore we have – Seers, Priory Scholar, and Ree Soesbee and Jeff Grubb directly – state that the Seers were wiped out by the mursaat. The mursaat tablets claimed that they fell to civil war and killed themselves (that’s what the jotun did, you golden dunces).
• Second, the Crystal Desert didn’t even exist back then. It didn’t exist until Year 0, long after mere “centuries after 10,000 years ago”.
• Where was the supposed betrayal by the mursaat – the one that involved them committing genocide? According to the tablets, they set out for war but was ignored by the others, then left the world. There was no betrayal, according to the tablets every race hid in their own way. There’s no act that could possibly be seen as betrayal by the other races in the mursaat tablets.
• Addendum to above, all lore – again, from Priory scholars and the developers directly, and ancient dwarven, ancient Forgotten, ancient jotun and even Glint herself; the very foundation of the lore provided for why all the races speak the same language – is that the surviving races were hidden by Glint – so how could they have hidden in separate ways?

If this was a similar but not the same retelling of what we knew, then it could be easily passed as mursaat lies to themselves. But this? We’re getting two different stories in the same setting. It’s like watching the Hobbit movies and reading the Hobbit book. Vastly different, though same overarching plotline.

ArenaNet, you did so well with Episode 1. Even the things that initially made no sense was explained in a perfectly believable way. It was your redemption from Season 1 and HoT’s sad storytelling.

But then we get this…

And turning Lazarus to be a good guy makes no sense, not after he swore eternal revenge on countless generations of humanity and asura-kind. But I’ll reserve that full judgement to playing through the main storyline.

And though not lore, the mursaat outfit + backpiece… -sigh- obvious money getting move is obvious. Would be nice to have a foe that’s humanoid and is fully unique for once. Should have been Lazarus, but screw uniqueness and screw continuity, I’m guessing?

Yeah, I’m a bit stingy. This and Dhuum are the plots I was really looking forward to being closed, was promised years ago “epic plans” and now we get a “screw old lore, we’re changing it all”.

Eh, I’m quite tired with the whole “A wild Scarlet appears.” She only ever does any amount of damage because her antics are unknown.

We’ve known about her for a while now, we need to start figuring out her antics before she’s ready to reveal her plan and cause havoc. And she still needs to be a threat then.

My issues with Scarlet can be summed up in four parts – from most important to least (and all are very big issues):

• She’s a one-note song. All about combining groups that wouldn’t work together (thus breaking their lore), or popping out at celebrations. Change it up a bit.
• We get too little too slow. Plot needs to develop a bit faster. Not saying “more content faster” but rather “the content needs to be juicier in story context.”
• There’s no development. In both her background and of what we’ve seen of her over the past three months as well as what’s attributed to her from before her final reveal, her personality has not changed. At all. You can take Ceara as she was born, and the Scarlet Briar at the end of Twilight Arbor and the only change is that she’s batkitten crazy now – and even that’s arguable to not be a change.
• Not a threat. She isn’t; at all. As said above, the only way she does damage is by her – or her forces – appearing out of the proverbial thin air. She’s a threat because we, the good guys, don’t know until it’s too late. When we find out, her plans go down the drain faster than it takes to flush a toilet. Which returns to the no development point, as her plans fail time and time again, leading her to be akin to a Saturday morning cartoon or a returning comic book villain. Team Rocket made more interesting foes.

Lazarus does not “need a physical body” because by rejoining his aspects, he makes his own physical body. See back to GW1, where just one aspect was physical.

Makes me wonder… could there be five (weak) Lazaruses about at one time?

But as Ider says: this (and most Lazarus theories) “makes no logical sence, no buildup and no story cohesion but is “surprising”.”

Honestly with everyone reaching for all these theories, it would be more surprising to the populous for Lazarus to not be a fake at all.

It’s a giant arch that leads into the center of Arah, to the center of the nation of Orr even. There are six of them in total, two can be found in Cursed Shore while one ends behind the Temple of Balthazar. They come together at the place where the Giganticus Lupicus is fought in Arah explorable.

Obviously it’s ArenaNet.

The complaints from the players is about new lore that seems to contradict old lore – be they the ever-increasing retcons (which just causes players to question what they can and what they shouldn’t believe as canon) or be they things that are just confusing and don’t make sense with pre-established lore (such as the xenophobic krait working with Scarlet and the Nightmare Court). Basically the complaints occur when Anet says one thing, then goes and shows another thing without giving an explanation for why – or when they do give an explanation, the complaints come in about the explanation end up being “the old information was simply misinformed” (which is more or less what happened to all historic lore on the gods and humanity in continental Tyria by now – for the… fourth time I think).

Going to quote myself from elsewhere:

But… they have a name.

It’s called Destiny’s Edge.

Also, something I don’t get is why is Taimi included when Caithe and Canach – who were there for killing Mordremoth – not? And if this is about the biconics, then why include Rytlock?

Honestly, I can’t even bring myself to choose any of these names.

• The Unbroken sounds like a name belonging to torture victems or ex-slaves.
• Eternity’s Guard sounds like a group that’s purely defensive – but Destiny’s Edge, born from Dragonborn’s Destiny and Edge of Steel, have always been a purely offensive group.
• Dragon’s Watch fits as their main goal is fighting the Elder Dragons but again, that name sounds defensive rather than offensive – it sounds like they’re a group watching for the rise of dragon activity, a name suited for when the dragons were still a rising threat instead of the current standing threat.

None of the name fits.

I VOTE FOR KEEPING IT DESTINY’S EDGE. The name has meaning, history, and importance to the lore. It fits thematically, as each of the group has ties to the original Destiny’s Edge member, and naming it something new feels like another case of ignoring the foundation of lore that was so present in Season 1. And for goodness sake, include Caithe and Canach in the listings! Stop hating on Caithe! She’s done nothing wrong to you, writers!

Danikat.8537:

The problem with calling them Destiny’s Edge is they’re not Destiny’s Edge and that guild may still exist. It’s a bit uncertain after HoT, but not to the point where it would be ok for a bunch of kids to come along and appropriate the name.

They kind of are.

The Pact Commander is considered a member of Destiny’s Edge and the biconics have done all that the Pact Commander has done to be considered a member of Destiny’s Edge, though in slightly different ways.

• They were mentored, at some point, by a member of Destiny’s Edge – either the Pact Commander, their racial iconic, or both.
• They worked on several missions with at least one member of Destiny’s Edge about random things – working with the Pact Commander against Scarlet, and with the Pact Commander and racial iconic in S2.
• They worked to bring Destiny’s Edge back together – rescuing them from Mordrem, working with Rytlock to do so, and tracking and finding Caithe.

They did it in different ways, but they did everything the Pact Commander did. The Pact Commander is considered a member of Destiny’s Edge… so why aren’t the biconics?

And why is Rytlock considered a member of the biconics now? Yet Caithe and Canach aren’t?

Besides, it isn’t appropriating the name – it’s joining the guild. Apparently people in the gaming community are unaware of the concept of recruitment when it comes to famous small guilds.

Danikat.8537:

I always thought of them as two entirely separate groups that occasionally ran into each other rather than one big group. Really the only things they have in common are working with us and ending up fighting a dragon.

They started as two separate groups. Season 1 was doing a strong job of intentionally making them their own characters with different goals.

Then Season 2 came and the writers just went “kitten that kitten!” and the biconics had the exact same goals as Destiny’s Edge. This became solidfied in Heart of Thorns, especially for Braham and Taimi, and with them working with not one, not two, but three members of Destiny’s Edge: Rytlock, Caithe, and the Pact Commander.

If ArenaNet had originally given them a name at the end of Season 1, then it would make sense to have a second group. But now, with the same goals, same intentions, same everything, it makes no sense.

What started as, throughout Season 1:

“Hi, we’re Destiny’s Edge, and we save Tyria from Elder Dragons!”

“Hi, we’re Destiny’s Orphans, and we do what we want!”

“Hi, I’m the Pact Commander, and I work with both of those groups but not really a member of either one.”

Got turned into, throughout Season 2/HoT:
“Hi, we’re Destiny’s Edge, and we save Tyria from Elder Dragons!”

“Hi, we’re Destiny’s Orphans, and we save Tyria from Elder Dragons!”

“Hi, I’m Rytlock, and this is the Pact Commander. We’re members of both of those groups.”

So why bother with separate groups

What’s next, we come out with the ciconics and make a third group and then we form the Holy Trinity that is three small groups uniting against the Elder Dragons because they have the same goal but different methods?

Danikat.8537:

Likewise DE weren’t there when Rox and Braham defeated the leaders of the Molten Alliance, when Jory and Kas solved Theo Ashford’s murder, when they all joined together to confront Scarlet for the first time or throughout the subsequent fights with her and her minions.

During Season 1, they were what you said. Two different groups that occasionally crossed paths.

Season 2 and Heart of Thorns threw that all out of the window. Just as Destiny’s Edge started as five individuals who had their own accomplishments and banded together to fight a dragon champion (Dragonspawn), and only just happened to eventually lead to combating the Elder Dragons, the biconics were also just some individuals who had their own accomplishments and banded together to fight a dragon champion (Scarlet) and only just happened to eventually lead to combating the Elder Dragons.

They started as two groups, but they became one.

And now, as this one group, they’re getting a new name? Why?

Hidden Arcana*

Arcana Obscura is part of Episode 8, which doesn’t feature this. Either way, all of this is well known and had been commented upon a lot during Episode 5’s release. Pretty much we’re seeing a lot of hints pointing to “killing the Elder Dragons without replacement will destroy the world” – the “without replacement” comes from Ogden in the same episode who states the Brotherhood of the Dragon believed Glint could become an Elder Dragon given time and magic. This leads folks to think that’s the purpose of Glint’s egg, and why Tequatl got a power boost. Given that the Pale Tree is indeed a minion of Mordremoth, she and the sylvari could also – theoretically – function as such (even Malyck could).

BobbyStein.2315:

One of the challenges of the semi-monthly release cycle is that we’re limited in how much content we can put inside each one. This can be a good thing if the story is very focused and doesn’t have a lot of moving parts. The problem we ran into is that we needed to develop a larger cast of non-player characters to account for every playable race, and then create the content in which to put them. That sort of build up takes time and incurs an amount of long-term development debt.

So then my question is:

Why are you sticking to the bi-weekly release schedule? If you know it hinders you, why keep at it? That makes no sense to me. I know you’re not the guy to set it, but I’m sure you know why it’s set there and who sets it and can explain to us this befuddlement – if not get the players’ opinion on it to the person or people who set the schedule.

BobbyStein.2315:

The end goal was to have multiple arcs going simultaneously like on more modern television shows, but where a weekly drama might have 20 – 40 minutes of character time to get things moving, we have maybe half that (or less). So after a few releases it started to feel like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads out there and you (the player) had no way of knowing which ones would be resumed.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.

Nein. The concept you had was good. The issue is that you didn’t go through with that concept. You had one arc, then you paused it and had another, then you paused that one and had another. That is not doing multiple arcs simultaneously.

On a side note, I keep seeing you (ArenaNet) compare the living story to television shows or books. The issue I am finding is that’s how you’re treating Guild Wars – like a novel or like a television show. But it isn’t. It’s a video game. And you write and make video games much differently. With TV and novels, you cannot show multiple scenes at once and instead have to show them back to back even if they occur at the same time. In video games, especially open world ones, this is not so – you can have multiple things happening simultaneously within a set timeframe, even if the players don’t always see this. E.g., when Flame and Frost: Retribution was going on, you had Super Adventure Box. That’s how you do multiple arcs simultaneously – having the content available to players at the same time. Not doing part of an arc, then part of another, then part of a third.

Doing one arc and then going to the next can work, but then it’s even less of a “living world” – it’s just a bunch of linear tales being told one after another. A living world has multiple places in the world evolving at once. See again, April 2013.

BobbyStein.2315:

Here’s where I think we could have done a better job with her.

I’ll be frank – and please excuse me if I’m too blunt here. I don’t care about “what could have been” – what I want to know is what will you do to fix the issue? And spoilers aren’t needed to be told for this. I’m talking about your plans for future exposition. And I’d like something more than the atypical “there is a story planned” and “it will all make sense in the future” because let’s face it, with the pacing of the story we might start to see what you see in, oh, 2015 maybe? At the rate I’m seeing, and I’ve been delving into it as much as I possibly could, that’s where I’m predicting things will finally start making sense.

So please, if you read this, inform us somehow about how you intend to improve your storytelling. Because as far as I see it, that is your numero uno issue.

(cont.)

Tupi.2967:

Abaddon = Chaos Energy,
thats the link with Scarlet Briar. Maybe she would take control of Dessa Engine to study Abaddon and we would try to prevent this.

I fail to see how Abaddon = Chaos Energy. If any of the gods holds ties to chaos magic, it is Lyssa, not the god of secrets and water.

There was never anything tied to chaos about Abaddon.

Obsidian.1328:

Darmikau.9413:

-snip-

Oh I agree they are very different in character and motives. My point was simply that the same people who gave us “Abaddon’s behind everything” are the same ones who gave us Scarlet. Up until EotN or perhaps Nightfall, there was nothing in the lore that implied Abaddon was behind Shiro(and I mean indirectly through the fortuneteller), the Titans, or the Cataclysm. That stuff was inserted into the lore post-script. The core of the dev team now got their start with Nightfall and EotN. If you look at it that way Scarlet makes more sense, unfortunately so.

The issue – as I see it – is less that Scarlet is behind everything, and more that Scarlet is just a poor quality character. People, mistakenly, say that Scarlet being behind things is the bad part when it’s not – not entirely.

The huge difference between “Abaddon did it” and “Scarlet did it” is that what Abaddon was behind was all the demonic attacks – or rather, the major demonic attacks. And this made sense – he was imprisoned in the Mists, in a realm which the demons would thrive in. Scarlet, however, is behind alliances that don’t really make sense (krait + Nightmare Court) and is presented without any faults. Abaddon had faults, had strengths, and had redeeming value. Scarlet just has strengths. That is the biggest difference, alongside the fact that what Scarlet is behind doesn’t make sense half the time.

Scarlet being part of Thaumanova actually does make sense. People are kittening and moaning about her ties to Thaumanova because her character is so poor.

As to Abaddon being behind Shiro: not entirely so. As early as the development of Factions, ArenaNet had given indications of a powerful force behind events – the Tomb of the Primeval Kings, Dragon Festival’s invasion, and Shiro. Suun outright states that there was something more at stake than we had knowledge of with Shiro’s threat. Abaddon wasn’t really shoehorned in – no more than Scarlet was with the Molten Alliance. In both cases, we knew there was an underlying forces, we just didn’t know who or what it was – and it’s possible that ArenaNet hadn’t finalized what was that underlying force just yet. But we knew there was some underlying force nonetheless.

Abaddon was only put in behind the events of Prophecies (Khilbron and Titans specifically). He was always behind t he events of things after Prophecies.

biggs.4702:

We had already guessed they were trying to work with elder dragon energies based on parallels to the Crucible of Eternity.

But at least we got confirmation. Before, it was only speculation.

biggs.4702:

All we learned or can guess from this fractal are the following:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS – DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE THE THAUMANOVA FRACTAL
What we knowDessa was once a member of the Inquest. Mistlock Observatory itself is a fractal. Scarlet advised the Inquest in their research and they didn't listen to her, but somehow maybe that was her plan all along (because isn't it always?).

And I think that’s it.

That’s a pretty puny lore payoff in my opinion.

Am I wrong? Did I miss something? I sure hope so, because otherwise, I’m not thrilled. Sure the fractal itself is fun, but I wanted a juicier bit of lore to go with it.

You are very wrong.

Firstly, nothing says Dessa was former Inquest – just that she knows folks who were Inquest. We also learn:

• Dessa cannot leave the Mistlock Observatory, and we learned what happens if she tries. We also know that she didn’t know Thaumanova had exploded (not too surprising).
• There’s the nature of the Thaumanova Anomaly to question.
• There’s Subject 6 – likely connected to Subject 7 from the Queen’s Gauntlet.
• There’s the ley lines, though we knew they existed we now got in-game mention of them, as well as a location where they criss-cross and by extension knowledge that they aren’t at the Infinite Coil Reactor, and we also know what happens if you experiment with chaos magic/dragon energy (and/or) over them. This is perhaps the most important aspect.
• We know what caused the explosion (the above experimentation on top of ley lines).
• There’s also that odd shining sphere at the end of the fractal to question.

We get just as many questions as we do answers.