There’s an entire game out there that’s not level 80, so if anything I would hope that we can find ways to make lower level content more enticing instead of funneling everyone into a single zone.
And what about the Grand Barrier Isle heart? Any events around there?
There’s two criers that appear in that area for events that happen nearby. I’m not 100% sure that every single heart has a corresponding heart, but the one’s that don’t are few and far between.
As someone who worked extremely hard on one of the Orrian maps, I can tell you that DusK has the most accurate comment.
From a lore perspective, the risen continent was once a living nation full of all sorts sorts of people and creatures. Now corrupted by the undead dragon, most of them walk the land as monsters. But you’ll still see a lot of the sentient inhabitants mindlessly continuing on the tasks they performed in their old lives. Some of them farm and mine, others lie around and weep in agony.
The coral soldiers, on the other hand, are more direct servants of the elder dragon. They take a more active role in defending the continent, so you should see them patrolling, standing guard, attacking players, etc.
That being said, what about the role of a Guardian as defined by it’s very name? Who is he guarding if not the group? Which brings me back to one of my suggestions above; having just a touch of aggro generation added so that when the group is going down, the guardian can draw aggro and and then plop down the wall of reflection you mentioned thereby allowing the group to recover a bit.
That’s why position is actually important in Guild Wars 2. Most of the guardian’s absorption/reflection abilities are sphere or lines. Wall of Reflection is an actual wall about 10 times the width of your character; plenty of room to protect your party. Then there’s abilities like Virtue of Courage (F3), which is not exactly a sphere of blocking but it applies a free block to every ally within range.
The main idea is that the combat and skills should keep you paying more attention to the game world than the various arbitrary numbers, bars, and meters typically associated with MMORPGs.
A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing. But it feels really great when you plop down that wall of reflection, and return that blast of whatever for thousands of damage to the thing that threw it at you.
Clearly this doesn’t apply to level-capped players, but have you considered targeting content at a higher level than your character? I prefer difficult content, so personally I tend to look for content that’s 2 levels higher than my own.
