Guild Wars 2

unknowable.8470:

I really would like these sorts of things to go in game, I love having them for extra depth but it would go so very far to give more plot to the game…

Even if it was just voice acting, text and shifting barely animated slides… Moving comic style… Ingame cutscenes would require a little more effort what with the animations for npc’s… but you could quickly build up a collection to use for future cutscenes.

I just want more story of this level and preferably higher as the personal story just… yeah.

I guess it wouldn’t take that long to create a single new interface for books and copy & paste all the lore-related blog posts into the game. The world has such a big potential and depth, but few is seen in the actual game

take the purchases of the game and subtract the profiles active in the forums and you can imagine how many people are not reading the blogposts.

clocktower
http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mad_Kings_Clock_Tower-33.jpg

I think it’s not that difficult because Anet has proven in a lot of instanced content that they can do it. Clocktower, Winterday, some few Personal Story missions were quite challenging.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Engineers can’t weapon swap anyway, so weapon swap sigils are completely useless to me.

for eles attunement swaps count as weaponswap, doesn’t kit-swap count as weaponswap also?

Vol.5241:

1.) Actually I’ve had +60 open world exotic drops (it’s cause of MF) since January (that’s when I started recording)

2.)
-So let’s talk about the race. How is that going to be fair for all classes? A class like mesmer, if I recall, does not have any speed buffs. While a class like guardian or ele can maintain 100% speed buffs
-As for vets – again, some classes are shortchanged than others. Just equip stability (if you have it) to handle it.
-Personal story missions were very easy. Interesting, yes, but they were easy.

3.) There is little to no skill potential when it comes to PvE. Anything that is difficult the first time will be learned quickly and it will not be easy anymore. I remember having so much difficult with the Mad King JP when it came out, and I was very good at JP. But it was difficult because I was still learning the paths and the most efficient routes. As soon as I finished that JP, I never had trouble again.

THAT is why it is difficult to design ‘SKILLFUL’ content. You need to design a system that will always be difficult whether it’s your first or 12th run. Because as soon as people figure out the system that supposedly makes it difficult, it will be exploited to the fullest extent.

Regarding time and gold
-I think you are overestimating the number of people who make gold off of flipping. If everyone did it, there would be no profit. It’s called arbitrage and it’s very interesting, you can wiki it. And it’s not as easy as it sounds. People who make money off of arbitrage deserve it

1.) OMG. O…M…G. I play since release too, 0 drop. Now I hate RNG even more. Well, you’re working for it I guess, so I’d say it’s deserved. Not a fan of farming stuff at all. As I said, boring to me. (just curious, how many hours/week are you farming? How long, would you say, can I stay in one area until diminishing returns starts?)

2.)

• race: It worked well on the Clocktower. In instances you can easily switch peoples skills of. For the moment you fall behind and have to fight the veterans, just switch it on again.
• some may have stability, others kill faster… It doesn’t matter, Personal Story managed to do this quite fine. You don’t need 100% equality – some classes are harder to master and that’s fine. They can do missions where speed is good, in others a good defense helps, and so on. It would bring the balance.
• Personal Story missions might have been easy for some, for others not so much. The thing is: you’ll have to be good enough – if you are you’ve earned it. If not, try becoming better.

3.) you said it yourself: it was challenging the first time. Why would you need to do it a second time?? No one said that you should farm this challenges, it’s a one-time mission. You were learning the paths. That’s great, this is what I want from my legendary challenge. Forget the farming-aspect here, none of the challenge-missions should be farmed at all.

Vol.5241:

People keep saying “please make it skill-based”

1.) You need to expand on this. I just cannot envision a scenario where a quest for a precursor would be challenging enough to be difficult for the top 5% of the playerbase, and one that would take a lot of time to complete.

2.) Jumping puzzle? Bosses? Those aren’t skill based. Jumping puzzles are extremely easy for the average gamer. People who stink at those just do not have the hand-eye coordination of the average gamer. Bosses can be easily exploited, zerged and hard to design so that all classes will be able to handle it equally.

And then there are the casual players who will suddenly complain that said content is ‘too difficult’ and that they want a precursor handed to them in mere hours.

3.) Unfortunately, the best way to ‘gate’ legendary items, which are (or will be) BIS items is time and gold. Time shows commitment to the game which is more important than ‘skill’.

1.) the precursor imho should be the skill-dependant part where all the lore is, the rest is already pretty time consuming… tons of mats you have to collect. So both: challenging and time consuming is in there.

2.) Not to be rude, but where’s your imagination? + you didn’t read my suggestion but only pick parts of it out of context. You can make (as I explained above) JPs challenging by instancing those and add new layers to it. Like a NPC who spawns veterans/champions behind him so that you have to

• be fast enough to let them spawn behind you —> it’s a race between you and the npc, OR
• be strong enough to beat the veterans while they try to knock you off the ledges.

Furthermore: instanced bosses can’t be rushed and exploits are quite easy to fix in 1-player instances. Hard to design? It worked pretty well in the personal story missions.

3.) time and gold only is good for

• people who flip trading post offers for hours (which is quite boring and not worth a legendary imho)
• people who farm for hours the most efficient route (which is also quite boring imho and favours players with a constant group)

EDIT: As I can see from your Sig that you already had 20(!!!) exotic drops I assume that you love farming. Nothing wrong with that. I see though, why you don’t like the idea of rewards for challenge instead of grind. Just to add, I play since release and had not a single exotic drop from open world mobs yet.

why not include a system where you could easily manage the money on all your characters without having to log in with them?

even Blizzard stated somewhere that they wouldn’t do flying mounts again if they could start all over…

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1239504-Ghostcrawler-didn-t-want-flying-mount-in-game-!

I’d wish that any character who’s running for a certain amount of time (e.g. 20 seconds) out of combat would get swiftness automatically.

The Spiral King.2483:

I just hope it’s not too easy to obtain. There’s not a whole lot of skill required in this game, so the only real way is to make it a time grind. It should take months at the very least.

no, there is a way to show skill: in instances where you are alone. You can’t cheat via portals in an instanced Jumping Puzzle and you can’t cheat defeating a boss via zerging him down in an instanced mission either.

imho this wouldn’t require unrealistic amount of work, just a few new lines for NPCs and the use of already existing locations to be made instanced.

example here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Festive_Lionguard_%28Gift_Exchange%29

alternatively to 2 new currencies you could make a tab where the same items can be bought for big amounts of karma. It’s non-tradeable so it would work too and would add more activity to the vendor.

Hi

First of all: this is not a suggestion to get things faster! Numbers used here are just examples and should be adjusted by Anet to their liking. This is a suggestion to reduce the “I’m forced to spend XY on expensive A while I would love A and B”

let’s take the wintersday-gifts as a informative example: You got 3 different currencies:

• Ugly Wool Socks
• Ugly Wool Hats
• Ugly Wool Sweaters

now you also had 3 tabs at the vendor to spend those currency on the same items.
Imho this was great!! It was possible to safe some socks for this one expensive item + you couls spend all hats and sweaters on other interesting things.

note:
A lot of people hat the fact that currency takes away inventory slots. Laurels don’t, and this evolution shouldn’t either. It’s like you have red, green and yellow laurels in your UI.

My suggestion:

• each item at the laurel vendor costs 2x more
• you earn 1-3 yellow laurels / daily
• you earn 1-3 red laurels / daily
• you earn 1-3 green laurels / daily
• important: the sum of won laurels is constant: 7

—> example:
today I got 1 yellow laurel, 3 red and 3 green
Now I safe the yellow ones for the cat tonic but still can spend my other laurels on other things.

—> it simply leads to more traffic at the vendor instead of staring at him for months.

let me say it again: This shouldn’t make it easier to get expensive stuff. Anet should find a balance for the numbers.

I have no idea why this hasn’t been done… can’t find a reason.

Minos.3450:

I’m more into a scavenger hunt in the ways some people here have already proposed : forcing you to explore in depths every parts of the game (dungeons, events, JPs, WvW, sPvP) plus some riddles to solve.

yes please

I’d suggest to implement it in a non-farming way. More like a challenge of your skill. It should be really using instances where only one person is allowed. The challenge could be in a variety of ways:

• entering a crypt and avoiding all traps + a bossfight at the end (you could instance the dungeon in the north of gendarran fields + scale the spider boss to 1 player)
• a jumping puzzle (instanced to get rid of portal-help, e.g. the big one in Lions Arch where you have to challenge the ghost-pirate at the end – a duell)

in short: use environment already in the game, but instanced – so that it becomes a legendary-challenge.

Add lore to it (!!). The dugeon in Gendarran Fields would introduce you to a Nemesis. The big spider would be his “pet”. Once defeated you find a clue where the villain was going to next. (cryptical clue, you have to find it out for yourself which leads you to the Jumping puzzle. Once you enter it you meet him again. He runs through the JP and summons evil ghosts behind him. If you’re fast enough, those ghosts will be behind you, if not you’ll have to fight them to move on. With his power he turns the NPC at the end in this JP against you. You’ll have to free him by weakening in battle.

etc. etc.

Numot.3965:

Gerky.6948:

I agree with the OP 100%, I also think with the addition of mounts people will explore the world a lot more instead of just waypointing through, getting a much more scenic and adventurous journey through Tyria.

No they wont.

They will skip content, just like how they skip trash in dungeons. The developers left out mounts because it would be out of place and people would skip events. Respect their wishes. Be content with spiffy toys like the sonic tunneling tool or the riding broom.

just because you’d do it doesn’t mean everyone else does. I certainly would love the feeling of riding through the country with MY horse. That would be the freedom of choice the guy above is talking about: People who want mounts use mounts, others not.

about the need for a purpose:
-) what’s the purpose of town clothes?
-) what’s the purpose of the broom/tunneling tool (people love those)
-) what’s the purpose of being able to blend out hat & shoulderarmor?

there is none, but it’s a huge deal for a lot of people

Omg A Hotpocket.7683:

Then walk everywhere, have fun. You don’t see people who backpack across countries crying and complaining wishing they had cars or horses to ride. If you want to explore, go do it. Your lack of having a mount isn’t stopping you. If you want to get around places fast then make sure to use swiftness buffs – that probably makes you faster than a mount would.

you really don’t get me… or don’t want to get me. I don’t want a mount to be anywhere faster. I don’t care about a speedbuff. I want a mount because it’s fun to find them, achieve them, collect them. I also want mounts because they look nice, it’s like having a companion. An addition wouldn’t hurt other people who don’t like mounts, because they still can run everywhere, teleport everywhere.

So I don’t get why people are against them, if mounts
-) would be only cosmetical like the broom
-) couldn’t be summoned in areas where griefing would be possible (Jumpingpuzzles)
-) were implemented, but not flying mounts

I really think there should be a character development for main characters like Canach in the game – perhaps in form of sequences (I’d love those AC-style-cutscenes).

Ascalon Catacombs hat this very detailed cutscene at the beginning to bring the story to everyone. I miss it.

so why should I have to pay for exploring, can you tell me that? I’d gladly pay for travelling because it’s there to let people play with their friends at any time, but eploring via waypointing is just immersionbreaking.

Scott McGough.6897:

I regret that there isn’t more background available regarding how it happened

but isn’t there something you could do? There are those 2 small compendiums on Southsun Cove which tell a little story… couldn’t you do some little lore-bits the same way?

I mean, for example, we get those cool blog posts but how many people will read that stuff which is outside of the game? I don’t know any one from my guild kittenads blogposts which is a shame. If those posts would be in the game, in form of a small collectible book, some frozen books like in Ebonhawke or something like that, this would give the game so much more depth. More people should read this (your clarification here, the blog posts your team is releasing, lore for people who play mmoRPGs because of lore

LordByron.8369:

they told pvp would not be involved in acquisition of PvE things…
I wonder if i can trust something anet says or even this time they will turn back on their words…..

quote? a source please!

Zaxares.5419:

PopeUrban.2578

Cosmetic rewards are Trophies. Difficulty should exclude people from a limited selection of trophy items. These items don’t affect your build, and only serve as an indication that you were able to complete some of the most challenging content in the game. I don’t see why people have a problem with that. What’s so horrible about people having things you don’t? What’s so bad about having an incentive to improve if you really really want that particular cosmetic thing? Why is “Just buy gems” a suitable alternative to getting better at the game? That’s like buying a professional championship trophy and skipping the season altogether. Sure, you have the trophy, but it’s lost all of its meaning.

I see where you’re coming from, but I’m of the belief that a player should be able to acquire the exact look they want for their character without necessarily having to do activities they don’t particularly enjoy. If somebody wants a bow that shoots rainbow unicorns or a gun that shoots confetti just because it suits their character concept, I don’t believe we should deny it to them just because they don’t like WvW or don’t like dungeons. Likewise, if a player who joins now sees the Molten Gauntlets and goes, “Man, that would look AWESOME with my armor set”, I don’t see why we shouldn’t let him buy a set from a player who has one, but hates the appearance (like I do. My Molten Gauntlet ticket is still sitting unused in my bank).

I’m not advocating making it EASIER to get these cosmetic options, just that there should be more avenues to do it. That’s actually why I DO support Legendaries being up for sale on the TP. If every kind of skin can be bought and sold on the TP, supply and demand will take care of it from there.

As far as having unique rewards to show off your participation, we can use titles or badges like the 100% completion badge to showcase player accomplishments. It doesn’t need to be armor or weapon skins.

so there is this cool dungeon specific armor, there was a line about being able to show that you beat that very hard (let’s pretend they are) dungeon by having that cool armor. It’s a prestige object which shows your achievement…

…and now you want that everyone should be able to get it? To buy it in the gemstore or get it for flower-picking or different difficult stuff which has nothing to do with the specific dungeon?

Just no!!

Grimno.6172:

I personally don’t think GW2 needs mounts that give any sort of bonus.
Maybe just cosmetic like how the drill and the witch’s broom work.

The game itself has so many waypoints to go from Point A to Point B, it’s really not needed to have any mounts besides looking good.

I think this is the kind of mount 95% of the people want, to have some collectible for vanity, not to give a speedboost necessarily

Kain Francois.4328:

I think what would be cool in the Precursor Scavenger Hunt is if we had to complete some of the more obscure events in the game, such as clearing the Inquest Base in Malchor’s Leap.

excellent, + add a reason why this is important for the creation of the weapon

I see why people don’t like the temporary aspect of the dungeon, I guess we will have to learn to look at the bright side of this: next month we’ll get a new temporary dungeon (I’m just guessing), so new content again for the dungeon-lovers.

Hi guys

A small suggestion here: make the progress on legendaries visible.

Colin stated a few minutes ago this:

We still plan to do both new legendary weapons, as well as a clear path (on top of the current random chance) to gain precursors which players can see their progress and understand how much work they have left to do to gain it.

I love that they plan to do this for the precursor, I would love it even more if they’d add a bit of an overview about the whole weapon-progress.

Nothing too fancy… a few bars like we know from the achievements; like:
Charged lodestones … 36/100 + bar
Orricalcum … 43/200 + bar
…

It would also be nice to put the ressources into a slot or something where it would be stored, so that you can’t lose it accidentally / that you see what you’ve collected for the legendary.

have a nice day!

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s highly likely the precursor concept will involve playing varied different content all over the game to gather numerous content specific materials that are combined together to make a precursor.

Thanks Colin for the update, it’s certainly not taken for granted since you obviously spend a lot of time working on the game.

I’d like to adress a question since I wonder about this basically since I’ve seen the implementation of Legendaries in GW2: do you like the idea of having a lore-component to the legenaries? Killing 1000 WvW players without reason is experienced quite differently than if you would say:

“collect 1000 souls from your foes to feed the unsatiable thirst of Zhaitan which lives in the blade-shards of the broken sword-edge.” and you’d see the souls coming from killed players homing in on you.

I feel that the current creation of legendaries is quite detached (don’t take it as offensive, it’s not meant that way) from the weapon itself. With the exception of the lodestones; there is no explanation but it seems logical that you need charged lodestones to create a charged weapon.

Zacchary.6183:

Not really. You run around the map until you almost got every point and then you use waypoints to get the ones you missed.

you must have tons of money, I can’t do this, sorry.

Zacchary.6183:

Hey guise you know why other MMOs have mounts? Because they don’t have any form of transportation other than walking! Isn’t that crazy?

It’s quite difficult to explore the area while waypointing

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Alex.7894:

I think mounts would be a very good addition to the game. Just think about leveling, when you have to go by foot to explore and discover new areas.Those are places you cannot teleport to yet and a mount would be more than welcome. Then there’s wvw , a place where you can do so many things with mounts!

1. WvWvW? Really? The swiftness zergs are hard enough to detect and react to as it is if they know what they’re doing. With mounts they’ll traverse the map in a matter of seconds and descend upon camps and towers, taking them before anyone even has time to react.

2. If I were a griefer and had a dolyak, where do you think I’d hang out? A jumping puzzle, that’s where. Secondly, if you aren’t willing to cross the world on foot and actually put effort into going the distance rather than speedrunning the whole experience, it will matter less to you when you finally complete it. You’ll say, “Wow, that was boring and useless.” Just like you would if you explored the world on your hot pink armored unicorn dragon mammoth in another MMO that doesn’t at all break immersion.

1. Mountspeed = Swiftness-Speed
2. can’t summon mounts in JPs

I posted this in another thread, I would like to see expeditions starting from the major cities to world-events / boss-events. A NPC would spawn a small portal to the border of the zone where the next big event happens and would run from there like the commander NPC for the breakout-events in WvW to the target-location: the boss-event.

Add a view events like in Ebonhawke to the cities too, so people don’t stand waiting for the expedition and doing nothing else.

The only thing that legendaries lack imho is the legend behind them. No lore whatsoever… this is not a legendary for me.

WoW did this really well (besides the subpar fact that you had to raid for those):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DXrhkdpDRg
and this is only the last step of the legendary questline

I don’t agree to add a power-advantage (and this is an advantage since you can swap to the “better suited” spec during combat) which has to be bought via gems. This would mean only rich people have that advantage.

I’m all for the ability to switch builds outside of combat – as a standard implementation, not for gems.

I agree to everything that adds more storytelling-quality to GW2. A few of my guildies haven’t even taken a step to Southsun Cove yet, perhaps a cutscene would make them interested.

GW2 never was about reading walls of text, why now with this mail-announcements?

I don’t like the line: go play another game. People don’t like mounts for various reasons, but rarely they think of the fact that Anet could implement them in their own unique way. Why would it be bad to have a mount, nearly every fantasy-story/movie/series has them.

I’m all in favour for mounts, because they bring more collectible-variety to the game. (if they would add enough of them). The more variety, the better imho.

Randulf.7614:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I feel like it would be a good idea to add “expeditions to metas” which start in the main cities of the races. Let me explain:

• There is a area in each city where criers-NPCs announce the next upcoming Meta-Event. There are much more than people know.
• The crier has a countdown-UI when his expedition starts. This UI is shown in each main city.
• When the expedition starts the crier creates a portal to the zone where the next Meta Event starts.
• The portal would bring you to the border of that map, people would run behind him – like the breakout-events in the WvW maps.

This would make the external dragon-timers redundant since you’d have an announcement-system in the game which leads to the next upcoming Metaevent. People would learn to know new Meta-Events which they haven’t seen before.

(big boss metas would have a dragon-logo on the UI-countdown timer)

Here’s a list of all those chest-metas:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/19kvqk/list_of_world_bosses_events_with_the_new_chests/

Hmm, I like this idea too. Nice thought!

if you like it take a look at this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1epr4f/npcs_who_announce_lead_you_to_the_next_appearing/?sort=new
It could use a bit of positive feedback

imho there’s an ingamesystem missing, which shows people where big events are going on. Everytime I come by a boss area naturally, the boss is never up.

Edit: improved the topic by a different idea

Good idea, titles like centaur slayer could add the centaur-tonic buff , so that other people can get this bonus as well, but have to use a tonic for this.

quick question: this new tool enables people to find worldboss events or other metaevent-chains quickly, it’s cool but have you thought of an ingame-system to do similar things?

Like a crier who runs around in our main racial cities and starts expeditions to the next big event via a small portal to the border of that zone. So that you see this 3min countdown as an event-marker in the city and follow him like you follow the npc commander in those wvw breakout events.

There are tons of big events in the game so main cities would be a good starting point to find frequent expeditions going on.

The reason why I’m saying this: the things outside of the game aren’t noticed by a lot of players. I know not a single person in my small 15-man guild who knows about those cool lore blogposts.

timidobserver.7925:

Sounds good to me as long as the reward for the harder version is better. It would kind of make the group dungeon pointless if you could just go solo easy mode through it alone and get the same rewards.

go away elitist :P

wow that sounds nice kitten you ARE listening

First of all: take a look at all the available world bosses / events which spawn chests with a guaranteed rare:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/19kvqk/list_of_world_bosses_events_with_the_new_chests/?sort=confidence

Do you know all of those? I count 28.

Do you also think it’s frustrating not to know when most of them happen? Yes we have dragon-timer websites, but those only cover a few of that huge list.

If yes, then read on…

so here’s the idea:

• add a crier to the main cities. This NPC has it’s own event-UI on the top right side of your screen.
• this UI shows us a countdown to the next upcoming world boss event (not more than 3minutes)
• he doesn’t announce which event – it’s a surprise expedition
• the NPC would open a portal to the entrance of the zone where the event happens.
• Now he would start running through the portal and from the border of the map to the location of the boss. (similar to the break-out events in the WvW homelands)
• Once he’s there the boss-event would start guaranteed – no time-window anymore, waiting for half an hour for a boss-spawn is tedious

So it’s like going on a random adventure. The event is up for 2-3 minutes before the portal goes up. The portal stays open for 1 minute. Because of the huge number of big events in the world, such expeditions would spawn quite often.

My idea would have a few impacts:

• racial cities would have much more traffic
• people would learn to know all of the world bosses, not only the “main ones”
• this would also revive a few zones where not much is going on… some people would stay for a while in that zone, doing a few events near the defeated boss

a further suggestion:

• add events to the city, so that you can spend some time doing something while you wait for the countdown to finish. Events like the ones in Ebonhawke, for example.
• each city would have it’s own unique events
• add a minigame to each main city, for the same reason.
• the timer would always be visible while you’re in the city, if you want to.

you may ask: why do we need this?, there are dragon timers!

• to show people that there are many more opportunities to get guaranteed rare loot.
• to revive empty zones where there’s still very good content
• to make main-cities relevant again

I hope you like the idea. What do you think?

I feel like it would be a good idea to add “expeditions to metas” which start in the main cities of the races. Let me explain:

• There is a area in each city where criers-NPCs announce the next upcoming Meta-Event. There are much more than people know.
• The crier has a countdown-UI when his expedition starts. This UI is shown in each main city.
• When the expedition starts the crier creates a portal to the zone where the next Meta Event starts.
• The portal would bring you to the border of that map, people would run behind him – like the breakout-events in the WvW maps.

This would make the external dragon-timers redundant since you’d have an announcement-system in the game which leads to the next upcoming Metaevent. People would learn to know new Meta-Events which they haven’t seen before.

(big boss metas would have a dragon-logo on the UI-countdown timer)

Here’s a list of all those chest-metas:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/19kvqk/list_of_world_bosses_events_with_the_new_chests/

Woodenpotatoes would give this thread a new push with part 2 of his lore series on Cantha ^^

1865 likes vs. 17 dislikes

I don’t like the way a legendary is created at all, gambling is just a bad way to do this since people would spend different amounts of ressources to get one. One player might be extremely lucky while others like the OP are left behind.

Why isn’t there a way to get this via tasks which can be found in a checklist which don’t depend on RNG? For tasks which are really challenging to accomplish instead of pure luck.

Warruz.8096:

and then a page talking about the current story, where to go to start, what activities are available and where to begin them.

this was actually part of the storybooks in GW1 – they got more entries while you were progressing in the story

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/0c/Storybook.jpg

Guild Wars had storybooks, which were kind of a guide + they included lore, nice artworks and other stuff.

I think it would be an improvement to use such books for the Living Story instead of guiding us throuh the story via achievements. You could take a look at them a year from now and would get back all the cool memories. + Anet could add in a way to replay some story instances too.

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081114012123/gw/images/3/36/Storybooks.jpg

Iridiana.9078:

Do you remind about Halloween and the quest about the past of the Mad King? Following the hints and talking with various NPCs every player could learn about the life of King Thorn and get an item related to him.
I think this was the way to get players involved…

I loved this scavenger hunt, but it would have been even more exiting, if you had such a book I’m talking about to read about his history whenever you like once you’ve completed the scavenger hunt. I can barely remember the story and would need to look it up in the wiki. Ingame would be the better more engaging choice.

Diablo 3 (as bad as it was) did some great things in this department
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQqh5vc7-Hk

even GW1 had kind of such a thing
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/0c/Storybook.jpg

this would also work much better for Living Story as achievements as a guide.

I love this one, I’m proud owner of such a bandana too

It doesn’t have to be a one-time thing, logic would say that the mother is dead when you failed the event before, but hell… it’s a game. I don’t care about logic. It isn’t logical that the shatterer lands each time in the same area either, but it’s (theoretically) fun either way.

I think what’s missing is more of long connected event chains. The connection – the questitem – would be essential for this. Something which can spawn events manually by having it with you or having done something before. This way you could have really long and epic chains which can be done in more than one playsession. Events could also spawn if certain prerequesites had been accomplished. I’ve seen a youtube clip where an assassin spawns on a road in queensdale, but only if you’ve done a certain human-storyline. Everyone can participate in fighting this champion. It’s a pretty neat story-telling feature and I wonder why it’s implemented so rarely.

Woodenpotatoes stated that events feel hollow to him. Well, something that happens without follow-up events which expand the story must seem hollow. The way it is now, without questitem which spawn follow up events, events take place only in a limited area and have little to no character development.

we don’t need quests, we need questitems that spawn events from an eventchain.

example: you escort a traveler through queensdale. Once you’re there the npc asks you to visit his mother at home, to see if everything is allright. He gives you the key to his mothers house. — you go to the house whenever you like — Once there (+the key in your inventory) the key spawns a new event where everyone around can participate. The door breaks open and the mother runs out of the house. Behind her a few thieves. Kill the thieves before they kill the woman. If they kill her, the event failed. If she survives the attack the woman gives you a letter for her son. — visit the son again — if he is there + you have his letter, he reads the letter. There’s money in it to open a shop. He now has become a vendor and sells unique items.