I don’t see why Livia would have changed her appearance or created an entirely new persona for herself for that matter. In 1256 AE she looked exactly the way we last saw her in GW1, so why would she hide herself now?
I would absolutely love for arena net to re-introduce the quest system to GW2.
For m, it’s all about the story in the GW universe and a good story necessarily needs a fixed start and ending, as well as fixed points throughout, in order to have a good build up, pacing, and a satisfying end. Telling a story through events imo impossible, because of the randomness in which they spawn – they can’t rely on players seeing it through from start to finish.
Also, Dynamic Events are about " the players doing stuff ", and as such rarely focus on dialogue and characters. That’s where the nature of quests shines, which only include a limited number of characters and can heavily focus on narrative instead of actual gameplay.
I don’t want Kill ten rats! -quests for my leveling experience, I want narrative driven quests on a small scale, so that the writers can actually fill the world of Tyria with character, and ultimately life .
Concerning the Living Story, besides obvious and main quests that give actual and easy to follow direction and are only available during the LS releases, minor quests could be strewn around the world, that forecast and harp back to the LS releases.
The Living Story feels like a filler arc right now. The reason for that is that updates are disconnected from each other. From release to release the player jumps from one point of the map of the other, to fight “the evil of the day” which happened to pop up just in time for another release. In order to write a good story (which is the main reason I visit the GW universe for) there needs to be a lot of planning. Basically, the entire story arc needs to be mapped out prior to even coding anything. Otherwise it feels disjointed. This is a problem the Personal Story had as well.
Even though I’m not a big fan of Scarlett, I feel like there was something there. “Finally,” I thought. “we have something to focus on.” But soon the supposed dangerous Main Villain was replaced by other happenings without any warning or build up. By sticking with one villain/problem to focus on and having the entire story mapped out beforehand, the arc can feel much more immediate and urgent.
Also, flooding the playerbase with skins, items, tokens, titles and other rewards is no incentive. It just dillutes the value of the already existing rewards. Bling can only incentivise so far, a good story can be engaging on its own.
I don’t really have any preferences about what storyline the developers tackle, as long as they do it right. I know anet always had problems of delivering the story of their amazing universe to the players, but this is something that MUST change, not only for the Living Story strategy to be taken seriously but also for arena nets future.
Best regards to the devs who are spending days, months, and years of their lives for our enjoyment!
I also think this is unlikely, however I do like the idea of giving actual personalities to the Elder Dragons (because fighting a tornado is much less engaging than fighting a person that has wronged you).
But retconning something that essential when people are even getting up in arms that the tyrian calender got changed from 360 to 365 days would be lore-suicide.
Wanting SAB or the Pavillion to b permanent is just like wanting Hallowen or Winters Day all year ‘round: Players would quickly lose interest because they know thy have all the time in the world to participate and the lose interest permanently, because they’ve just done it so many times over.
The temporary nature of these things is exactly what keeps them fresh and makes people come back.
Once cured, Orr will probably be inhabited by all friendly races.
Humans will claim their history.
Charr will claim any new land.
Asura will want to have say in new colonisaton as well, plus there will be research possibilities.
Silvary will have a big role in curing and reshaping the land and will thus look for places to explore.
Even Quaggans might look for refuge once the waters are less dangerous.
Only the Norn may be left out since they really have no interest in Orr. Though we might see a few Norn looking to find big game.
NC-Soft has been a great publisher during the development of GW2. From what I’ve heard, they let a-net have mostly free hand on their project and let them work on it until they thought it was ready for release. Just how a publisher should.
I really hope NC-Soft doesn’t ruin that by banning Cantha.
Cantha’s story was wonderful, giving us an enemy that was actually tangible. Shiro was a person with his own complex history and complex motivation, not a mad god or an unintelligable Elder Dragon.
The GW fanbase did not only fall in love with Factions story, but also with the landscape. Dreamy Shing-Jea, sprawling Kaineng, The Jade Sea, and The Echowald forest all are areas with unique feelings associated with them. And they could only be improved by the new Graphics.
If the concern is, that the game isn’t just about humans anymore: Rumors are there’s another Pale Tree in the Echowald forest, Quaggans could ally with the Luxon to reclaim independence, the Tengu probably fight a hard battle with the xenophibic Imperials. And since the Tengu WILL be introduced as a playable race in the future, you simply can NOT ban the continent where the fan favourite race is most prevalent.
GW2’s entire desgn philophy is to be inclusive. Wether it is that NC_soft wants to target many audiences since they need to make money on a AAA non-subsciption MMO or that a-net knows that the average gamer is getting older and doesn’t have as much time anymore.
But making humanity into one big, bland, homogenous mass is not inclusive: It’s boring. The races already are too similar to each other; there’s great potential, but no one seems to have the guts to make them truly unique, out of fear to alienate even the smallest demographic.
Lastly, I understand asian themes are a bit overdone, Mist Of Pandaria, Aion and all the other asian MMO’s kind of wore that idea out, but I and the rest of the community are not asking for Cantha now. There are more Elder Dragon’s to finally get rid of, after Kralkatorrik, we’ll probably get closer to Elona (if that doesn’t get banned as well), and Cantha is quite a distance away. But in a few years, after a few expansions, I’m sure it will sell.
And I will love you forever if Cantha’s story is good : )