Guild Wars 2

New PVE progression (“mastery points”) is specific to the jungle and is account-wide.

These points are used to purchase new PVE abilities across all characters on the account- you will not need to grind multiple characters.

Storyline is based around Glint’s legacy from GW1.

Only in Avatar.

nGumball.1283:

Yeah, HoT will not feature a multi-class. Anet already expressed their unwillingness to re-introduce a multiclass system.

Thank god. You know what multi-class always means?

Less choice.

For real. I know it seems like it’d be the other way around, but it ain’t. It’s just one more thing to min-max into the ticky-tacky spec. One more reason to get kicked.

Let me tell you what really happens with multi-class: you have to level a class that you don’t want to play because it happens to be the only “right” class synergy with the main class you do want to play.

I agree. Wholeheartedly- unless our character knows something that the players don’t, I hate that we aren’t able to do more for Rox. She needs someone other than Braham to act like they give a crap about her and we’re in a position to do that, especially if the PC is a Charr.

But we don’t.

Throughout these characters’ stories Rox has been the one that resonates with me the most. I’m not sure why- maybe I’m just a sucker for tough hard luck cases. But she has the most emotionally painful life of any character I’m aware of in GW2, and yet still is warm and kind and works her kitten off.

Rytlock is a total, unmitigated kittenbag to her- to the point that I really hope it turns out he’s her biological father with an unusual if weirdly expressed level of concern for her. That’s the only thing that, for me, makes his actions with her fit into his otherwise generally epic aura of awesomeness.

I think in some later storyline we should get to straight up duel Rytlock to force him to back the hell down. And then later we should find out he let us win because that was the only way he could justify it.

Donari.5237:

Hence the “see all the dialogue options” part.
I consider the OP to be an honest person, as I decided to send 4 gold to help out and said in the message I hoped they would return anything they got beyond 4 gold from people (whether to me or to others). Moments later, the gold was returned! So OP must have been made whole

Holy crap, that happened?

MithranArkanere.8957:

Some used to call that “flavor of the month”, or “cookie cutter” depending on the situation back in the days.

When I played WoW (which was up through WotLK) the min-maxed combination of stuff was 100% of the time called the “cookie cutter build”. It was such a universally used term that it was defined in the forum stickies everywhere and on the most popular wiki.

I feel like that was more descriptive than “meta”.

However, I propose for differentiation that we adopt the term “ticky-tacky” instead.

Little PC’s on the battlefield,
Little PC’s made of ticky-tacky,
Little PC’s on the battlefield,
Little PC’s all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all play just the same.

And the PC’s were created
To tell their own personal story,
Where they filled in little boxes
But they came out all the same.
Norn Necros, Charr Hunters,
And Sylvari Elementalists,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all play just the same.

Ykfox.3825:

Is this where I point out that the Charr effectively commited genocide on the human kingdom of Ascalon, and yet Humans can still work together with them?

Or that the Asura commit the most heinous crimes against sapience imaginable … pretty much whenever they have the opportunity. They don’t even have to be at war or corrupted by an evil force. They just have to be bored, curious, or feeling particularly superior that day.

And in fact, that’s kinda the thing in all of this everyone seems to be missing. The beings of Tyria commit terrible acts constantly, on a grand national scale. The only difference is that the Sylvari actually have an excuse, and many of them are still free and able to fight back.

(Well, ok, the Norn seem to be an exception to all of that. Oddly they don’t seem to have done much of anything terrible on a grand scale, ever. Maybe that comes from having plenty of good beer and no organized government or religion. Weird, never really thought about that until just now.)

You know, it’s interesting, but GW2 is probably the closest to a traditional pen-and-paper, non-strategic RPG of any major MMO because it doesn’t have the trinity. Pen-and-paper RPG’s generally don’t either, because that would be amazingly boring. (In fantasy ones you do get healers, but rarely tanks.)

From what I’ve heard the newest D&D went all WoW class roles though, so I suppose that’s different now. I haven’t played tabletop for years. But I remember the first time I ever played an MMO I was like, “wait, why aren’t they just killing the wizard?”

Nothing to current PC’s at all. Period. Anet isn’t crazy, and they attempt fairness across the playerbase.

Possibly in the expansion there will finally be a third plate-wearing class, in the style of deathknights et al, which would be a corrupted-then-freed character. I would do that, personally- it’s a cliche, yes, but for a good reason. Players love being a kitten anti-hero seeking redemption.

Most likely that class could still be any race, Sylvari included. After all, we’ve seen just about every race corrupted by at least one dragon, somewhere. You don’t have to be part of a master plan to be pulled kicking and screaming into darkness.

Olvendred.3027:

3. He’s alive and has been corrupted. In which case he’ll almost certainly be a major bad guy/boss in the coming storyline.

Sarah Kerrigan, is that you?

Wait, no Arthas? Sylvannas? Diablo?

SenorMoody.5908:

I am Groot!!!!!!!!!!!

Your point is valid.

Devildoc.6721:

Ya’ll get way too defensive about a fantasy race.

I’m not particularly emotional about the Sylvari. I’m just very disappointed to see so many people who think it’s hilarious to make Asura “master race” jokes and explore what it would feel like to use real hate speech by coming up with new, safe vegetable-based slurs.

I thought that’s what you were doing- I apologize, you obviously really are trying to explore the lore and figure out the universe, so I was wrong to assume that.

So that having been said, back to the actual lore- I think I might be able to make this less ambiguous for you.

Devildoc.6721:

I for one find it interesting to have a somewhat self aware but not entirely free construct that feels the pull of their programming and yet can still make some free choices.

The thing is, you just described almost exactly what it is to be a human being. The only thing in that sentence that is different from the human condition, depending on your belief system, is the word “construct”.

And that’s the real world.

Tyria exists in a fantasy world. Magic is the stuff of life. You don’t need any religion to believe a living being can be created. All you need to do is believe in Tyrian life magic- which it would be rather silly not to believe in, since consuming it is the entire reason dragons do what they do, and manipulating it is part of what makes them so powerful.

Rocks, flames, and huge trees seem to just get up and start walking around in this world. It’s not much of a stretch to think that when a dragon creates something that looks alive, it really is alive. Heck, it’s hard to imagine otherwise. And if that something seems to think, love, hate, compose poetry, make mistakes, and all the other trappings of intelligent life, what possible reason do we have to think it isn’t intelligent life? Because the wrong force of nature made it?

What happens when we find out which god created Tyrian humans out of a lump of clay? Does that mean we’ll decide humans aren’t really people either? Is that true in every fantasy world with a known creator? Where instead of human instincts and reflexes and unconscious behavior being the product of natural selection, they are the product of a deity? None of those should be considered real people?

When you put it in context of the world it isn’t actually reasonable to compare Sylvari to AI’s or androids. That’s a sci-fi thing. This is a fantasy thing. They don’t just look like thinking, talking plants- they are thinking, talking plants.

Gaile Gray.6029:

If it says “This message was sent by another player. It was not sent by the Guild Wars 2 Team” then you know it’s not from us.

Ok, so I 100% totally, completely know you are being endlessly polite, avoiding anything that might even be misinterpreted as impatient, remaining ever the gracious host you always are…

But this still made me chuckle. Just saying. Cuz you can’t.

Devildoc.6721:

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

Sylvari are clearly sentient and capable of feeling pain. The fact that someone lacks free will in certain situations does not diminish their personhood or mean they can be tortured with no moral issue.

When their entire existence is to serve a dragon as constructed dragon minions, they’re not people.

I thought you might just be trolling, and with this comment now I’m pretty sure, since you couldn’t genuinely believe it’s meant to be that simple if you played the game. You’re not the only one, I get it, hurr hurr stupid salads.

So…

Yeah. Honestly, I’m going to act too serious, get accused of not taking a joke, but I am going to admit that it’s not very funny. Because this happens in the real world, with real people, who are born to the wrong parents or in the wrong place. Hate kills.

Often.

What can men do against such reckless hate?

We can start by not pretending it’s ok.

Devildoc.6721:

we’re not experimenting on people afterall, just dragon minions, constructs, with pre-programmed personalities.

Ridiculous.

First, you cannot justify actions based on information you learn later. The Asura culture is abhorrent for it’s flagrant disregard of the basic dignity of sapient beings, and the culture of the Inquest takes that to a level that is both evil and stupid. Asuran culture breeds sociopaths, and the Inquest collects the most… special of them.

Second, you cannot act just as ruthlessly bad as your enemies and still consider yourself better. That simply makes you a different kind of bad.

And third, what evidence is there that dragon minions are pre-programmed personalities? That’s absurd. They show a wide range of behavior, they can learn, and above all they can be freed and granted full free will. Creation and influence is not the same as non-sapience. (And that’s just in-game. Outside the game we absolutely know that Sylvari have free will- because they are able to be player characters. If they had no free will we would hit the button to start their story and then sit back to watch the character play up to 80 itself.)

I’ve played numerous MMO’s, and with one in particular (the one you’re thinking of) got in deep. Multi-hour all-guild raids several nights a week, dailies every day, obsessive gear and build simulation… I even learned their API and wrote my own add-ons to complement my strengths and weaknesses as a player… You get the idea. The usual. Power overwhelming.

Then I quit, for all the right reasons.

Thing is, a while later I started craving the experience again. Not so much the raiding and gear gathering as the immersion, the experience. GW2 appealed to the needs of a refugee like me- casual friendly but with enough depth to suck me in.

What ultimately sold me were two things: getting named Game of the Year by practically everyone and a big, fat, delicious sale on the digital edition. I impulse bought it a day before the sale ended.

Best value I’ve ever gotten for my money in a game, without exception. It’s been even better than I’d hoped. And I’ve hardly ever played it all night long. Hardly.

Berserker or not, it has always felt really weird that there are only two heavily armored classes. It always seemed like one was missing. I was expecting something more deathknighty (they’re an mmo trope at this point, just like warrior and paladin/guardian/etc) to eventually be announced. Maybe a dragon-corrupted-but-free-willed warrior of some kind in this universe.

But if there was a berserker:

FrownyClown.8402:

Staff would be a support weapon, but unlike the guardian it would focus on debuffing enemies. For example, creating an aoe field that strips boons or stomping the ground to cripple all enemies and apply weakness in the area.

Nah, staff should be their main dps weapon.

Because “Agents of SHIELD.”

Gyler.8150:

Could do a sort of LS2 boss room A.K.A. capcom boss blitz, fight the fun bosses one after another or one a day for a daily.

Not a half bad idea. They did something like this in another mmo (probably more than one, just one I remember) and it was a fun filler until more story and large-scale raids came out.

Maybe this could be integrated into the fractal paradigm? Shadows of old enemies forming in the mists? That gives you the option to basically do hardmode versions of the old bosses too.

My first thought was, “how terrifying would it be if the remaining dragons, seeing the others actually defeated, actually started working together? That’d be awesome.”

But no… This:

Phineas Drayke.6381:

Or maybe, make them kill each other and have popcorn watching the fight

This this this this this!

What a theme to explore, that being caught in the middle of an all-out war between the dragons, coping with a world without any balance, would be even worse than where we are today!

perilisk.1874:

Just call him “PC”. You know, short for “Pact Commander”.

+50 points, sir.

Slowpokeking.8720:

They could dominate the Risen to control them, and transfer the dragons’ power together to create monsters, would these be helpful if the Pact could take such technology?

In every world ruthless people with terrible intentions leave behind legacies that can be adapted to good.

So the revolting attitude of the Inquest (and of Asuran culture in general, which a sane player should often find abhorrent) isn’t necessarily something that will make every discovery or technology they come up with intrinsically evil- it just determines what they choose to do with it.

However the technologies I think you’re talking about, the ones that explicitly (even if not always knowingly) try to exploit or control the magic of the dragons, are different. In my opinion those will all inevitably, without fail, lead to tragedy.

The magic-technology of Tyria is not like the science-technology of our world.

Our technology relies on forces that have no will or thought behind them at all. The only will involved is the will of the user. That means in our world it’s not very hard to take something that came out of awfulness and put it to good- or the opposite, to pervert something beautiful.

Tyria is different. In Tyria some of the fundamental forces of the universe are actively influenced by powerful, sapient beings with their own motivations and agendas. It’s not just a matter of cause and effect like our world’s electromagnetic energy, gravity, strong force, weak force… Dragon magic in Tyria is imprinted with the essence and will of the dragon you are trying to exploit.

Any technology that relies on magic tainted by that will might be able to resist their agenda for a while- but not forever. The technology itself leaves a weakness open to be exploited by something that possesses power, intellect, and sheer, soul-crushing experience that is hard to imagine. Even another dragon would probably not have hubris enough to assume that comes without consequence.

I’m going to shamelessly self-refer here to a great conversation we had a few months ago in this thread.

If the story team ever wants to give dialogue a personalized, natural feeling one option would be to record versions of phrases based on current title, with generic ones for race/gender and class for folks who don’t have a title selected.

I know there’s a cost associated with that, and probably some collaborative challenges too (the writers would have to know future titles, so those could be included). But how cool would that be? “Greetings, Mistwalker.” “Good morning, Chef.” “Well met, Dark Traveler.”

Although just for the record, I love it when Charr call me “boss”, because that fits consistently into the background dialog you hear with them all the time. So Charr are allowed to do that. For them it seems to be a sign of earned respect.

SilverWF.4789:

Silalus.8760:

You already have /bow, /salute, /yes, and /no. The only things really missing are /challenge (as in, challenge to a duel), /congratulate (probably just as /gratz), and a nice solid /handshake. (For bonus points, /fistbump too.)

And you can do that while downed/dead, right?

You missed that I also said:

Just a thought, but an alternative would be to allow certain emotes while in a defeated state

That obviously would be necessary to be useful. Wouldn’t even need to be for all emotes, just certain ones relevant to sportsmanship.

And again, my point isn’t that this should replace the friends list method. This is to supplement it- butter them up before you try to talk shop cross-faction legitimately as frenemies.

Mounts.

Problem solved.

Just a thought, but an alternative would be to allow certain emotes while in a defeated state and then slightly expand emotes to include some basic, purely good-sportsmanship cross-faction communication.

You already have /bow, /salute, /yes, and /no. The only things really missing are /challenge (as in, challenge to a duel), /congratulate (probably just as /gratz), and a nice solid /handshake. (For bonus points, /fistbump too.)

Now I admit that doesn’t let you get or give advice like you describe, but that’s where the friends list actually makes sense. And if you could use the canned, limited, hopefully anti-spam filtered emotes to show good sportsmanship then I would imagine that other player would be much more likely to accept a friend request and talk then or later.

This would be awesome. I would pay too, though probably not if it was per character (like bag slots). If a reasonable price unlocked it as a feature for all characters, like a bank tab or the wardrobe, I’d certainly pay for that.

Farzo.8410:

Some professions would be able to abuse this.
What if a thief ends up 1vs1 against someone, it’s not going in his favour so he stealths and tries to get out of combat, to change to something else and then attack again.

It’d be reasonable to give it a cooldown that starts after you exit combat, maybe? So you can’t switch the instant you get out of combat. Like swapping weapons, only it’s not available in combat either. So big red x when you’re in combat, them a 15s (or whatever) cooldown when you get out of combat, then swap away?

Minor races are whoever Evon Gnashblade says they are.

Seriously. Hear me out.

In addition to “minor” or “lesser” the grawl, hylek, ogres, quaggan, and skritt are also grouped as the “tribal races”. (You see that alternate term here, for example: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personal_story#Part_V_.E2.80.94_Helping_Hands_.E2.80.94_Level_50) And just like on Earth, that word is nearly meaningless except to dismiss their cultures and incorrectly associate them together. As you get into the story you find they each have their own rich mythology and society, magic, and unique technology. They have cities, languages, agriculture, and political structures. They also seem to have populations that rival the so-called “major” races.

As to the more mythic races like the tengu and kodan, they too are pretty obviously advanced beings. (Heck, the kodan seem like they might be considerably more advanced than the “major” races in a lot of dimensions) They’re just physically far removed from most of the population of Tyria and exacerbate that distance by being isolationist to varying degrees- so they aren’t so much “minor” as they are “mysterious”.

And we won’t even discuss the citizens of the Moletariat. That’s an even more highly advanced, highly organized society that just happens to be at war with most of the other highly advanced, highly organized societies- which is hardly unique to them, after all. It hasn’t been that long since the humans and charr were at war, and both still have rebel and/or terrorist groups making plenty of trouble.

So “major” vs “minor” doesn’t seem to be about technology, population, spirituality, or political organization. It also clearly isn’t about being enemies or allies. So what’s left?

Trade.

The only universal difference between what we call “major” and what we call “minor” races in Tyria is whether the trade federation / spacer’s guild / dutch east india company of this world, which is to say the Black Lion Trading Company, is doing business with them. Whether it’s self-imposed (as I suspect it is of the dredge), due to remoteness (as of the kodan), or simply because they aren’t perceived as worth the effort (like those “tribal races” above), ultimately it’s up to Evon Gnashblade. If he permanently stations traders at your cities than you are “major”. Otherwise, so sorry, you don’t get to be one of the cool kids and for the most part even the supposedly enlightened Orders write your entire species off as unemployable.

It’s not a problem with the new dailies- it’s a problem with scaling for certain events.

The trouble is that some events scale just fine, such that even with a large group of people everyone has an ample opportunity to contribute enough to get full credit. Others don’t, once you get beyond a certain number of people.

That’s 100% the reason why people get so desperate about tagging. The new daily system has made it worse because it can be ridiculously specific for PvE, but that’s just exposed the real problem . It’s a matter of scaling each event in a way that makes it broad enough to handle a full zone, without making it so aggressively scaled that people start screaming at non-80’s to go away.

I don’t envy the devs that particular balancing act, but it’s arguably the most important element of GW2’s unique drop-in/drop-out, non-trinity, open-world PvE content.

Bazompora.2635:

Heck, there’s even 2 furry races already!

Wait… What’s the second one?

And on a related note, and to ambush an otherwise serious and insightful thread, I have said before and I will say again: I would cheerfully pay lots of money to play a Skritt.

And if I was in charge of writing a personal story for that race, I’d show all the events of the original personal story, but from the outside and from the Skritt perspective. In other words you’d pretty much get screwed over, beaten down, and kicked (literally during Wintersday) with brief interruptions of you trying to stave off the Asura’s unambiguously evil plans for genocide.

In the end, of course, it would turn out that you were really responsible for the victory against Zhaitan. You’d sneak onboard for the final airship battle, and while the rather pointless glamour fight is going on above you’d do all the real, sweaty, bloody work down below in the engine room and ammunition storage- fighting off all the minions down there that the big idiots up top are totally missing.

In the end you’d stumble out of the airship victorious, bloody, filthy, exhausted- and completely unnoticed. You saved the world, nobody will ever know, and you and your people won’t get credit for it. Just like always. (For Pratchett fans: Hang.)

Lord Kuru.3685:

A dev post a few months ago explicitly said it was ok.

I’m not sure which post you mean, but Gaile Gray said “no” to basically the same question today:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/AutoClicker-Macro-Legal-Still/first#post4666463

I figure it’s only intended to address edge cases- that it’s meant to provide an absolute limit to the cost of moving an upgrade that you own rather than being more generally useful.

It’s always there, so you always have the choice to pay that $3ish if a particular upgrade is irreplaceable through normal play. It’s somewhat unpredictable when a market condition or game mechanic change could suddenly make something expensive or even impossible to acquire, and when/if that ever happens you have this option to fall back on.

Currently there are only a tiny number of upgrades this applies to- which means everything is probably working as intended. My assumption is that it is not intended to be an item used in anything but the most extreme, probably even unforeseen cases. If it became generally useful it would mean something has broken in terms of upgrade values. Either it would mean the extractor was priced too low, making moderately priced upgrades too commonly available, or the upgrades themselves became priced too high.

Onyx Crow.5379:

Is there someone who want to explane the main (story) lines and other lore stuff to me.

Wiki links in the post above are spot-on. The best way to enjoy the story, though, is to experience it. Your personal story as a character is designed to bring you into the lore, and it is designed to be 99% playable solo. (There is only one exception, which I won’t get into to avoid spoilers.) The 5-man dungeons also shed more light on some history and character development for some core NPC’s.

Here’s a short primer on dragons and their role, though, if you’re really in a rush. Obviously this could be considered to include massive spoilers:

Brilliant, OP.

Yo dawg, we heard you like loot, so we put loot in your loot so you can loot while you loot?

Seriously though, I’d settle for just a right click option to “open all” for a stack of identical boxes. Doesn’t make the lack of magic find impact less distasteful, but at least then my significant other won’t yell across the house at me asking why the hell I’m clicking so furiously.

X T D.6458:

Proper communication is always key, having people in ts, and saying in map/team chat what commander is doing what.

This, 100%.

There is absolutely no substitute for voice communication. The in-game communication and status methods are good, but not enough.

Nearly every server has a voice chat server running. Any server that doesn’t (I’m not personally aware of any, but I’m sure there must be a couple), or even just one where a significant number of wvw players are not listening in, is at a severe disadvantage.

It makes it a heck of a lot more fun too! (On my server at the end of a long week when those UK guilds start getting drunk and singing… Awesome.)

Basaltface.2786:

ask me as a charr player. You didnt experience horror till you tried to make a charr engineer that does not look like a tent that decided to become sentient, arm itself with a rifle and went on an adventure.

Wait, wasn’t that a Monty Python skit?

I’m a non-RP’er that is 100% in support of RP’ers.

Frankly I wish there were more talking and emoting away everywhere, enough so that the devs could dump all that repetitive NPC dialogue that is meant to provide the same kind of color to the world.

Seriously, will that golem in Rata Sum ever stop hassling that poor merchant? Either arrest him or go away, for the love of all that is good and holy.

Wandering past deeply IC RP’ers and genuinely good player musicians has made my day more than once. If there was an RP channel I’d keep it on all the time.

So sad that this will never happen, since there’s so little reward to the cost of doing more voice acting for the class. I hereby volunteer to re-voice all racial quotes for one race/gender combo, gratis. :P

Anyway, blue sky I’d go for, “Forward!” That covers both of the buffs as well as the feeling of the class as a sort of phalanx anchor. Whether advancing on a position or retreating and regrouping you are encouraging an armored push forward.

KevinB.9643:

I want my "YOU SHALL NOT..PASS!

OMG yes! But not for guardians… If they give elementalists a shout based on attunement, that needs to be the earth version. (And “Flame imperishable!” for fire… The thought gives me goosebumps.)

laokoko.7403:

The same reason, it is hard to be over critical of GW2, since I can’t say it is actually doing bad compare to other mmorpg on the market.

This.

The economic design and stability of GW2 are way better than most MMO’s in my experience.

I have some pet peeves too, of course. I’m not a fan of how crafting feels more like a path to endgame token redemption then an economic activity, for example. I also feel like there aren’t nearly enough options for characters or players to specialize in being good at one economic activity versus another.

But those are probably more overall game design issues than things that could be solved economically. And taken as a whole the GW2 economy seems to be a lot better designed and is definitely more simple-yet-satisfying than the other MMO’s I’ve played.

And let’s face it, you see basically this same thread on every MMO forum pretty often. To me that says that as obvious as “solutions” might seem intuitively, designing and managing an artificial economy that doesn’t include the same frustrations as the real economy is actually hilariously difficult. I have yet to see one that everyone points to as the gold standard to be imitated. (And I’d actually personally suggest that the interplay between RMT and gold in GW2 is the gold standard to be imitated for that aspect- and frankly getting even that one thing right is pretty darn impressive.)

Zaxares.5419:

Yeah, even though I’d love a serpentoid playable race, I agree that the current way the Krait have been written leaves them no real wriggle room for being “good”.

I see what you did there.

I had the same thought at first too. But really it seems more that they have become intensely connected war buddies. And for Rox in particular that has really deep meaning. In fact, I have a feeling it’s much deeper for her than any romance would be.

(The rest of this is intrinsically a spoiler.)

As a gladium, Rox has one of the more heartbreaking stories in the game. Her official origin story: Rox’s Tale

She explains what being a gladium means to her when you first encounter her in the game too:

Rox Pickheart:

It’s somebody who survived when the rest of her warband didn’t. A leftover, you might say.

Survivor’s guilt for sure- but it goes beyond that too. Rox lost everything. Everything.

Imagine that your coworkers are also your family, your high school clique, and your graduating class from Navy SEAL school. Take every little moment of human connection you’ve ever had with another person- fighting back against a bully, eating dinner together, talking philosophy as you’re coming of age, venting about your boss, and put all those moments into maybe 5 or 10 people.

That only begins to cover what a warband is to a Charr.

Now imagine if those people all died at once, instantly and senselessly. Imagine that even your freaking pet died with them. Rox clawed at the rock they were under until her hands were bloody, then passed out from exhaustion- and I have to say, I think that was a pretty tame response. Every important connection in her life was instantly and permanently severed, and for the first time in her life she was truly, utterly alone. Charr age is usually measured in months, not years, when they begin to meet the people who will eventually become their warband.

After that kind of loss you can see how she would connect to someone like Braham. Since her tragedy he appears to have been the first person that took her seriously and both accepted her help and protected her. (Well, arguably Rytlock takes her seriously too- but ok now, she helped take out freaking Tequatl as ordered and that apparently wasn’t enough for him. Seriously, what does it take to please that guy? He has got to be her father. It’s that, or he’s an epic jerk to her for no good reason.) He acted like the warband, the family and friends and more, that she lost. He is her way of starting to rebuild all of that.

So I think whatever she feels for Braham is, for a Charr, something infinitely more deep than what she would feel for a love interest.

Vavume.8065:

Risen, I want an undead thief to add to my collection of thieves.

Kinda surprised there’s only one vote for this so far.

Why wouldn’t the death of Zhaitan perhaps leave a few of the undead with free will? Seems reasonable to me, and while it’s been done before the undead are usually mighty, mighty popular amongst players, creative or not…

Personally, though, I’d pay for a Skritt.

Rabe.2456:

In Soviet Tyria…

Oh well played sir, well played…

Zietlogik.6208:

noone likes zerging…its boring

Zietlogik.6208:

A personal note, I would like many of these to contain a barrier of entry of some sort, to prevent the mass zerg mentality.

A lot of outspoken posters voice this opinion, and it’s totally understandable- but it isn’t universal. Plenty of people like zergs, including me. I wouldn’t want it to be the only type of content around, but it can be a fun break from more serious stuff.

Just sayin’. I guess what I mean is, please try to remember that one person’s “boring” is another person’s “relaxing”.

Anyway, while I hope there are always fun zergs from time to time, GW2 really shines for me when the devs focus on content that is massive, cooperative, yet still accessible. I have to put the Marionette fight among the fights I’ve been most impressed by in an MMO, for example. I also wouldn’t mind seeing a little WvW play into the living story somehow, if it can be in an optional way that won’t make pure PvE players feel forced to participate. Maybe something in parallel with the main story, for example, maybe a more brutal, less heroic side of events.

About the only type of content I have no interest in is 5-man instanced content. I got bored of that in other MMO’s a long, long time ago…. and with GW2’s lack of party roles I have to say it’s not the game’s strongest suit anyway. Probably any chapter that focuses on a 5-man I’m just going to skip.

Talyn Sneider.1825:

First of all thanks for listening to us, means a lot to know that you’re listening.

Heck yeah! I’ve never seen another major MMO story team so obviously engaged. It is absolutely awesome. (And frankly it encourages me to spend more money on the game too, just for the record. Tell that to your BA’s, would ya?)

Talyn Sneider.1825:

-We can have ranks in the army based on our achievements or account points, this allows us to feel more engaged with our characters
-The dialog can refer to us by our rank, oh i heard about the infantry that lost so many fighting the elder dragon, welcome back my friend, i cant believe you are now an arch mage, you sacrificed much to achieve this, etc…

This is a darn good idea, and I’ll add to it:

What if you had your actors voice a nickname based on each title? (Naturally you’d do it for a ton of possible future titles too, so you could get it done all in a session to contain expenses.)

For example, “Mist Runner” could probably just be voiced as-is, while “Combat Healer” might be voiced simply as “Medic” so it would flow naturally into dialogue.

Add to that a couple generic ones such as race (“Norn” or “big guy” for males of that race, “Charr” or “Legionnaire” for them, etc.), class if course, and personal story faction (“soldier”, “scholar”, “rogue”, etc.) as well as “commander” for those with the tag.

Then based on what title you currently have selected and whether you have a commander tag up, the dialogue with npc’s could rotate through some appropriate nicknames.

That would add a touch to the fun of having a title too, especially if there’s any dialogue other players can hear. And as far as Talyn’s military idea, something like that could blend in seamlessly via earned military titles.

Shiren.9532:

While I was happy to see the world recognise my actions I was uncomfortable being viewed as the one as opposed to one of the many that defeated Scarlet.

One comment on this, because there is something quite unusual about how it played out for MMO content:

Remember that you personally were the one that cornered the severely wounded Scarlet in her lair and ultimately delivered the killing blow. You literally were given the chance to use the game mechanic finisher for this, which shocked and impressed me, personally. Each character has their own version of that particular story moment, but in your personal narrative it really was you (character), and you (player) actually did hit the buttons to make it happen. To me that made it more real than the average “you killed it in a raid” tag.

I actually was really impressed with that bit of instanced content because it was a wonderful moment of existential moral ambiguity, particularly given that you (player) have very little choice in the matter, Bioshock Infinite style. (In fact it felt more than a little like the handing over of the infant in Bioshock to me.)

In the end each character’s personal narrative goes: one soldier/scholar/rogue among many, you were at the fulcrum of history at just the right moment. And at that moment you had the ruthlessness to take Scarlet’s piece off the board forever. The world will remember you for that. Your myth will grow larger than life, your role will be exaggerated, and perhaps one day long after the real you is gone you might be renowned as a hero still or perhaps revised to someone with cruel motivations. And it is all because you just happened to be the one with the sword/axe/unicorn-rainbow-shooting-greatsword-of-death in your hand at the moment where the only option seemed to be the one that ended with cold blood on the ground in front of you.

So just an alternate perspective, but that is pretty real to me- I bet there are long dead kings, presidents, and soldiers who would agree with your discomfort. Your discomfort in how you are remembered, as opposed to all that really happened, is perhaps a very believable part of your story.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Thank you. This is very kind of you to say, and it makes me very happy. We’ve worked hard to make the PC’s best friends interesting and not cookie-cutter buddies. They’re the PC’s supporting cast, and as such, all their stories affect and reflect the PC’s story—your story.

You really do some great work, seriously.

One concrete example that I bet others would agree with: in the current event you can ask Taimi about her legs. And she answers you frankly- turns out honestly she’s not doing great, but it could be a lot worse.

And it doesn’t lead to your next quest. It isn’t a plot moment. You aren’t going to change her life for her or kill a dragon to stop her illness from progressing. You just care, and she appreciates it in her own way, and you’re both just a little bit more real because of it.

That shows a lot of thought- and I for one really appreciate things like that, alongside all the big stuff.

It all comes down to the one true rule of all epic storytelling (and really almost all satisfying storytelling in general):

Everyone should be the hero of their own story. Everyone.

This is a Joseph Campbell thing. I’m not just talking players- in a perfect world of stories this would go for everyone from NPC’s dying alone in the flames of Lion’s Arch to Scarlet sitting in her lair, plotting a way to end her pain by sharing it with the world. All of them, in their own minds as they live the story of their lives, should see themselves as the hero, the protagonist, in the events unfolding around them.

That doesn’t mean we have to FOCUS on everyone, of course. We are focused on ourselves and the people close to us, so we naturally see more of our own story than the rest of the world. But every character should be built with the understanding that if the viewpoint suddenly shifted, if they took over the narration, they would be the new hero in a related story.

This doesn’t contradict MMO’s at all- on the contrary massively multiplayer gaming has the potential to fulfill the promises made by a thousand generations of mythic storytellers. Unlike movies or books, for once this is actually possible!

And it can really work when it works. I hate to bring another game into this, and I want to make sure it’s clear that I LOVE GW2, greatly admire the work of the story team, and I no longer play this other game… But one of the best examples I can point to was the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in WoW.

It was near perfection in this particular element of storytelling- especially if you created a new Death Knight. From character creation you saw a perspective of the world in which you actually made the transition from antagonist to protagonist while many others around you were doing the same. You became important, yet you were struggling to survive beside many others, increasingly trying to find your own path in a horrifying world. Then, as you joined the main story, you saw familiar faces again and again and watched as they too grew and changed, lived and died in their own struggles. Your own actions earlier would also come back to haunt you…

By the end of WotLK you saved the world and were adored and loathed by many factions- but there was never a moment in which you could do it alone. You were one of a legion but found yourself in the right place at the right time, again and again, to wrest dark power from the adversary and to make the sacrifices the world demanded to keep turning onward. It took a lot of new phasing technology and a LOT of side storylines and voice acting to make it feel natural, but it was really something to experience.

I’m not at all saying GW2 needs to copy that story or those exact techniques there. Tyria is it’s own world and GW2 is it’s own game, and both are really awesome. There are lots of reasons I’m playing this now… You already won me over. (And it’s worth remembering WoW took quite a number of years, not to mention a point of generating truly unreal revenues, before they were able to do something as ambitious and elaborate as WotLK.) But I wanted to give an example of one case, at least, where that kind of storytelling really worked. A world of many individual stories where you weren’t ever exactly at the center- just always close enough that, with enough strength and will, you could make your life (or death) count.

The big secret is: There’s really nothing odd at all with the idea that you are a hero in a world filled with heroes.

Truth is, that’s just life.

You know, with this and so many other WvW discussions it seems like what some people want is a hybrid between sPvP and WvW.

I guess… something with the flexibility and gear progression of WvW, but closer to the playstyle of sPvP. It’s hard for me to describe exactly what that latter thing means, because it’s frankly not my cup of tea, but the feeling is definitely out there.

Maybe there could be a new map, instanced like EotM, with a much smaller player cap and more reasons for people to spread out and a greater emphasis on individual and very small group tactics.

Again, not my cup of tea, but the more I lurk in this forum the more I see that there’s this in-between segment of players that seems to be unsatisfied with either free-for-all WvW or structured PvP.

Aeolus.3615:

Would be cool to a just have one world like Eve and all alliances had territory to conquer Ç_Ç

There is literally nothing more like work than EVE. WORK is less like work than EVE.