Guild Wars 2

Scarlets Legacy will be that players will tolerate the flimsiest, shoddiest excuse for a storyline if enough horrific looking backpieces are doled out.

It is a bodysuit. If you are reading more into it than that, I feel sorry for you.
Please note the only “skin” showing is her face.

Sirendor.1394:

Is that a new race?? Lore-wise these armour sets are impossible.

The “lore” ship has sailed and then sunk.

If the 6 gods can be McCoy’d anything is fair game.

Female Svanir/Icebrood

new chest and leggings, norn cultural, glad.

Punctuation would please a few.

Vick.6805:

MastaNeenja.1537:

If it disappeared tomorrow I wouldn’t mind. Tried it for a year not really my thing. I would however pay good money for a nice campaign or expansion. Kinda sad when you think about it, a year after Prophecies was released they put out Factions. What do we have a year after GW2 was released? Well if you weren’t there to see it you may never know.

^ this

In a year content was added to GW1. Here, content is removed in favor of shoddy temporary failures.

No matter what destruction Anet scripts Scarlet to perform, at the end of it she is still a laughable cardboard cutout.

Haven’t checked the bay yet, but it appears Scarlets Super UFO drill has removed the last vestige of GW1 LA.

I have a feeling that the Tengu will be slaughtering anyone that comes near their precious gate, refugees or not.

Odds are if that is indeed what happens, as they hinted, you will all be able to thank the Scarlet Saga for closing the door to a playable Tengu race for a very long time.

I don’t think even McCoy’s amazing retcon powers would be able to clear the extreme animosity between races this will cause.

The irony is delicious to me. Everyone cheering the destruction of LA as clearing the way for Tengu will possibly find it has done just the opposite.

From what I read looks like the zone will have a timed enviromental effect, miasma, that will just kill you, event or not.

looks like exploring the zone will have to be done in stages.

Thankfully, I am not bothering.

Sure, why not. It’s all about Scarlet. She did all the machinations to supposedly wake the dragon unhindered by anyone, so, for sure, at the end have her do a 180 and kill it all by herself as well.

And we can watch. Like a TV show. Who needs us for anything but scene decoration.

And what better way to tell us how unimportant we are to THE STORY than to cheat us of any role in finally taking her down.

zamalek.2154:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

leaving a large part of the game living in the past with no connection to current events.

The only problematic one is Tequatl the Sunless – and that can be waived as you never actually see it die, the very most we know is that we lopped off its tail (hence, it could be out-living Zhaitan).

All the rest remain relevant.

Seriously? I suggest you spend a bit more time looking at NPC dialog, Reading text, and paying attention. I can guarantee you Lion Guards and the havens will still be shipping goods to LA, that NPCs will be talking about it pre-destruction, and the bulk of the world will go on blissfully unaware of this update. Ft Trinity won’t care, the Vigil babysitting cannons in Frostgorge won’t care, the Majority of the world won’t care.

In short, it is not going to be a “world” altering event. It will be a zone makeover with bits of fallout.

Yes, they can go “back in time” for PS.

But are we to now assume huge chunks of the non-instanced game are now in the past as well? If prior releases are any indication, there will be little to no integration of the new content with existing content, leaving a large part of the game living in the past with no connection to current events.

GG writers.

According to the latest info, you will be logging in to a city already taken and a deed already done.

Good luck with those symbolic gestures.

And here I was thinking “Send in the Clowns”

There will be no DEv2 so why belabor the point?

Avascar.9237:

They’re mail.

Mail, not exactly real-time NPC dialogue.

There is more real time npc dialog than mail actually. I get that people don’t care, why not just state that? Furthermore, how does it being Mail invalidate it?

I’m betting that Anet knows that people don’t care as well. Too bad.

All of the hype about the “new” things they have done which were not new at all, but this depth of NPC trade infrastructure is something I’ve never seen done in any MMO, much less so integrated and so well done. It explained and supported the very premise of LA very well and did so much more than plunking an NPC city down and declaring “here be trade, yaar”

But ok, scrap it all. No one cares. Most are positive they “might” get a new back item which ofc far outweighs any loss of continuity or disconnected lore in game. Jeez, there might even be a Mini!!!! With particle effects!!!

Perhaps a giant wooden badger marionette?

Legions of Risen Ambient Creatures with a real grudge?

The RNG becomes self aware?

Some sort of Pirates. Pirates are always good. Perhaps the Arch Pirate or Uber Pirate.

Oh, I know, an Arch Pirate bitten by a radioactive spider from Scarlets fall out. SpiderPirate. With legions of Skritt/spider drachnids. Skriders.

Skriders on the storm.. dooo dooodo doo….

This is a terribly cruel suggestion. I’m not a fan of the current writing team, but even I would not subject them to the crushing humiliation of presenting this story to a reputable publishing house.

eleshazar.6902:

I keep wondering why people think that LA is going away on account of this update, or is being changed in such a drastic manner. I know that we are going to get invaded, but people are just automatically assuming that what is happening is going to alter in such a way as that it will affect everything.

Never once has it been confirmed that LA will be destroyed, or even altered at all as a result of Scarlett’s attack…. It could be, but we just don’t know.

TLDR; Hold your horses before you make an kitten out of you and me.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/11/prepare-to-escape-from-lions-arch-in-guild-wars-2s-next-conten/

This is why people think that.

The trouble with the CDI topics is, they do not want input. They want feedback on what they have already decided to do.

And then they paint themselves into a corner with no way out.. as this LS illustrates very well.

I think people are unfortunately ignorant of just how well crafted the whole “LA as trade Center” idea was done. It is big, well thought out, makes sense, and shows the Lionguard and havens as a totally apolitical entity only concerned with that trade. It really is one of the stars of the game as launched. “Commerce beats Combat”

Oh well, click through dialog, don’t read letters, don’t pay attention to flavor chat. I understand that. Players do that in every game.

What I won’t be able to forgive is if Anet throws this all out.. because they DO know it is there. I cannot fathom them stomping all over their own creation as they did on a much smaller scale in Kessex. Kessex was just more visible.. they have done it in every update but it was always temporary.

Nothing about LS is worth this kind of lore and continuity loss.

The only mystery to me is the sheer amount of bad plot GW2 players will swallow whole.

goldenwing.8473:

PeterThomas.7243:

goldenwing.8473:

ANet has said repeatedly that this is THEIR game. They have total control over the vision, the direction, the content, etcetera.

The players can accept what the developers are doing, tolerate it, or walk away.

You are, of course correct.

It just makes me sad.

The level of quality that the game offered at launch compared to what the Living Story offers us now are like night and day. I only keep playing because there’s still enough repeatable core content that interests me (for now).

I could not possibly agree more.

At release, this game had me as excited as a kid at Christmas. That is not something I could say about any other MMO I have played in over 14 years. Then, it seemed, slowly, after about January 2013, something changed, and patch after patch, the quality appeared to downward spiral.

My guild enjoys the 5-man content and mobile combat, along with most of WvW.

The original artwork and graphics for this game are superb.

The story writing since LS first went in just makes us wince. And what could be construed as a desperate ploy for attention grabbing by destroying LA …

…well…. that just makes us sad.

PS: When you realize that ANet will do what it wants, for whatever reason, that the Dungeon Master appears to be acting capriciously and arbitrarily, without regard to consequences, without regard for consistency within their own lore, then what trust is there left for any sense of game integrity? I suspect that if it suited ANet, there would be no reason to retain ANY of the characters from LA (council, Evon, etcetera).

No amount of logic (from customers trying to reason out who/what will survive and what will happen next) will hold in the face of ANet’s demonstrated behavior. (Perhaps they want it that way.)

At this point, nothing they do would surprise me. Including destorying their own game.

This sums up how I feel very nicely. This game is devolving, and the current Anet team seems to delight in destroying their own creations and lore to prove something.

They may well be remembered for doing what no mmo has done before, they desperately seem to want this.. but will it be a Pyrrhic victory?

The ownership thing is beyond anything I have seen in 14 years myself as well, to the point of not even allowing client side UI and graphic options. The constant prodding to do what they feel we should be doing. CDI threads that bluntly put some development decisions “off the table”. Then the whole “we think most players are bad so we made Marionette and Jungle worm to make you get better” attitude of the last chapter.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

That interview aside, there’s also the matter of the other races, such as the Mursaat and Forgotten, who also used magic. And that was long before the Bloodstones. So you don’t need a redcon from the writers in an interview to deduce that the Bloodstones can’t be the only source of magic on Tyria.

Interesting contrast to what you said 6 months ago in the linked topic.

“But what the interview implies, is that basically we could use magic whether the Gods removed it or not. Since magic is also possible without the bloodstones. Now we know that there was magic use before the bloodstones. But Prophecies is pretty clear on the source of human magic. You can’t just redcon all of Guild Wars 1 in one breath. Because that’s basically what such a statement is. It also diminishes the power of the human Gods, making them seem pretty insignificant.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Angel-McCoy-Interview/first

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Because a few lines by a single writer in an obscure interview re magic.. on a French gaming site.. trumps years of lore development.

/golfclaps

I have no idea what you are on about, but it’s simple logic. Just reading the GW timeline and using common sense, you know that the Bloodstones by definition can’t be the only source of magic on Tyria. The Elder Dragons themselves ooze magic, and they predate the Bloodstones by thousands of years.

Besides, we know that the Elder Dragons feed on magic, and that many ancient races have fought them and lost. Were the Elder Dragons on a magic-diet back then, and waiting for the human Gods to make them breakfast?

The sole source of Dragons feeding on magic, the ley lines, and that the old lore was “mistaken” is that single 2013 interview and a followup on these forums to rebut criticism of it, by the same writer followed by an extensive retcon of the Wiki.

http://esprits-dorr.fr/node/261

Because a few lines by a single writer in an obscure interview re magic.. on a French gaming site.. trumps years of lore development.

/golfclaps

I’m not happy with it since I am positive it will be poorly done as far as actually affecting the world as it should. It will be just more content shoved on top of the existing world content with no consideration of impact.. like they did in Kessex but on a pretty much game-wide scale.

There is so much chat and flavor text alluding to LA and trade throughout the game. The entire premise of the Havens and LionGuard out in the world zones is entirely connected to LA and trade route protection.

Hearts, Flavor text, dialog.. just a ton of in game information and lore connected to LA as it is now. If they leave all of that unchanged.. and given their track record they will, then we will have, again, NPCs and institutions blissfully unaware of LA destruction, living in the past, and what should be a world shaking event becomes simply a disconnected zone makeover like Kessex.

If they are going to present this as half-done, it shouldn’t have been done at all.
I would like to think they did address this.. but I have Zero confidence that they even bothered. They haven’t previously.

I pity the future new players who listen to NPCs, read flavor text, read the hearts, and wonder why so much effort is being made to move trade to a City that no longer exists, and why NPCs keep acting as if nothing happened.

A small example.

lordkrall.7241:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Like the Great Destroyer, Jormag’s Claw, Svanir and every other Dragon Champion we have met….

To be fair there seems to be several different levels of Champions.

Morgus Lethe for one seemed quite a bit more powerful than Svanir for one. Or TGD for that matter.

And since we don’t know anything about Mordremoth we can’t really know how much its corruption would effect the target.

Morgus Lethe was a character in a book, and a short paragraph in the Wiki. Far less than that in game. As far as I am concerned, non-existent. Furthermore, he was who he was prior to corruption, and corruption only made what he knew dangerous.

Morgus Lethe did not become who he was by being a Dragon Champion as was suggested re Scarlet. He was an important Captain of Lions Arch, full of knowledge about that all on his own. Only his corruption made that knowledge dangerous.

But w/e, not important. Scarlet will end up being whoever and whatever they want her to be, and loyal fans will explain away and fill up the gaping maws in the story with rationalization and retcon, tossing in a few more “ley lines” for good measure.

inazuma.7021:

Scarlet being a Dragon Champion could explain why she’s so darn good at everything. Doing all three Asuran colleges, etc. You know, all the reasons her haters call her a Mary Sue.

Like the Great Destroyer, Jormag’s Claw, Svanir and every other Dragon Champion we have met….

But then again, Lore consistency is not a strong point in LS. Still, Scarlet will be whatever they write her to be regardless of gaping plot holes.

This writing team is too prone to suggestions from the Kewl Idea Fairy.

Of course she is a genius, she can pod race, fix any mechanical device, build robots, quip with the adults like mad and her miti….

Oh wait. That’s another Adorably Precocious kid.

NM. Trope is Trope

lordkrall.7241:

I am rather sure they DID comment on it, when this was brought up soon after release.
And they basically said something along the lines that they wanted it to feel more epic, and thus made it require a group instead of going in solo.

I’ll see if I can find the post again, but I seem to recall that it was something like that.

And yet the overwhelming feeling is.. it is NOT epic. Since that is the case, why not a soloable version?

Simply requiring 5 people to faceroll does NOT make “epic”, regardless of their intent.

I think the fact of the matter is the blunt force application of “This is how we want you to play” and it permeates all facets of the game.. they were pretty blunt about it when explaining the new boss fights.

The Sylvari use the contrived theatrical Mid Atlantic english.

Standard treatment of many high elf-like races unfortunately.

Already moved on. No point dragging it out.

An absolute failure to me. There is no sense of personal accomplishment, since the events roll out to a preconceived ending that requires Zero input from anyone. Oh, sure, you can participate.. but you won’t change anything, the story will auto-complete, and next episode will launch regardless.

In the campaign storylines of GW1, to finish a story completely meant doing it completely, personally. From beginning to end. If you failed a step, you stopped progress until completed. You had control of the pace, and the completeness of added bonus steps if you wished. When you finished, you knew that the sole factor of that finish was YOUR efforts. (not talking about content skipping runners BTW)

If a step in the story was annoying, hard, frustrating there was no “oh well, I’ll just wait 2 weeks”. There were no awards for failing a mission enough times to somehow get an achievement for it ala Marionette.

I think over time this kind of pre-ordained temporary content will hit the scrap heap of MMO Gaming. I think that people will come to realize that nothing they do really matters or changes anything except what back piece they wear.

Living dynamic events are best when building tangible items that do change the world, as the world events that brought in 2 races, transportation systems, guild halls, worked to return the dieties, and other improvements to Everquest 2. Living events are best when things are added to the world, not when wreaking destruction upon zones and leaving ugly messes and disconnected, meaningless events for new players to go WTF and scratch their heads over. (and try it, only to find out that regardless of new player zone, it is far from new player content)

I really don’t even see this as “Living” content. It is episodic content, temporary, fixed, immutable, unchangeable, and unresponsive to player input.

A good example of Living content is the final months of SWG. My server, one of the few, finished Imperial. We murdered the ewoks on Endor, we crushed the Rebellion efforts, and completely built the 2nd Death Star.. all by player effort. Other servers finished Alliance.. with the canon results, again by player effort.

And bringing up SWG.. I had the good fortune to experience the original, sandbox game that Koster designed. Truly a living world, since players made the Civil War content, the cities, the vehicles.. if it was great armor, a player made it. If you wanted a buff, a player did it. Everything was player made, and resources changed so that no one could stay static and still compete. There was co-dependence on hunters, miners, and originally very very few quests. Cities grew, and cities died, power changed, landscape changed.. all by player activity. Every sentient in game had faction that could change with how players acted towards them. You landed in that game with no golden path, with a survival knife, bad clothes, a melon and a few creds and from that point what you did made your world, and your story.

People don’t want that. People don’t want the reality of an actual “Living World”. People want scripts, paths, steps, and shiny carrots on a stick. Do this.. Get this.

The only change Anet has made it that the carrot changes frequently, and can’t be repeated.

Why set your sights so low when asking for redonkulos? You should always include a T Rex

I have never bought the idea that heroes “ruined” GW1.

Grouping with players was never removed. Seems that it just became the less popular option.

Heroes never “forced” players to use them.

If GW1 was somehow “ruined” it was players who did it. When not forced to group with players, many, and perhaps the majority, chose not to. It was player choice that destroyed " pug grouping" in GW1.

I’ll never accept that “pugging” is the preferred option when it has to be forced by game mechanics.

WvW is the only “Living” and actual dynamic content in game.

After defeating every player char, every dragon and placing a gigantic statue of herself as Supreme Empress Being of All, Scarlet will break the 4th wall.

She will go to Disney World, broker a movie deal with Disney, and somehow get Cinderella renamed “Scarlet”

After.. she will move in with Charlie Sheen, continue “winning” and live a rich and famous lifestyle from product endorsements and her wildly popular talk show.. “Lets Talk about Me”

In her free time she will earn the Nobel and Pulitzer, as well as doctorates in every discipline that offers them.

No clue what she has planned for the 2nd Month.

timidobserver.7925:

MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online. Being anti-social and playing solo is your choice, but the MMO portion is where the development focus should be.

1. Calling others “antisocial” because of a simple choice in how they play is not an argument, it’s an insult.

2. Stop dragging out the MMO argument. Garriot coined the term to describe UO.. the first game that actually allowed thousands of players to log on simultaneously. It does not mean “forced to group”. Sure, Anet removed the “forced to group” mechanic for DEs… but many remain as “forced to have other people in the area” to complete.

It isn’t even a matter of the content being “hard”. Most of the time it is just respawn rate and utterly useless NPCs. Some DE are just too tedious to bother with, for example.. rezzing 12 Hylek in Timberline Falls, which usually requires rezzing twice that number as they die faster than you can rez. Or the Manor you defend in Genaddaran, 8 mins of pirates from multiple directions and guards that die if glared at. Not hard, just frustrating when solo.. and in these zones, on my server.. that is most of the time.

The grandfather of all “group or die, M in MMO” games, Everquest, now has hireable mercenary “heroes”. The fabric of the Universe did not unravel.

Allowing mercenary/hero companion is possibly the simplest fix for declining participation in low level zones, an issue with all games with traditional level systems.

Even a system like the Fire Imp pet in GW1 that becomes unusable at a certain level would work.

I doubt given the current direction of this game we will ever see anything like Hero/Mercenaries. In spite of the rhetoric of play your way, in actual practice this game attempts to force people into activities and singular playstyles more than any other MMO I have played in more than a decade.

This is an example of what I mean. Two hearts from one Haven area, just as an example. These kind of references are common in all of the areas that have Havens and Lionguard commerce protectors.

Will all of this be changed to reflect the “living world” or will it be assumed that all of this content is now “historical” like the Personal Story.

I somehow don’t see Southsun as the location for a hub city for Tyrian Commerce.. you know, that silly function LA has, game wise.

Why not. The whole thing is going to official “historical mode” anyway. If we can do PS in a zone that no longer exists surely portals can also be used to replay the stories.

I wish we could have portaled to the Kessex story steps.

“Oh, my, my Sister seems to be held in a Bandit Cave guarded by a Gigantic Toxic Spider Queen nobody mentioned….”

The story for that zone now also lies in the past and I prefer to avoid “new Kessex” if I possibly can.

Vol.7601:

Vigil keep makes the most sense lore and gameplay wise.

How, in either sense? It is a military keep, and while they may be able to support some refugee population outside the walls, it is in no way adequate to assume the role of a major player hub and trade center.

Gameplay? Go look how big it is, and get back to me. Unless the plan to put all of this in Gendarran zone/external keep.

It makes no sense at all. It is just “convenient”.

Living World.

I sincerely hope the festivals are gone. You know. Living World. Nothing is off the Table. Change. Consequences. blah blah blah. All of the stirring reasons people use to point out that destroying LA is just “peachy”.

My eventual hope is that each and every player so happy to see content destroyed or removed loses some part of the game they care about as well.

Nothing is off the table.. see?

Throw out all of the rationalizations. It is a script, done by an obtuse playwright who refuses to think the creation is not the greatest story told.

Players are not failing. They are performing their bit part in this sorry melodrama and receiving compensation for doing so, as any extra would. There is no succeed or fail. Only following the script, or choosing to walk away. Neither option will impact the script in any manner.. if you walk away, no compensation. That is it.

Scarlet always wins because that is the part written for her. Period. Player action or inaction has nothing to do with it.

Ashabhi.1365:

This is the first time I can remember in all of the games I have played that the most important hub of activity will be destroyed. From what I gather, even the PS chapters that are in LA will be changed.

Do I think LA will endure in some form or other? Yes, I do. I think at some point it may be rebuilt, just not how it is now.

In response to the OP:
I really don’t think that they are trying to completely sever ties with GW1. I think they’re actually trying to get us to do something we haven’t done for a while. They are trying to make us CARE about what happens. By reading the forums, I think they succeeded.

Yeah, well I suppose I could also make my neighbor “care” by burning his garage down but I doubt there would be a positive outcome.

Sirius.4510:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I doubt that 200 plus years of isolationism has somehow moderated the views of the majority of Tengu. The vast bulk of them hated humanity and there is nothing remotely hinted that would have changed that.

It’s not really clear that was true except for the Sensali tribe (which may or may not still exist). We never learned the motivations of the Tyrian tribes except that the Caromi were possibly bandits – there was a quest that involved them stealing stuff – and never saw the Elonian tribes. Quetzal would kill trespassers of any race (even skelk, as far as I recall) on sight, but it wasn’t clear why.

Currently the wall guards are apparently mostly Caromi. So, something has clearly changed, even if it’s just that they now have territory to defend.

Angchu were the only Tengu that did not have KOS reaction to my Human chars. Regardless of motivation Sensali, Avicara, Coromi, Quetzal, were very aggressive and very hostile, no exceptions. The vast majority of Tengu in GW attacked on sight, and in spite of the apparent ability to communicate I can only think of one hostile Tengu that ever did. So I will stand by my opinion that they were in the main a xenophobic, hostile race, judging from the actions of the huge majority of Tengu in GW. And again, I fail to see how isolation would have tempered this.

All I can think of is the line from Spaceballs.

bluestocking.6148:

Xyonon.3987:

I wondered that too. I mean everyone has their personal preferences, maybe the whole team consists of many classes but only one mesmer, and that mesmer does not like the staff for example as a weapon. So it will never be balanced, allways a tiny bit weaker etc…

Horrifying nightmares of every MMO… :s

There’s over 300 people in the ArenaNet offices. I’m pretty sure every possible race/class/weapon combo is covered.

Except that the original question is “what Developers play” and not “what employees play”

aspirine.6852:

One panic or spitefull spirit would shutdown/destroy a whole zerg in WvW
Much too powerfull for this type of game.

Ah, but one can dream of tossing Panic into a Zergball. Epidemic even.

The skills that apply Torment are also pretty much a punishment Hex.