Guild Wars 2: Post-Release Discussion

[Arcana]

Temple of the Silent Storm week has been fun, even though i've only gotten a chance to do it for a day (stupid guild members), a huge influx of paid tourney gear on alot of players i'd say its come off as a success.

[Kuya]

Why is nobody picking up the damn orb

[Arcana]

The meta for this damn Spirit Watch map seems to be 2 ele runners with Mist Form & Ride the Lightning and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

[Celeras]

There really is tons you can do about it lol, and warriors are arguably better carriers with all the zoomzoom they have their weapons. It's a pretty great map.

And solo queued/2-teams are SO welcome its not even funny. Like 2m queues at 3:30am my time. Shoulda been like this all along.

[Sci]

Time to start backpedaling it seems.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post1548080

I’ll throw out feature wise, many of the things we’ll be doing feature wise across the first half of 2013 are typically the type of features you’d likely only see in a paid expansion traditionally. We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to do that for Guild Wars 2, and think there is something really compelling in that experience, which is really the only message we wanted folks to take from all of this. March will of course continue this tradition of free releases, major features, and of course the growth of living story as we expand its role in Gw2.

All of that being said, this is exactly why we try and avoid talking about stuff until it’s ready, if we say something early and it ends up not ending up exactly what people expect, it doesn’t work out for anyone. Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I imagine it’ll still get quoted until the end of time, but hope that helps explain where it came from, and what to expect. Just to re-iterate the post I made back in January:

“To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.”

Even with number of new features, I still wouldn't consider Jan/Feb anywhere near "expansion" levels. And with statements like this, I doubt March will be much better.

[Celeras]

Idk man. Two new PvP maps, new tournament bracket and PvP skins, Fractals/ascended, Laurels & expanded dailies, Guild missions/commendations, several jumping puzzles aside from the ones in guild missions, slow moving living story (which barely counts as anything yet but I hope it ramps up as I love the premise). Next month we already know about a new XP bar for WvW progression ranks/abilities.

I've paid for expansions with a level increase and not much else.

[ClarkSammich]

I think it's pretty subjective, and I don't like their terminology. For some people, these three months (including what we get in March if it's roughly the same size) will be "an expansion's worth of content". To me, it's fixing the game. Once all the underlying issues are fixed and they start releasing content that isn't still fixing launch bugs and replacing poorly designed systems, we'll see.

[Celeras]

Definitely subjective, but all I know is that every patch since Halloween has changed how I play/what I do, and my character feels nowhere near finished. I know some people got sick of stuff pretty quickly, but I'm not in that boat. I still have tons of personal goals, all of which are currently delayed because I'm loving spirit watch.

[Kuishen]

I think people are just comparing it to GW1, where both boxed expansions had an entirely new continent to explore, 12 or 26 (? I forgot how many missions Nightfall had) new missions with Normal Mode and Hard Mode, as well as tons and tons of new quests, new pvp modes, new classes, new monsters, new armor sets etc.

So if you are comparing it to GW1 expansions then yeah people are gonna be disappointed, but considering having played XI for 5 years I'm very satisfied with the amount of content being released thus far, I still hope they plan on doing boxed expansions that are on the same caliber as the GW1 boxed expansions of course.

I still don't think they should be releasing as much broken content as they do but even that's gotten better over the past few months.

The rest is all subjective to opinion on whether or not you like the content (for instance me hating how many time-wasters they put into AC). Pretty much my only problem with anything they've ever added to the game was the implementation, I love all of the core ideas of all the of content that has been released thus far, but they've definitely failed at implementing a few of them. Time wasters in AC, Agony being a straight up gear check, soulbound RNG bullshit minis.

[ClarkSammich]

There's some ye olde bullshit in regards to them doing Cantha in GW2 unfortunately, I think they'll look elsewhere first for boxed expansions. That big sink hole in Divinity's Reach was the Canthan district, and it used a mix of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese architecture/style, which didn't fly in those markets apparently. They took it out because people responded so negatively to the culture mixing, and we got a big hole they can make a story around instead. I'd almost rather see Elona first tbh, the whole African/Mediterranean thing is real neat, and I think they could do a great job with it.

[Arcana]

Elona would make sense to come first in this game, Kralkatorik sits in the Crystal Desert and can easily become part of the problem in that region along with palawa joko, cantha is essentially a black hole of information at this moment, we might start to see more canthan influence coming in because Zhaitan is dead.

[Kuishen]

I think Jormag is gonna be the next dragon we face because he's honestly more of a threat, his influence is seen in way more zones than Kralk's and while Destiny's Edge has a personal beef with Kralk, I don't think they're gonna go for him yet based on how their last fight went. Plus Jormag's champion Icebrood Shaman was the first dragon champion Destiny's Edge beat.

As long as Kralk isn't active I'd say Destiny's Edge is going to want to move on Jormag next.

[Arcana]

It was pretty much hinted in the "mission complete" that Jormag was going to be the next dragon, the living story looks like its pointing towards Jormag's influence moving south and can probably see the living story as the story leading to new stories (in about a years time we might see some Branded creatures attacking Ebonhawk and the Black Citadel). The question is Will a weapon forged in Deldrimor steel be able to hurt the dragon? or is it going to be shit like Zhaitan?

[Kuya]

Not terribly excited with this dragons plot, particularly because it looks like Rift's plot superficially. Plus i'm tired of dragons.

[ClarkSammich]

Little known fact: The primary story team for Guild Wars 2 did not work on the plot the game was released with. They were appropriated elsewhere during development and plot we have was thrown together by whoever else was available.

Edit: I meant story the game was released with; the actual "plot" as it were has been around since GW1, but the actual events and dialogue etc of the story was not done by their story team.

[arus2001]

Not terribly excited with this dragons plot, particularly because it looks like Rift's plot superficially. Plus i'm tired of dragons.

Even Rift's plot as related to the dragons is fucking farce. Majority of the time you're just picking on reskinned minions while anyone seeking any kind of plot resolution is forced to raid, and raids have never been good avenues of storytelling with everyone just wanting to rush and kill.

[Lucavi]

Dunno why every MMO IP these days has to always be about freakin' dragons anyway. I mean yes, Dungeons and Dragons; sure, pay an homage and such. But christ, can we move somewhere else? Can we have some other kind of Big Bad? Sargeras has all kinds of flaws, but at least he's not a fucking dragon.

[arus2001]

Eh, dragons are kind of the pinnacle of mythical beasts for our culture. While dipping back into Greek/Roman lore could give you lots of potential bads, usually their related tales point out glaring weaknesses along the way. Dragons have seemingly lacked the sort of Achilles heel even certain depictions have tried to create one. Of course, there are other cultures that can be tapped into, but I imagine they'd suffer the similar "better off a minion" problem in a lot of cases. Perhaps it's best to say humans would make the best villains, both in inviting sympathy and disdain, but killing some giant dragon is just cooler, yoz~

There's a part of me that feels MMOs would be better off we veered away from "Save the world!" type plots. But a certain element of player involvement would be needed for this more akin to political intrigue or general exploration.

[Kuishen]

Bitches love dragons.

[Corrderio]

Dragons are fine and all, but I'd love to see more on other enemies. Such as destroyers. Or to be more specific, the one that drove the Asura from their underground homes.