2:29 pm, October 2, 2013
171
Is the concept of a living story a good or bad thing for Guild Wars 2?
Just curious to see what others think, not just about Flame and Frost, but about the entire concept of Anet's living story as a whole. Personally, I can think of a few reasons why I'm not so sure if this is a good thing for the players.
For one thing, typically in an online game, content can be added over time and the game grows bigger and more varied. In the case of the living story, the game does not get bigger or more varied over time. It can potentially become bigger for a small period of time, but then is reverted back to its previous state after it's over. Any resources being spent creating content intended to be temporary is taking away from resources that could be spent on permanent content. Over time, this could create quite a bit of content that gets added and taken away, and in the end, not really increasing the total content that the game offers. This is especially noteworthy for anyone who either takes breaks, or anyone who is thinking of buying Guild Wars 2 in the future. Imagine if you got into Guild Wars late, only to find that "War in Kryta," "Winds of Change," and "Hearts of the North" were all temporary events, rather than permanent additions to the game. That the developers actually put in the time to create more content for the game you are currently playing, but have decided to remove it. I'm actually one of those people, and I'm very happy that they weren't temporary, because I found them very enjoyable and it would have been a little disappointing if I never got to experience that content.
The other thing that I'm not much a fan of, is that if content added is only temporary, then the legacy of this game is lost over time. If there's a story that you find particularly cool or interesting, or a dungeon or instance that you want to replay or show to a friend or (in the case of a new player) experience for the first time, you can't. You can always go back and experience the content that Anet decides to leave in the game, but are not given the option to experience all of the content. I fully expect to see events from that story removed from the open world, but would it not make sense to leave the instances in the game in order to allow people to replay past events that they may have found enjoyable? They've already been created, all of the work is done. It seems a shame to just throw it out after a short period of time, only to begin working on the next instances and dungeons which will subsequently also be thrown out in a constant cycle.
But that is just my opinion. What do you guys think of the whole concept?
For one thing, typically in an online game, content can be added over time and the game grows bigger and more varied. In the case of the living story, the game does not get bigger or more varied over time. It can potentially become bigger for a small period of time, but then is reverted back to its previous state after it's over. Any resources being spent creating content intended to be temporary is taking away from resources that could be spent on permanent content. Over time, this could create quite a bit of content that gets added and taken away, and in the end, not really increasing the total content that the game offers. This is especially noteworthy for anyone who either takes breaks, or anyone who is thinking of buying Guild Wars 2 in the future. Imagine if you got into Guild Wars late, only to find that "War in Kryta," "Winds of Change," and "Hearts of the North" were all temporary events, rather than permanent additions to the game. That the developers actually put in the time to create more content for the game you are currently playing, but have decided to remove it. I'm actually one of those people, and I'm very happy that they weren't temporary, because I found them very enjoyable and it would have been a little disappointing if I never got to experience that content.
The other thing that I'm not much a fan of, is that if content added is only temporary, then the legacy of this game is lost over time. If there's a story that you find particularly cool or interesting, or a dungeon or instance that you want to replay or show to a friend or (in the case of a new player) experience for the first time, you can't. You can always go back and experience the content that Anet decides to leave in the game, but are not given the option to experience all of the content. I fully expect to see events from that story removed from the open world, but would it not make sense to leave the instances in the game in order to allow people to replay past events that they may have found enjoyable? They've already been created, all of the work is done. It seems a shame to just throw it out after a short period of time, only to begin working on the next instances and dungeons which will subsequently also be thrown out in a constant cycle.
But that is just my opinion. What do you guys think of the whole concept?