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Flameseeker Chronicles: Learning from Tyria's past in Guild Wars 2
The latest Guild Wars 2 living world release, Echoes of the Past, seems to be a big hit. It's nice to see fans so unreservedly happy with an update since the past few months have been a little rocky for GW2, but ArenaNet has hit it out of the park this time. If you haven't gotten a chance to play it yet, I strongly recommend checking it out before reading further, if possible. There are spoilers below the cut, and hardly anybody likes spoilers. Except me: the guy who flips to the end of the book sometimes. I'm a monster.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The true nature of Guild Wars 2's Sylvari
Remember last week, when I made a comment about how neat the little touches in Guild Wars 2's Gates of Maguuma release are? Stuff like a vine poking at a waypoint in Dry Top and making it spark? Hey, it was actually kind of cute! Aww, the big fella probably doesn't know what a waypoint is. Maybe he's hungry. Those aren't for snacking on, you silly vine. Right. Well, hide your Miracle-Gro because more vines are now spreading eastward across the waypoint network. As of this writing they've gotten as far as Lion's Arch, which as we all know hasn't seen enough trouble lately. Some of them have even fully entangled the floating waypoint doodlehoppers, growing larger in the process. So I may have been right about the snack part, but that doesn't exactly bode well. What exactly is going on?
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's Gates of Maguuma is a leap forward
A few months passed between season one of Guild Wars 2's living world story and the start of season two, and the first content release of the new arc was going to have to make a big splash, no matter what it turned out to contain. Fans grumbled warily about the chances of being asked to repair road signs for weeks while waiting for the meat of the story, and ArenaNet played its cards close to the vest. Teasers, speculation, and season one recaps were all we had to quench our thirst for GW2's second season. We were parched, moving endlessly through a vast wasteland of -- wait, there's a metaphor here. Hold on, it's coming to me. Anyway, we've been delivered to an oasis: The Gates of Maguuma are open, and we've taken our first steps into a new region of Tyria. Along with several other media representatives, I was invited to take a developer-led tour of the new Dry Top zone and story content. Does it live up to the anticipation? The answer necessarily contains spoilers, so read on at your peril, mortal.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Let the Guild Wars 2 season two speculation begin
The new car smell has worn off Guild Wars 2's feature pack, which is great because it's not a car and that was getting a little weird. Whatever your opinion might be on GW2's living world, players have gotten used to biweekly content updates, and while it's refreshing to have a break every now and then, people are starting to draw comparisons to drought conditions while scavenging for any hints as to what might be coming next. ArenaNet has been busy with the Chinese beta and feature pack release, but letting us roll around like tumbleweeds for a bit is probably a good way to dry up any lingering burnout from the first part of the Scarlet arc. In the aftermath of the Battle for Lion's Arch, we were nevertheless left with a lot of information to sift through and a few pointers as to where the story might take us next. At the very least we have enough to fuel speculation, which is my second favorite pastime (right after fearing people off of cliffs in Edge of the Mists).
Flameseeker Chronicles: Why Guild Wars 2 shouldn't replicate Destiny's wedge
When I look back at a year of Guild Wars 2 releases, one thing stands out to me: I really like Kasmeer, Braham, Marjory and Rox, and I'm not alone. ArenaNet's four newest iconic heroes have remained steadfastly popular in the midst of other criticism of GW2's living story. They're not universally popular -- no character is -- but you can usually count on their dialogue and characterization prompting appreciative threads and analysis. At the start of the Tower of Nightmares release, a few of my friends even linked to a forum post that theorized that Kasmeer might die (she didn't), and were deeply concerned until Wintersday came around. "ANet had better not," one of them said heatedly. "If Kas or Jory die, I'll quit." While the iconics of the personal story and dungeon story modes, Destiny's Edge, have their fans, I've never heard anyone threaten to uninstall if one of them shuffles off to the Mists, even after a long history and a novel dedicated to their exploits. I think the main reason is that it's a lot easier to respect characters and want to be around them when you aren't left feeling like the only adult in the room.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Who watches Guild Wars 2's watchknights?
A few weeks ago, I covered a few possibilities for the direction of the Guild Wars 2 patch that was known at the time as The Queen's Speech, now revealed to actually be Clockwork Chaos. The majority of it didn't pan out, which is to be expected when engaging in wild mass guessing; I'll be a little disappointed if ArenaNet has really decided to retcon the hints it previously set up around the Great Collapse, but we know that the Crown Pavilion Arena will probably be revisited at some point and there's always a chance for things to go wrong in lots of different ways. The plus side is that Scarlet Briar is exactly the kind of villain GW2 has been hurting for, and her presence on the playing field is opening up all kinds of potential directions for the plot. Behind the cut are spoilers for this chapter of the living story as well as Scott McGough's short story What Scarlet Saw. Join me in the depths of hopeless nerditude and let's discuss the new lore elements this release has introduced!
Guild Wars 2 weaves together three story types
ArenaNet Continuity and Lore Designer Jeff Grubb claims that there are three types of stories that players will encounter in Guild Wars 2, and he's written up an informative post explaining how the team has woven these tales into the game. "This is an underlying theme of the game -- people coming together and cooperating to fight a greater foe," Grubb explains. The first type is what he calls Story of the World. This is the over-arching narrative that deals with the biggest threat to the world (the Elder Dragons) and how it is to be countered. ArenaNet chose to use dynamic events to tell these stories so that players are gradually made aware of the threat. The second story type is your personal one, which tells of your own rise to power, fame, and glory in a variety of ways. Finally, there's the story of the five central iconic characters in the game (Destiny's Edge) and how they relate to you and each other.
