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[Editorial] Guild Wars 2: Lion's Arch is Under Attack! ...Everyone Go About Your Business
BMunchausen
Staff WriterMMORPG.COM Staff Posts: 400
Yesterday I wrote a piece loosely arguing the importance of narrative to an MMO experience. With that in mind, I thought today I'd talk about the successes (and failures) of Guild Wars 2's latest Living World episode, Escape From Lion's Arch.
Read more of Neilie Johnson's Lion's Arch is Under Attack! ...Everyone Go About Your Business
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I just checked it out this morning without looking into it to much.
As I made my way there I was like, " What the hell happened here? "
edit - I meant this response as in " oh cool everything has changed here, I should do some exploring and see what's up"
Anyway - thanks for the article.
Yeah the game sucks honestly, GW2 has good graphics, and sound as same with ESO, my problem with it is the game-play.
> Limited Crafting per character can't craft all on the fly.
> Limited Stacks of items that can be stackable in a bank making players have to buy from cash shop to expand.
> No Housng/Crafting Items for housing.
> Lack of freedom to customize have to spend spend spend in cash shop.
> Instead of using cosmetic slots you have to pay for items or buy with in game gold to customize appearance.
> Multiple Characters to play every class rather than a single character with Class Swap
> No Dual Class System
> Now finally they destroy Lions Arch, No real story to me, and ruined the game for me as if all the lack of game-play and content wasn't bad enough they go and ruin Lions Arch rather than turn it into a peaceful protected city at all times or make an instanced version with Combat where players can defend it and so on rather than destroy Lions Arch.
It really makes me angry what developers can do to a game and how bad they can ruin a great game.
"What the hell happened here?" LOL! Yeah, let's take a stroll in Lion's Arch and then WTH? Still, it's true if you missed the memo, then the rest of the world is pretty much business as usual. Lot's of death and destruction in LA though. It's quite the change from some of the less compelling living story stuff. There can be quite a bit of lag in there, but that goes with the territory.
huh, Most those things are "pluses" for me. with the exception of no housing and the stacking thing which sort of makes sense as they want to be able to make money. I realize many people like to tout the whole "b2p" thing but they still need to make money.
Sounds to me that it has less to do with "sucking" and more to do with you just wanting a different game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
They have to make money beyond the purchase price, you sound like you just completely hate that they have a cash shop, its either that or a subscription if you want to continue to see new content. Companies exist to earn a profit, and employees work to earn a paycheck.
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
Most games don't allow a single character to have all crafting professions - GW2 does even if only 2 are active at a single time, but you can easily switch for a fee without resetting and progress.
Stacks of 250 per item plus starting collectible storage of 250 that only recently was expanded to 1000 (via 3 unlocks of 250 each).
Lack of freedom to customize? What? And you can spend in game gold to purchase stuff from the cash shop.
There aren't many games that allow you to class swap and in the end the time required to obtain everything for that single character is the same has having alts in GW2.
Again dual class systems aren't wildly available and may leads to problems, like in GW1 where the Necromancer was in PvE better at playing any other caster class than the original classes themselves were, or how many classes were better ritualists or how warrior and assassin were better with scythes than the dervish.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
All the issues can be summed up with : Lack of consequences.
Live events were so great in other games because the players had a hand in it. In Asheron's Call, if your city got destroyed its because you failed to stop the villain.
In GW2, what happens is alreadydetermined, and whether or not you help won't make a single bit of difference.
Indeed AC wins that hands down. It is saying something that all these years pass and they still can't match AC for monthly events. If you are going to make a monthly event little more than a change of scenery why will players care?
If no one takes part in this, not one person, Lions Arch will look like it used to once the event finishes. How is that going to make players want to take part?
Heh, but can you seriosly imagine the outcome with consequences?
Every server struggles for the survival of LA. So on the servers LA survives, on others it is destroyed. I can not imagine this would work. At all. ^^
I rather bemoan I just can't follow the story, so I have no real clue why these things transpire, and I feel no emotional connection to the villains - and to many of the heroes as well.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Seriosly, there's ways to work around that. There's a "guesting" option, right? Have players guest over to other servers to help defend LA and be rewarded for it. If there's more servers that saved LA than servers that failed, then LA is saved. Vice versa.
Of course, that would require real work from ArenaNet. That "major patch every two weeks" thing was the most stupid idea ever.
For the most part, they've done a great job with the event. But I agree that if they're going to be ambitious in terms of implementing these world-changing events, it needs to carry through to the entire world and not just exist within an "instance." For example, I was adventuring through the Caledon Forest this past week while all of this was going on, when a group of NPC's walked past talking about heading to Lion's Arch to sell their wares. I understand that it's difficult to pick up on all of these small things, but it would have been so much cooler and much more believable if I overheard NPC's talking about the attack on Lion's Arch elsewhere in Tyria.
Something else that they need to keep in mind in future is that the event currently encourages zerging, when the point is to actually split up and save citizens. It would have perhaps been more clever if there were individual "rescue the citizens" events that groups could focus on.
Asheron's Call made it work.
As long as there is nothing you could not do if LA was out of action why can't it become a ruin? Its not like GW2 has nothing else that would serve as a hub.
Then you go to part two, for those who succeeded it is time to build up LA's defences in case of further attack. Earthen ramparts, magical sentry posts, whatever. Meanwhile on the servers where LA is a ruin, they are doing part two as well. Rebuilding Lions Arch. Much of the mechanics would be the same, and restoring the graphics that was once there helps keep the coding down.
If using something like a small village it might never get rebuilt and would serve as a testament to what happens if you don't do enough.
Well it did work but it was a group effort. There was some events in which the story was determined by the actions of the players but it was rolled to all servers. Also as noted AC was doing 30 day content pushes many of which were pretty large and they were doing it very well.
I'm sure there is nothing wrong going around the real world (like the crisis in Ukraine) and what do we do?
We sit here talking about games.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders