tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post1139089629217441516..comments2024-03-28T10:18:05.213+00:00Comments on Inventory Full: Oh, Hey! Destiny's Edge! Didn't You Guys Used To Be Famous Or Something? : GW2Bhagpusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-86406529443362061352014-08-06T22:54:40.983+01:002014-08-06T22:54:40.983+01:00They do have a few of these. Ebonhawke has a lot o...They do have a few of these. Ebonhawke has a lot of books scattered around that give some background about the Siege for example. The problem is they are ridiculously short. Each "book" has just a few sentences. You have to find half a dozen to get the equivalent of a paragraph or two. I found them more annoying than intriguing for that reason.<br /><br />Presumably text puts next to no strain on any part of the game engine so I can only assume they are so brief because whoever put them in assumed players have the attention spans of hyperactive kittens. I'd have thought the kind of players likely to want to read a book of lore in the first place would be not just eager but willing to spend a few minutes reading an in-game lore source rather than a few seconds.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-74171594150372259352014-08-06T18:23:16.773+01:002014-08-06T18:23:16.773+01:00As someone who did not play Guild Wars 1, I do fee...As someone who did not play Guild Wars 1, I do feel like my first play through of the game was missing something. However, they did give me enough information to understand some of what was going on. I feel like I missed out on really understanding the dragons and their history.<br /><br />I feel like GW2 could do with adding lore objects of some kind with attached story - like books you can find all over the place or, even better, little narrated cut scenes. No need to fully animate them - they could use concept art and the like. It would fill out the lore a little better for those who are interested without feeling the need to go and read it on a wiki or in a novel.Morrighanhttp://meta-gamer.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-40279173795322711672014-08-05T16:08:53.262+01:002014-08-05T16:08:53.262+01:00Yep, you nailed this topic for me. Not only did I ...Yep, you nailed this topic for me. Not only did I play GW1 since beta weekends, but I also read Edge of Destiny in anticipation for GW2's release a few years back. I don't consider myself a lore junky, but having these (and Ghosts of Ascalon) as a foundation for my understanding was very important in my approach to playing GW2. Story is a deciding factor of whether I'll stick to a MMO or not, and I've had plenty of complaints about the end of the Personal Story and Season 1 of the Living Story. <br /><br />So far, Season 2 isn't perfect, but I'm enjoying the new approach more than the previous season. I plan to hang in there and see what happens -- I am interested in the Elder Dragon threat far more than I was interested in Scarlet. Aywrenhttp://www.sygnus.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-51380406573562439552014-08-04T10:15:24.795+01:002014-08-04T10:15:24.795+01:00I'm a superhero comics fan of half a century&#...I'm a superhero comics fan of half a century's standing. I *know* that, in genre serial fiction, there is no pre-existing reference, no matter how fleeting, that cannot at a later stage become the current, single most important piece of information in the entire history of the enterprise. Equally, I know that there's no honking great major plot point, signposted and telegraphed so clearly it could be seen from the moon, that can't vanish unresolved and apparently forgotten between one episode and the next.<br /><br />It's the nature of commercial genre serial fiction created by a fluctuating collective of writers and artists. When the Asura and Sylvari Personal Stories were written, those writers may have had specific ideas about where the stories would lead. On the other hand they may have seen them as complete and finished, leading to nothing. Whatever those writers thought or planned won't mean a thing to some new writer who gets a great idea next week.<br /><br />If you can't keep half a dozen contradictory ideas in your mind at once and believe that what you knew as "black" yesterday is "white" today, it all becomes very frustrating. Every time the merry-go-round grinds to a halt and starts spinning in the opposite direction some of the less agile fans fall off. It probably pays to keep the jolts to a minimum if you want to hold on to the maximum number of paying customers. There's a point at which suspension of disbelief turns into giving the writers so much rope they hang themselves. <br /><br />Don't think we are anywhere near that point yet but the current, more linear narrative structure was probably a good idea. Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-49375093557030192592014-08-04T08:11:47.634+01:002014-08-04T08:11:47.634+01:00One third of those steam creatures went into a por...One third of those steam creatures went into a portal and never came back out again. I am certain these were pilfered away and 'improved' on by true geniuses. There is still hope for world domination yet! Jeromaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02206083433625986970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-30071548497997868142014-08-04T07:09:15.058+01:002014-08-04T07:09:15.058+01:00If 93% of characters are going to miss it (as Davi...If 93% of characters are going to miss it (as David points out below, only 1/3 of Sylvari get that plotline), I don't think it can be that important.<br /><br />All us Infinity Ball Asura were speculating in Season 1 about what that story tells you about the steam creatures, and how Scarlet uses them, and <a href="http://whyigame.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/gw2-wild-story-theory/" rel="nofollow">if there was some deeper meaning there</a>. But as the story revealed later, Scarlet just invented them, and the bit with the alternate timeline was unrelated.Aspeonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-79149372739721612082014-08-03T23:49:34.306+01:002014-08-03T23:49:34.306+01:00On the mystery point... note that the non Pale Tre...On the mystery point... note that the non Pale Tree Sylvari thing only comes up if you picked the "where life goes so do I" option in character creation. Every one of the character creation option branches off a chapter of your personal story...Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13375883494813662483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-22123963412533192812014-08-03T23:46:45.560+01:002014-08-03T23:46:45.560+01:00I never had the slightest idea about the storyline...I never had the slightest idea about the storyline when I was playing WoW. I wasn't really aware there was one. I've learned since then from much blog reading that there's a long ongoing saga in play but it goes right over my head. At least WoW doesn't have an overt "Personal Storyline" with a big, green map marker that never goes away.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-25579142384219810532014-08-03T23:39:40.316+01:002014-08-03T23:39:40.316+01:00@Jeromai and David
Well, I did the Sylvari story...@Jeromai and David <br /><br />Well, I did the Sylvari story up to about level 15 tonight. Very interesting. Caithe seems to me to be no more than a cigarette paper's width away from being Nightmare Court herself. If she's any kind of hero it's definitely Batman not Superman at least when it comes to morality. <br /><br />Actually being introduced to Trahearne in context makes a huge difference. I was taken aback when Caithe described him as her brother but later I realized that of course Sylvari have no nuclear families and she's presumably expressing a level of kinship that derives from their status as Firstborn.<br /><br />I stopped just at the point where Malyck shows his face and drops the bombshell that there are Sylvari unrelated to The Pale Tree. Until I read that on the forums recently in a discussion over LS2 I was completely unaware of that major plot and lore point. <br /><br />So far my investigation of the Sylvari Personal Story seems to bear out all my doubts about the problematic nature of the mechanics in GW2 when it comes to an average player having clue one about what's going on. I'm all for mystery but this is just silly.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-1095997876873739092014-08-03T19:39:10.995+01:002014-08-03T19:39:10.995+01:00World of Warcraft got really bad with this from ar...World of Warcraft got really bad with this from around the release of the Cataclysm expansion. Basically the whole backstory for the expansion was released in a novel and if you didn't read it you were just presented with a completely altered world and no explanation for it in game. They then continued to release novels where important NPCs (supposedly, I didn't read them myself) went through some character development, while all you saw in game were those same NPCs appearing to have schizophrenic personality changes from one zone to the next. It... didn't make for the most compelling experience.Shintarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-82413131782842083022014-08-03T19:05:26.499+01:002014-08-03T19:05:26.499+01:00I did sylvari first, without any real lore exposur...I did sylvari first, without any real lore exposure prior to that (I'd played GW1 up to the Searing once), and Trahearne came up a few times in the early story, without being a sudden surprise. He was still a bit annoying as the Pact commander, just because it felt like the sort of role the player should have held (especially since he was always asking you what to do next).Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13375883494813662483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-8515822383872911112014-08-03T17:48:11.704+01:002014-08-03T17:48:11.704+01:00Ironically, the Sylvari Personal Story has the bes...Ironically, the Sylvari Personal Story has the best presentation for the entire Orr stretch because they introduce Trahearne to you very early on at a logical point, instead of just popping in like a big deus ex flora into the other races' stories.Jeromaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02206083433625986970noreply@blogger.com