Flame + Frost = Farrago: GW2

"Is that it?" was the refrain that echoed across Tyria as the first chapter of the Living Story limped to a close last night. Listening to map chat in Lion's Arch it was apparent that few players had read the press releases, seen the interviews or had the slightest idea what was going on.

Most did know that they were one achievement short of a Box Prize though, and not surprisingly, quite a few thought there might be a pot of gold at the end of the three-month long rainbow. There wasn't.

Next it'll be CCTV in Lion's Arch, you mark my words!

The pot of gold, such as it was, had already arrived with the conclusion of the Rox and Braham storylines more a week ago. A ticket for a pair of exotic gloves too utterly hideous even to contemplate wearing. No-one paid much attention at the time, what with the new dungeon and all. Even the anticlimax was anticlimactic.

What we did get was a bonfire and just how appropriate, in this particular case, was that? You've been driven out of your home by a bunch of burning creatures chanting about fire and setting your settlement ablaze. Do you really want to see more flames? Okay, it's cold in Hoelbrek so the warmth may be welcome but they already have rather a lot of open fires there. All the time. How special does it make you feel that they lit one more little one? And as for Black Citadel, where you're sitting on a solid metal floor that conducts heat and where the enemy at the gate even before all the recent kafuffle was always the Flame Legion? Does any of this make any sense?

In someone's dreams. Not in mine.

Then there's Rox and Braham. Hmm. These two characters that drop out of nowhere. The big, buff Norn and the wide-eyed catgirl.That we all follow. Whose story we are mostly watching, facilitating, a story clearly not our own. After that video I can't but think we're seeing Our Gods walk among us in their Mortal Form. Are we comfortable with that?

Is this whole thing a complete mess or what? I'm not saying its not been fun but has any of it made any sense to anyone? Has anything since the game launched made any sense? Did The Mad King destroying the Lion Statue make sense? Okay, he's mad, he gets a pass. Did the Karka make sense? Did Tixx make sense? The Super Adventure Box? Anything - anything at all - about the Living Story?

Might there be a whole lot of people working very hard on personal projects, obsessions,

We can't all be famous

ideas, getting them into the game with very little in the way of top-down, authoritarian control? Might things be getting greenlighted on a prospectus containing not much more than "wouldn't it be cool if...?"

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing. Not at all. For my no money it's a considerably better thing than, for example, the approach Rift ended up taking, where players must at all costs not be annoyed, nothing disruptive must ever happen and everyone must get a Fair Go. That makes for an admirably solid, reliable experience but one which, after a while, tends towards the dull.

At least with ANet (as with SOE all these years) you never know quite what might happen next. Sure, some of it, arguably most of it, doesn't really come off but rather a sporadic splurge of exotic failures than a steady stream of stuff designed not to annoy anyone.

In a day or so we're off to Southsun Cove for a couple of weeks. If Team Spring Break (Really? You really want to call yourselves that? In public?) can make that a place worth spending more than five minutes in then I'll be impressed. After that, who knows? This over-excited PR blurb certainly isn't letting on but apparently "it does all tie together".

I'll believe that when I see it but I don't mind if it doesn't. It'll almost certainly be just as much fun if it all falls apart.