6161

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if everyone who owns the game now will get the full season 1 shenanigans when they add the replay feature? I ask, because I got Guild Wars 2 somewhere near release and have barely played it since. Not sure I’ve got any characters into their 20s. And if getting future stuff unlocked permanently just involves logging in occasionally I can probably swing that, but I’d be a little let down if I do eventually get into GW2 and then they tell me I can’t play content that I owned the game during because I was a bad person and didn’t play their videogame.

Tried looking at their announcement for it and didn’t see anything specifying, but I don’t read their forums so I don’t know if they said on there or something.

6162

Far as I know, they haven’t said how the season 1 replay is going to work, whenever it is released.

6163

As far as I know they haven’t said there will be a season 1 replay.

6164

Correct. They said that the feature will launch for Season 2 Living World, but that they’re “looking into” the possibility of a solution for Season 1.

6165

Part of the issue I think is that a lot of the content would need to be reworked, since much of it was open world (Lions Arch, Giant Robot Defense, Queen’s Jubilee Farm, Return to Karkaland, Flame and Frost Hit F on Signpost, probably more)

6166

Well, I finally finished the Personal Story on my necromancer, after several weeks of play (not counting the couple of months I took off in the middle). I could have powered through much quicker, of course, but I basically played just enough to get the daily reward box each day. They did a pretty good job on the storyline, I thought. Certainly it could have been better if it didn’t have to fit into the constraints of an MMO, but it was fun and it certainly was plenty of content. I liked the ability to do it all at my own pace, too. Well, almost all. That last mission required a group to go through the final dungeon (at least for me…maybe some crazy builds could solo it, but not I). I was fortunate enough to find a nice group of people that didn’t mind the multiple-deaths-through-inexperience…that LFG tool is nice. Only real complaint is that the rewards are pretty pathetic; much better stuff from a few rounds of follow-the-timer-to-the-next-big-enemy group events.

Still a ton of stuff I haven’t seen in the world; heck, I’m pretty sure there’s entire zones I skipped over. Might see some of those on another character, though. And of course it’ll be fun to see what they bring out in season 2.

6167

Is there a quarter to three guild for guild wars 2? I just hit level 80 last night with my thief and I think it’s time I stopped being a loner and joined up with a group. :)

6168

That’s my favorite thing about Guild Wars 2—the extent to which the world is sprawling. I have an 80 and two mid-40s characters, and according to map completion, I’ve seen less than half of it. Well, that and the asura animations and voice work.

There is a Qt3 guild, but it’s extremely quiet most of the time.

6169

The first episode of season 2 started yesterday afternoon. Even if you aren’t actively playing GW2 right now (like me), be sure to login at least once in the next two weeks to permanently unlock that episode. After the next episode releases, if you haven’t already unlocked the previous one, you will need to pay.

6170

I have severely mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, there seems to be significantly more and meatier story/scripted content to it in addition to a new area with some platforming and dynamic events. On the other hand…I’m probably undergeared but the story content seemed ridiculously hard in cheap ways. Namely, that every encounter was simply numerically overwhelming and focused on me to the complete exclusion of the NPC helpers. I can’t fight five full strength mobs plus two veterans solo, guys. Hell, I can’t even fight two veterans solo. Maybe it’s supposed to be done in groups but it sure doesn’t say so.

6171

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I agree that the encounter design is a little on the tough side. (A pair of veterans is a lot nearer the ‘hard’ side of the scale than not.)

That said, I really appreciated that there was a dialog option specific to character history—my asura got to talk asura business with Taimi at one point. Another bit, talking with some Durmond Priory explorers, wasn’t background-specific, but it’s still nice to have random NPCs in the game world recognize your character for things your character has done.

I’m also pleased with how they’re setting up the narrative this time, which I’ll have to explain later, since I need to run now.

6172

I also have no idea who any of these characters are. I think I’m supposed to know them from the previous Living World content, but I don’t, in part because a lot of the stuff that went down in the part of season 1 during which I was actively playing had little to no actual story content, like the Zephyr Sanctum stuff. (Though hey, at least I knew those guys so I had some idea why to care about their ship having crashed.)

6173

I’m with malkav to some extent…I barely know who my team is, having missed most of the season 1 content. I did look at some of the season 1 summaries on the ‘net, but it’s not the same as having gone through it. I did find a spot in Lion’s Arch where you can go talk to all of them and get some immediately-after-season-1-ends dialog, which helped a bit. Even with what little I know, I’m already getting tired of the two human girls’ ongoing soap opera. “Oh, I’m so worried about <other girl>, she might get hurt and/or not like me any more.” Get a room and leave me out of it.

I played the first couple of instances of the story today, and will probably finish it out tomorrow. No real trouble for my pet-focused necromancer, although that stupid golem with all his little chain-knockdown-golemites was very annoying. Pets handled him, though. The content is certainly more difficult than what I remember from going through the personal story, and I’m sure the effort required varies wildly based on your particular build. Some might need a team…if you happen to see me online I’d be happy to help (I’m in the QT3 guild). I dislike the stupid jumping much more than I do the combat; took me a while to figure out where I was even supposed to jump when they said “go up the cliff” (turns out you have to jump twice before the time on your shard thingy runs out).

6174

The thing I’m liking about the story so far this season (with respect to structure as opposed to the moment-to-moment narrative, which remains that ham-handed style we call ‘video game writing’) is that it addresses a frequent complaint about the end of the personal story: unlike the last act of the personal story, season 2 is willing to put your character in the leader’s seat. It’s nice being called ‘boss’. I doubt it’ll have any real choices for players to make, but at least they pay lip service to the idea. Between that and the character-specific bits I mentioned before, it feels to me more personal and more grounded in the world than season 1 did. I also get a whiff of some narrative symmetry brewing: the Living Story crew plus you makes an adventuring team a la Destiny’s Edge, and after making a name for yourselves in prior events, you’re off to nose around in current events, as is only fitting and proper for adventurers to do.

I’m definitely also willing to help out with living story stuff if you catch me online, too.

6175

Do you have to log on to each of your characters to get the new story journal? Or is it account wide?

6176

Account wide I believe.

EDIT: The unlock is probably account wide, but story progress is character specific. You can’t even get the achievements even if you’ve unlocked them on another character.

You’ll enjoy a few of the extra achievements then (also, server lag + crystal abilities = horrifying screams)

6177

Do you need to just press Log In on the 1st screen to unlock the content, or do you have to Log In and then select Play? Or do you need to take it 1 step further and select a character and choose Play?

6178

Have a character enter the game and get the achievement and unlock.

6179

There was something I clicked on the right side of the screen after logging into the game world with a character that gave me an achievement announcement.

6180

I don’t think I got any announcement or anything to click when I entered the game world with a character. Maybe it is because I am only level 2. The first episode of season 2 does show up in my journal, but locked. I think / hope it will unlock if I hit level 80.

I decided to postpone buying The Secret World (I returned it before using it) so I can play this. After creating a character, should I just follow the quests for a while to get my feet wet?