New player question about lws5

So I just started playing during the Halloween event (saw my friends playing it and looked fun) and I have been really enjoying it haha . So story wise I'm halfway through lws2 , I own both expansions.but my question is since s5 is coming out soon should I play it once it comes out ? because that's how it's meant to be played?or just go through the story in order? thanks!

Well, that depends on how much of the story you know prior to whatever comes next. If you're in LW Season 2, that's even prior to Heart of Thorns, so you're about 20% of the way through what's been released of the story so far. Going into the next LW Season 4 episode will skip that remaining 80% story.

So basically, do you care that you may not have the context for what is currently happening because you have yet to complete a prior story instance? You do you.

It's up to you, there's no absolute right or wrong way to do it. The main benefits of playing it early are that you're more likely to avoid spoilers that way, it can be more fun with loads of people on the map and if there's anything which is useful outside of the story (like the roller beetle mount) you get it earlier on.

The potential downsides are more variable. More people on the map can also be annoying because you don't get the full experience of some things - meta event chains will almost always be part-completed when you load into the map so you'll end up doing them out of order and areas which need to be unlocked or which are guarded by difficult enemies are likely to always be open. And collections and things can be more expensive if you're doing them at the same time as everyone else. And of course you might run into bugs, which will be fixed later on.

If you do not go for full completionist i am quite sure that you can go through the whole story by the time LS5 hits. There are at least 2-3 episodes in LS4. So you have time.

So long as you're logging in, you'll have it unlocked, so the story stuff you can just play in order at your own pace. It's possible that the maps will be somewhat less active after a few weeks, for better or worse, but I've never run across an abandoned one.

Season 5 isn't going to be around just yet. I do know they are going to wrap up what is in terms of Season 4, and I expect that Episode 5 wil be out sometime perhaps late Jan or early Feb. As far as your questions: as long as you log in during the release window, you will secure the episode for free, which can be accessed whenever you feel ready to do so, via the Personal Story journal tab of your Hero panel (default: H).

Previous episodes no longer in the window can be picked up for Gems at the Gem Store. If you are interested in progressing story, then start from Season 2. But if you want to get into the expansions but later want retropsective, that's up to you as well. I wound up doing Season 2 after Heart of Thorns, in this case, just to see what happened that led up to the whole thing.