Will we ever see the result of the cleansing of Orr?

This got me curious last night as I was running my ranger through the main story.

With the emphasis on Trahearne's Wyld Hunt and the world-effects of ORR being raised by Zhaitan having been a predominant focus in the main story. I was thinking how cool it would be to see effects of the cleansing given Trahearne's fate.

With Orr's location it would be amazing if the entire region was updated (Like Kessex Hills, but on a larger scale) at some point and the Ruins of Arah made into a restored massive city that would act as a crossroads point for Tyria, Elona, and Cantha?

We do get to see part of Orr in the process of restoration in Siren's Landing (season 3 episode 6). My guess is that is as far as we'll ever get, unless there is a yet-to-come living story map that occupies a not yet used part of Orr.

ANet pretty much gave up changing existing maps to reflect the current timeline rather than the one they were originally built for, as living story season 1+2 showed that the majority of players doesn't get along well with permanent map changes and the previous map versions being inaccessible. We get to live with the maps that did get changed back then (most notably Lion's Arch and the Kessex Hills), but don't expect anything remotely like that to happen again. It's simply a lot of work for little to no gain.

@Revan.2015 said:This got me curious last night as I was running my ranger through the main story.

With the emphasis on Trahearne's Wyld Hunt and the world-effects of ORR being raised by Zhaitan having been a predominant focus in the main story. I was thinking how cool it would be to see effects of the cleansing given Trahearne's fate.

With Orr's location it would be amazing if the entire region was updated (Like Kessex Hills, but on a larger scale) at some point and the Ruins of Arah made into a restored massive city that would act as a crossroads point for Tyria, Elona, and Cantha?

In a hundred years or so it might be like that but not during the GW2 timeline.

It's not like flicking a switch, after all, it'll take a long time for it to recover.

I was really happy to see the start of the process in Siren's Landing. This game can often feel like we drop into a place, solve the most major of the problems affecting it by killing something and then abandon it to go on to the next urgent thing. It was really nice to know there's this whole other side to the Pact with people dedicated to doing the follow-up work to finish the job.

I wasn't surprised to see that so little progress had been made, because what's being done in Orr is a lot like some aspects of my real-life job in wildlife conservation. Even without magical corruption, zombies and gods-only-know what else to deal with a restoration job like that would take decades at least. (It's hard to say exactly because there's so much we don't know - for example it's hard to tell whether Orr is all rock or if there's any soil, and if so whether it's saturated with salt from being underwater so long.) With all the fantasy aspects to deal with as well, and the sheer size of the project I think it would take hundreds of years before Orr was fully restored, cities rebuilt and people living there. (Getting people to move there may actually be the hardest part, since there would probably be a lot of well founded superstition related to it. Even before Zhaitain woke up Orr was associated with undead thanks to the Orrians from the Cataclysm who were all over Kryta in GW1.)

I think it's reasonable to assume Siren's Landing isn't the only place this work is going on however. The Artesian Waters (where Trahearne carried out his cleansing ritual) is an obvious choice, and the archipelago coming across the Straits of Devastation, especially because that's near Lightfoot Passage where a small group were trying to conserve Orrian flora and fauna specifically for reintroduction after Zhaitan was defeated. I imagine Risen clearance and other efforts to control the corruption are on-going anywhere the Pact still has a presence. It would be nice to see how those efforts are progressing too.

The problem, as other people have said, is that changing existing maps can be difficult. Anet are capable of editing maps or making new version of them of course, but it tends to upset newer players (and some veterans) who are worried about losing access to current content, and it doesn't tend to be as exciting for the target audience as new maps because only some of it's new.

Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

@kharmin.7683 said:Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

They are and they won’t change.

Siren landing was kinda of in of “in progress” of Orr cleansing. We may get another map in the future that goes to Orr that have it cleansed or near cleansed.

@otto.5684 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

@kharmin.7683 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

I thought about this too for a bit and was curious if a progress lockout would be possible. This is all just theory, but would two instances of the map be possible? One being the original and the other the "cleansed" version. This way new players will only be able to access the original until they complete "Victory or Death!" and reach level 80? at which point they are able to access the new version after they see a short summary of the change like the LWS1 with the Scarlet war.

Only reason I thought of this was because of the way the old story mission in Lions Arch are handled, given its only a player instance. Dungeons are instances as well though so I am not certain how far-fetched an open-map instance would be.

Siren's Landing.

@Revan.2015 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

Two copies would be a lot of work, I think.

Arah is instanced anyway (dungeon) so there can be new major city and you can get back in time by doing dungeon. From that city you even could see all Orr cleansed but with no or little option to view it.

Another option is changing map by little peaces in which you will see the differences or change it for while. For example when you do meta event in god temple it gets cleared and restored to old time glory, until next meta or something.

@Ryan.7583 said:

Another option is changing map by little peaces in which you will see the differences or change it for while. For example when you do meta event in god temple it gets cleared and restored to old time glory, until next meta or something.Interesting, but then you're back to the confusion for new players during that time in between?

@Revan.2015 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

Nope, frozen in time.Just like Amnoon oasis isn't a branded hellhole when you visit it

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@Revan.2015 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Aren't core maps supposed to be frozen in a point in time in the lore? Isn't this why Kessex Hills hasn't been upgraded/changed or other maps (like Orr)?

As far as I know it would be technically possible to have two versions of the same map. The maps aren't really geographical locations, they each exist in their own separate 'box' of space (like levels in traditional games, or different maps for a game like Sim City - only difference is we're move zoomed in and the edges are usually hidden), so there's no reason they couldn't have two maps which look like they're the same area of the world but with different people, objects, events etc. (In fact I think that's how the tutorials are done - you're not really in Shaemoor when you make a human character, you're in a separate map which looks the same but with more fire and centaurs.)

You're right that the problem with that is locking people out of the earlier version of the map because they've completed the content. Elder Scrolls Online had a huge problem with this early on, because they built this cool system where areas of a map are 'phased' for you - so if you haven't completed a quest a town might be on fire and if you have it's safe. Playing solo it's great but if you're grouped with someone who is at a different point to you it looks like grouping is broken because you get close to the town and suddenly you can't even see each other, and of course it's impossible for them to help you with the quest. (They've mostly fixed it now by toning down the phasing.)

But if it was done with whole maps I think there would be a way around that by giving players a way to choose which version of the map they go to. Because the maps are separate this wouldn't require any new tech - for the game it doesn't matter that the maps are in the same place in the world, they're different maps and treated the same way as any other maps. The problem would be how to let players specify which version they want - would you need to set your 'time period' before choosing a waypoint/going through a portal? Click a waypoint and then get the choice of which version of the map to go to? Should these new maps be displayed separately instead of on the world map? But that's "only" a matter of deciding how best to present the choice. Not saying it's an easy decision to get right, but there's no technical reason it couldn't be done.

@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Ryan.7583" said:

Another option is changing map by little peaces in which you will see the differences or change it for while. For example when you do meta event in god temple it gets cleared and restored to old time glory, until next meta or something.Interesting, but then you're back to the confusion for new players during that time in between?

There are two options:

1. They will need to deal with flow of time and changes to world and have "old world" only in story instances as it is for Lion Arch right now.
2. As mentioned before two instances of map (similar to dungeons): story and progress modes.

Both option will need mayor remake of maps and metas (rewards) to encourage players to go back and play with good old content, they probably forgot about.It is not lose cause in business point of view too. That's because this massive remake will be much easier and faster than making new maps but still will offer so much more than any today's living world episode.

@"Danikat.8537" said:But if it was done with whole maps I think there would be a way around that by giving players a way to choose which version of the map they go to. Because the maps are separate this wouldn't require any new tech - for the game it doesn't matter that the maps are in the same place in the world, they're different maps and treated the same way as any other maps. The problem would be how to let players specify which version they want - would you need to set your 'time period' before choosing a waypoint/going through a portal? Click a waypoint and then get the choice of which version of the map to go to? Should these new maps be displayed separately instead of on the world map? But that's "only" a matter of deciding how best to present the choice. Not saying it's an easy decision to get right, but there's no technical reason it couldn't be done.Of course it would work, but would it be helpful? It will end up splitting the playerbase even more, as even for maps that now have only one instance the players in that one instance would be spread across two (or more, depending on how many historical versions of the map we end up with) map instances then.

How/when/where would switching maps be allowed? If I'm in the middle of a cleansed, peaceful Cursed Shore and a friend on the old Orr-at-war version of the map asks for help, do I just pull up a menu and switch over, ignoring the fact that I would've had to travel through a bunch of agressive orrian mobs to get there if I had started on that map, because all of the waypoints in that map instance are contested?

What about map exploration? Does exploration of each version of the map (e.g. pre and post Tower of Nightmare Kessex Hills) have their own exploration, or do both come together? Can I just switch to whatever version of the map has the easier route to a poi, vista, or hero point to get my exploration done?

Then there's the question about immersion, story coherence, and overall feel of the playerbase. You mentioned ESO. I've played story in ESO with 1-3 friends both when it was released and after the major overhauls. Yes, phasing is a LOT better than it used to be in the beginning, but personally I still don't like the way it works. They've done something similar in the recent living story episodes where story npc appear at different spots depending on where you are in the episode, but for some reason it doesn't feel nearly as intrusive here as it does for me in ESO. Still, the maps and instances we play here are the same, and personally I very much prefer the way GW2 handles the changing world.

ArenaNet has stated they would never do phased maps as that would split the player base up even more so that it does now, just in case no one knows, that would indeed be two different copies of the same map...one copy as it originally was and the second would reflect all the changes based on the story, but a big problem with that is all of the options when it comes to secondary NPC's during the Personal Story, that would take a lot of work to have each outcome displayed on an after affect map.

I hope not. The point where MMOs start re-designing existing maps to accommodate story is usually a jumping-the-shark moment. The disparity between the experience of new and old players is too great. It's easy for me to revisit a lower-level area and recall what was going on when I was meant to be there. Not so easy for a new player to project himself into the future of his story when he first signs up.

in destiny 2 they make the tower only accessible after getting trough the first main story (or using a leveling booster), this can be the same case for orr.kinda like how they do it with LA, the main story shows the old version of LA while the open world shows lobsterland.so orr is getting cleaner but the story will still show the old corrupted version, allowing the open world to evolve while not disturbing the story.