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Which part of the story/lore do you like the most, so far?


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No single arc has been strong enough for me to vote for above another

My views on each in summary;

  • Personal Story was fine first time round and has a proper campaign feel, but the short unengaging instances and low production values have aged badly
  • LS1 was garbage. It had little story, little lore and what it did have was strung together badly. Xenophobic races, united by a single all powerful person who could do anything the plot demanded regardless of how stupid it was vs the lore of the game. No matter how epic the Marionette, Battle for LA was, the near non existent story was dreadful. No matter what is said about any other aspect of the game, LS1's story (or lack of) was reviled during the first 12 months. Even the devs had to apologise for the lack of story and it all came down to the ambition of delivering content every 2 weeks not matching the quality that was achievable.
  • LS2 is generally fine and maintains a decent quality throughout, but the lack of VA causes a disconnection. It is prob the strongest season though, even though it began Aurene's story and she has been the single biggest flaw in the entire game's narrative. I enjoyed it a lot at the time.
  • HoT was a poor story. It was a single rushed Act split into tiny chunks which explored very little of the potential it set up. It deserved to be so much better. Instead we ran through the jungle, just about touching upon a few interesting things then quickly run on again before we could fully explore them. No Malyk, sudden ability to kill Mordremoth on the spot when we needed it. It was not good. I wanted it to be good so much, that even knocking on Mordys door, I was convinced we were nowhere near the end. Oh the disappointment
  • LS3 had moments. Some moments were great - the White Mantle arc for example was pretty much spot on. Balthazar's random introduction, the poor handling of Lazarus and the utter nonsense with the Shining Blade however were terrible. But we also got some cool ED and Mursaat lore and also Primordus's emergence was epic
  • PoF started really strong. Balthazar's motivations were poorly conveyed, but we got some really great instances....right up until the idiotic death twist and then it all fell apart with a rushed final third of the story. It hit a high with Kralk hovering over ahead at the end, but it was an expac of two halves with the good stuff being really good.
  • LS4 started brilliantly. Episode 2 was amazing and it was really setting things up with the Joko/Scarab Plague arc. And then Aurene returned and ruined the entire arc and continued to do so until the finale. To watch both Joko and Kralk so utterly mistreated was quite hard to play through. An ED reduced to being beaten up by a suddnely all powerful child and being part of some awful "redemption" cycle. The last few episodes of LS4 rank as the worst story in the entire game. By a massive margin.
  • The Saga had a brilliant prologue, but the piecemeal story bites haven't really worked well so far. Drakkar was rushed. The first episode had great atmosphere, but lacked enough story progression. The elements are there - the right characters, the right arcs, the right motivations and an excellent villain, but so far nothing is being done with to create a deeper story since after the Prologue. The Saga should be the best yet, but it is failing and failing rather quickly as well.

There is too much inconsistency, a complete inability to write compelling villains over a long period, too much rushing, too much metaphysical nonsense and an over reliance on trying to keep Aurene relevant. I don't think the episodic format ever worked for the game compare to a campaign structure.

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I never left the jungle. Or maybe it never left me.

You're asking a difficult question. I don't remember many disappointments. It's nearly 1 AM, and after having the dullest day, I'm now full of enthusiasm to replay only everything. So thanks a lot. (Already spent closer to two hours thinking about this. Probably book's worth of loose details, not enough for coherent sentences, but enough to matter to me.)

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LS1, sure Scarlet wasn't the top villain, but it was amazing, the marionette, the invasions in LA, attacks of Aetherblade, nightmare tower exploration! God the breachmaker! That nuclear alert sound! (Still used in guild chat if spoiler part) The knights! The first time we discovered Southsun Cove it was really rewarding. Canach was also nicely introduced. I'm sure they are peoples also thinking LS1 was great but they aren't in the vocal majority sadly. Community events like the election of Kiel/Evon was also nice feature and it came with introducing the fabulous labyrinthine cliffs. I still want a battle of LA fractal and a Marionette one. I'm sorry but LS1 got good lore. I liked a lot the tower of nightmare arc with all the toxins, progressing through it and the dynamic events around Kessex Hills, was a thing to see aetherblade airships stopping around the maps and launching invasions. The main aetherblade complex that is now the fractal were a real thing at launch, it was considered as a dungeon, like other ones and it sad they haven't continued that way, adding dungeons in HoT and PoF to replace them with fast path (fractals) and even more recently just boss (strike).

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Ended up voting none in particular simply due to the lack of an option that amounted to little segments of each.

Each story arc has had -something- i liked,With the exception of LS1, until i can experience it that story is the worst one in the game, due to the fact it doesnt exist(Hint: that little "walk through" they give is awful). But none of them are overall amazing IMO.

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I liked Heart of Thorns best. My pc is a sylvari, and I liked the sylvari and jungle themes as well as the meta events. I also liked the Personal Story because it had some choices. I enjoyed Path of Fire as well. The mounts were particularly well done.

I didn't like LWS1 as well because it often had very little story because of the 2-week release schedule. I also didn't like Scarlet. She was too over-the-top for me. Also, I was stuck in an overflow during one of the big battles and didn't get to participate. I did like Canach's introduction as well as the Marionette boss.

I wish LWS3 would have taken the time to finish up the unfinished plots of HoT before moving on instead of just leaving them hanging. I also hated the Shining Blade oath part. I did like Knight of the Thorn, however.

LWS4 had some good parts but was also the start of the Braham show.

Icebrood Saga: I haven't finished the Prologue yet because of how much I dislike Braham. I am thinking of skipping the rest of Icebrood Saga but haven't decided yet.

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@"Dante.1763" said:Ended up voting none in particular simply due to the lack of an option that amounted to little segments of each.

Each story arc has had -something- i liked,With the exception of LS1, until i can experience it that story is the worst one in the game, due to the fact it doesnt exist(Hint: that little "walk through" they give is awful). But none of them are overall amazing IMO.

It's a real shame it can't be replayed for joiners to the game since. On the one hand, the story was barely existent, with some little bits to progress our actions and not much else. The set pieces are what made it and the innovations which laid down the foundations for things later. For every episode where we built a fence (yes we got an episode where we built sign posts in Wayfarer - that happened), we'd get an episode like Battle for LA which I don't think has been bettered since anywhere in the game.

But yes, as someone who played LS1 and hated and loathed it in equal measure, the onlt thing worse is the pathetic story journal video they gave us.Episode 2 of LS2 covers more story than the video. Actually ep2 covers more backstory about LS1 than LS1 did....

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@Randulf.7614 said:

@"Dante.1763" said:Ended up voting none in particular simply due to the lack of an option that amounted to little segments of each.

Each story arc has had -something- i liked,With the exception of LS1, until i can experience it that story is the worst one in the game, due to the fact it doesnt exist(Hint: that little "walk through" they give is awful). But none of them are overall amazing IMO.

It's a real shame it can't be replayed for joiners to the game since. On the one hand, the story was barely existent, with some little bits to progress our actions and not much else. The set pieces are what made it and the innovations which laid down the foundations for things later. For every episode where we built a fence (yes we got an episode where we built sign posts in Wayfarer - that happened), we'd get an episode like Battle for LA which I don't think has been bettered since anywhere in the game.

But yes, as someone who played LS1 and hated and loathed it in equal measure, the onlt thing worse is the pathetic story journal video they gave us.Episode 2 of LS2 covers more story than the video. Actually ep2 covers more backstory about LS1 than LS1 did....

Yea, i caught small segments of LS1 before i was deployed. Alot of it was laying down the foundations for further stuff, but the story i did catch is not even really present in that terrible journal.

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HoT was best for me, might have be also due to being hyped a lot about the game, but still, I replayed the story many times and still enjoyed it most.

From Living worlds, unfortunately I didnt played lw1 and I guess I will never have the chance to, so I most liked lw2, but that is probably because I bought all episodes at once, with other living worlds I have problem I feel its small portion of story at one time. In living world 3, 1st episode was really good, then it went down, which may be due to my main character for story (basically my first character on which I do every story first now, in older content decissions what I would like, canon character for me) being a charr and the lw3 was strongly designed to be for humans (joining Shining blade as a charr is just, idk)

PoF was great only on one part, the part with Eater of Souls which got me lot of fun in feedback from players also :D

Lw4 just idk, I lost probably hype about the game, which is continuing to Icebrood Saga too.

One of my problems with story now is I really cant get bigger bound with characters. Mostly I like Rytlock, which is in the game from start and then Taimi, which was in most stories probably. Another characters are quite boring, annoying or without development. Lot of characters are introduced, but they dissapear from story again without any development or episodes are jumping from one characters to anothers, so you dont see some characters in really long time so you lost interest in them.

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Without a doubt, my favourite is the level 1-30 part of the personal story. Even though many of the individual storylines are probably not that strong in their own right, I think that part of the story does the best job of worldbuilding and establishing the various racial cultures. It goes downhill a bit after that, but I do still like the rest of it.

Living World Season 1 was my least favourite by far. It felt like fan fiction written by people who didn't really understand the setting and hadn't actually played the personal story. I think Randulf summed it up pretty well. Personally I think they should have just declared it non-canonical, rather than having to spend Season 2 tidying up the mess they'd made.

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None of it. Since Kormir stole the player's divinity in Nightfall the entire storylines have sucked arse. This game should be about killing Kormir, not the other shit that it insists on pedalling. Frankly the storylines and characters are shit in this series and the ability to murder NPCs a la ESO is sorely missing.

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Although I enjoyed all the story arcs and have recently replayed it all, LS1 is still my favorite for one simple reason, mystery and player interaction. it wasn't just a story that you played in an instance, it was a core part of the game, it intertwined with the seasonal events and festivals, it wasn't just episodes that you play and waited for the next. It was an integral part of the game world that slowly evolved over weeks and months and it left a mark on the Tyria that we still see today. Although some of the execution left to be desired it really gave you the feeling that the choices we collectively made and our actions mattered. I couldn't see it at the time, but today I understand what they were trying to accomplish and it was brilliant. Too bad it is impossible to replay it. How do you make something that leaves a permanent scar on the world replayable?

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I can't say about LS1 'cause since it doesn't exist anymore and I met the game a few years after it was ridiculously wiped out I stick to LW4, chapter "Long Live the Lich" mainly because of pregnant Gorrik and Palawa Joko, which was particularly a very funny character and the final cutscene with him pretty much giving an earful to the Commander was very nice.

LW3 is cool but because of the White Mantle cockroaches, Draconis Mons and fights in very tight areas (a very reddish one in Caudecus' questline — not sure if it was really against him or someone else) rendered it a "meh' to me.

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Personal story had generally the right scope for an MMO: smaller stories within a large world. Stories that wrap up and don't need to interfere with the game as a whole.

Sweeping up to the Pact and Zhaitan, though, and it starts to fall apart. It creates a grand story that shoots upward, needing to be topped with every expansion, until more and more, we have to have Kralkatorrik eating his way into the Mists, threatening all of time and space. And with each dragon that "needs killing," we just go through the same issue of an over-reaching problem that we're still just supposed to smite our way through.Which I guess is fine? Because I'm not here for the plot, I like the combat, more or less.

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The maps of the initial PoF expansion were fun because they brought back a nostalgic feeling from Nightfall. Nightfall is, by far and away, my favorite GW1 campaign, despite my absolute loathing of Kormir. I'm sort of indifferent about the actual storyline of the expansion.

The first episode of LS4 was kind of disappointing, but the next few episodes got better; Specifically any time I had to interact with Palawa Joko. I love psychological villains like him. And then Aurene happened. Go figure.

I've only just started the Jahai episode and I'm already feeling kinda iffy about it. The guy I liked most, chasing after, knowing I'm probably going to kill him... that feeling isn't really there. Fighting dragons, weirdly enough, isn't as fascinating to me. Killing a big dumb monster has never really been that interesting to me. Oh well.

Haven't really done anything in LS3 because of how much I despise HoT, but I'll have to buck up and stomach it, if only to say I got it done.

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