How did you get caught up on Living World Season 1 events and characters?

[Smattyshmin.7586]

As a person that never got to play the 1st living story, I came in during the second one. It was a little disconcerting to skip to the second one from the PS. I ended up watching the following:

1.) The in game LS video: This was not really a recap. This was a 1 and half minute trailer. Their idea of introducing Destiny's edge 2.0 was showing their face in a video. This was the worst.

2.) Wooden potatoes 1 hour long lost lore of LS 1 Video: This was better. Wooden potatoes always does a great job of recapping the lore. This got me caught up.

3.) A 3 hour movie version of LS Season 1: This was awesome. IT was basically like I was there. Not gonna lie though, 3 hours was very long and I had to divide it up to watching it over a week while doing laundry or walking on the elliptical. I don't see many new players that would be willing to sit through this.

4.) There was a youtuber that had a series called Tyrian Charactereology: This series told the story of each major character's backstory in 10 to 20 minute episodes. This was not not good for recapping the events fo season 1 but definitely helped fill me in on the motives and relationships between the characters. I loved these. I really got invested into the story after this.

It was only after that much content did I feel like I better understood the Living World season 1. I don't see many players willing to do all of that just to get filled in and caught up on the story. Unfortunately, that 1 and a half minute video was the worse. IT was kitten. I think there should be a nice 15 to 20 minute video recapping the events and maybe a few 5 to 10 minute videos recapping the most important characters.

How did you guys get caught up on Living World Season 1 info? Is it even necessary?

[Ashantara.8731]

@Smattyshmin.7586 said:How did you guys get caught up on Living World Season 1 info? Is it even necessary?

If you are interested in the story, yes, it is necessary.

How did I catch up on LWS1? - I watched the aforementioned videos as well (as I had been taking a break from GW at the time of Season 1) and read up a lot of things on Wiki to better understand the references and NPCs.

[Randulf.7614]

Having suffered through the season and its "story" I can agree the video recap in game is a waste of time and effort. How it got approved it beyond me - it covers next to nothing useful.

A 10 min video would be enough in the proper creative hands to cover all of the pertinent parts of LS1 that are needed. The 3 hour vid - whilst i respect the time someone put into it - is unnecessary given that story is spread painfully thin. In fact the biggest complaint of the entire fiasco (besides the ridiculous temporary nature of the rapid fire content) was the fact that was virtually no story. There is more context for what happened in S2 when you enter Scarlet's house and listen to the hologram playbacks. That is very good.

The recap just needs to cover the fact that a sudden appearance of a super resourceful and intelligent Sylvari united a faction of Flame Legion and Dredge as part of her army alongside the steam creatures and repurposed Watchwork Knights. She took what she learned from all of these to locate a specific leyline (awakening the triple headed wurm), make herself a very toxic poison (curated in the Nightmare Tower I believe) to lay upon LA distracting everyone whilst she drilled with a ship she built from the combined techs of her factions, into that leyline and thus redirecting it to awaken Mordremoth. Then we banner slayed her. (most of this didn't become entirely clear until the final parts of the Season or Seaosn 2). Explain all that in a more composed, fluent way and bam recap complete.

It can skip a lot of the festival stuff, the voting for new council member, Tequatl, the fence building episode, the "hiccuping", the Mad King stuff (that was great though) and the Karka attack on LA and just focus on the key points

Beyond that is just needed a bit of backstory for the NPCs we meet which is def needed if you jump into S2.

Even if they can't do a video, a series of short concept arts or screenshots with explanation texts would be better than the recap.

[Taril.8619]

@Smattyshmin.7586 said:How did you guys get caught up on Living World Season 1 info? Is it even necessary?

I watched the terrible recap ingame. Talked to the woman about the characters and got told basically 0 things that were in any way useful.

Then played through LW2, HoT and LW3. Which gave me enough information to sort of fill in a rough idea of what went on and who the heck any of the characters I've been playing with actually were.

I could be wrong about them, but honestly, of all the LW1 characters, barely any of them have been interesting enough for me to actually care to find out about them...

Braham... Ranges from meh to actively annoying man-child.Marjory... Exists. Sometimes.Kasmeer... Whiny and heavily religious.Rox... Quiet and awkward.Taimi... Funny, annoying with a sprinkling of pitiful during LW4...Scarlet... Kooky mad scientist.

Ehh... I think I'll pass on sitting through 3 hour videos to find out more about these people... I'd rather watch stuff that details actually interesting characters, like the members of Destiny's Edge (Sans Rytlock), Canach, Trahearne, Anise, Queen Jennah, Gorrik, Blish, Glint, Palawa Joko...

[Randulf.7614]

@Taril.8619 said:

@Smattyshmin.7586 said:How did you guys get caught up on Living World Season 1 info? Is it even necessary?

I watched the terrible recap ingame. Talked to the woman about the characters and got told basically 0 things that were in any way useful.

Then played through LW2, HoT and LW3. Which gave me enough information to sort of fill in a rough idea of what went on and who the heck any of the characters I've been playing with actually were.

I could be wrong about them, but honestly, of all the LW1 characters, barely any of them have been interesting enough for me to actually care to find out about them...

Braham... Ranges from meh to actively annoying man-child.Marjory... Exists. Sometimes.Kasmeer... Whiny and heavily religious.Rox... Quiet and awkward.Taimi... Funny, annoying with a sprinkling of pitiful during LW4...Scarlet... Kooky mad scientist.

Ehh... I think I'll pass on sitting through 3 hour videos to find out more about these people... I'd rather watch stuff that details actually interesting characters, like the members of Destiny's Edge (Sans Rytlock), Canach, Trahearne, Anise, Queen Jennah, Gorrik, Blish, Glint, Palawa Joko...

FYI Canach's story begins in LS1 as a Consortium employee to research Southson Cove and then turns into a villain after being blamed for the Karka Invasion and tries to sabotage the dodgy Consortium re-settlement plan on Southson . My guess is if they do more Visions of the Past, they will add in the fight against him. His story is one of the few interesting aspects of LS1. In fact he prob gets more background exposition than the others with maybe the exception of Braham

The Privator Investigator instance for Marjory was also quite fun and I'm surprised that wasn't continued later as it helped differentiate her character

[Westenev.5289]

How did I catch up on lws1? I didn't. The recap was hot garbage, and everything I learned was 3rd party rumours.

I hated every Dragons Watch character except Canach, Taimi and Rytlock until PoF, where Kasmeer was written into the story briefly, only to be dropped for a season so she could have time to grind 300 gold to buy a commander tag so she could finally lead the brainless masses through several meta events.

To me, Rytlock, Taimi and Canach are the only organic members of the team if you start from lws2. Rytlock is familiar from personal story, Canach feels freshly introduced and Taimi has a full character arc in lws2. Kasmeer finally joins the party durring PoF, while lws4 and lws5 really gave Braham some much needed attention.

[Hirosama Nadasaki.6792]

I just played through the story hoping they'd give me some context as I went on. As per Anet's tradition, the context I got was very little, but at least i got some insight on their personalities.

Honestly, this isn't even a problem isolated to LW1. LW writing constantly drops references to things outside the main story, such as GW1, without giving any form of context whatsoever. I walked into LW2 and HoT knowing fuck all about the forgotten, the exalted, the zephyrites, the mursaat, bloodstones and whatever, got very little explanation for any of them and all presented in a very disjointed way. The same thing happened when I entered PoF knowing next to nothing about joko, the sunspears, and kormir, and now I'm doing LW4 still knowing very little about joko and still nothing at all about things like turai ossa or ascension.

This is by far my biggest gripe with the storytelling in this game. It's impossible to follow it without the wiki opened on the background, and that makes it extremely hard to get invested.

[Kichwas.7152]

@Smattyshmin.7586 said:As a person that never got to play the 1st living story, I came in during the second one. It was a little disconcerting to skip to the second one from the PS. I ended up watching the following:

3.) A 3 hour movie version of LS Season 1: This was awesome. IT was basically like I was there. Not gonna lie though, 3 hours was very long and I had to divide it up to watching it over a week while doing laundry or walking on the elliptical. I don't see many new players that would be willing to sit through this.

Watching that now and it's seriously blurry / low-rez but also on point. I left the game midway through season 1 so I've been wanting to fill in context for a while now, and this looks good.

There were parts of season 1 that really bothered me, lore wise; as they seemed to conflict with the basic setup of Guild Wars 2 at launch as well as Guild Wars 1. Those lore conflicts are actually why I stopped playing Guild Wars 2 for a few years.

• so watching this will let me see if they ever resolved that.

A lot of season one's instanced content has been added back into the game in sliced up pieces in the fractals - but without the context I've always wondered how they came across to newer players.

[Godric.4276]

I'm dealing with the same thing with Season 3 now. Was I supposed to know who Caudecus was or even what a bloodstone is? It's heartily annoying my character talks about it like it's common knowledge but doesn't give any exposition to help me understand. The same thing happened to me in season 2 where I just wandered around not knowing what was going on until the very end of the story.

[Randulf.7614]

@Godric.4276 said:I'm dealing with the same thing with Season 3 now. Was I supposed to know who Caudecus was or even what a bloodstone is? It's heartily annoying my character talks about it like it's common knowledge but doesn't give any exposition to help me understand. The same thing happened to me in season 2 where I just wandered around not knowing what was going on until the very end of the story.

Caudecus is introduced in the core story and in the Queensdale map and then again in the Caudecus Manor dungeon. He is not introduced via LS1. So yes, you should absolutely know who Caudecus is unless you skipped the early - still available - content

However, the Bloodstones and the White Mantle are significant parts of Guild Wars 1, so yes apart from some titbits in core maps, it is likely many newer players to the franchise will be confused here

[Godric.4276]

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Godric.4276 said:I'm dealing with the same thing with Season 3 now. Was I supposed to know who Caudecus was or even what a bloodstone is? It's heartily annoying my character talks about it like it's common knowledge but doesn't give any exposition to help me understand. The same thing happened to me in season 2 where I just wandered around not knowing what was going on until the very end of the story.

Caudecus is introduced in the core story and in the Queensdale map and then again in the Caudecus Manor dungeon. He is not introduced via LS1. So yes, you you should absolutely know who Caudecus is unless you skipped the early - still available - content

However, the Bloodstones and the White Mantle are significant parts of Guild Wars 1, so yes apart from some titbits in core maps, it is likely many newer players to the franchise will be confused here

OH?! Do people do dungeons while leveling? I had always chalked that up to a far too time expensive side quest. That's too bad they're relying on you doing a heart in queensdale or an optional dungeon to know what is going on.

[Randulf.7614]

@Godric.4276 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Godric.4276 said:I'm dealing with the same thing with Season 3 now. Was I supposed to know who Caudecus was or even what a bloodstone is? It's heartily annoying my character talks about it like it's common knowledge but doesn't give any exposition to help me understand. The same thing happened to me in season 2 where I just wandered around not knowing what was going on until the very end of the story.

Caudecus is introduced in the core story and in the Queensdale map and then again in the Caudecus Manor dungeon. He is not introduced via LS1. So yes, you you should absolutely know who Caudecus is unless you skipped the early - still available - content

However, the Bloodstones and the White Mantle are significant parts of Guild Wars 1, so yes apart from some titbits in core maps, it is likely many newer players to the franchise will be confused here

OH?! Do people do dungeons while leveling? I had always chalked that up to a far too time expensive side quest. And no, I don't recall Caud in the Queensdale map at all if you are referring to people just completing hearts and moving on. I remember the White Mantle far more than him just because of my Human's origin story.

Also, I forgot to help OP on the characters of season 1 and all the information I gathered from completing season 2

But here I'll help you catch up with the characters and all the information ArenaNet wants you to know about them.Marjory - I'm gayBraham - Me big Norn Ooga boogaTaimi - Jimmy NeutronKasmeer - I'm gay

Not to be frank but this is pretty much the only things the characters exude and is essentially all they're about so far. Marjory doesn't seem to be anything close to affectionate to her sister other than passing remarks that they're related. So Kasmeer and Marjory's characters are boiled down to asking each other how they are feeling. Braham doesn't get much development until Heart of Thorns to me. Taimi is ok I thought, has a little personality although a little cliched.

Yes people do the dungeons whilst levelling. Even those who don't, the content is there to be played and it is fair for Anet to assume content still available in core areas has been played prior to later content. The village in Queensdale and corresponding NPCs and heart vendor give a decent amount of flavour around Caudecus as well.

As for your summary of the characters, whilst LS1 was very poor with story and exposition, it did more than the rather strange summary you gave. Whilst LS2 isn't great at filliung in the gaps, we do get a clear idea of Braham and Taimi at least as the LS progresses.

For reference, I've better summarised them below that can be taken from LS1

• Marjory - Private Investigator which played a part of the story as we used clues and her skills to solve issues. Her LS2 involvement resolves around her family ties and little else. Any distance between her and her sister is because Marjory is disowned from the family, partly due to her relationship with Kasmeer which is more to do with Kasmeer's nobility and the class gulf than their sexuality
• Braham - son of Eir who barely new his Mother and is rising to meet a legend he clearly too young and immature for
• Taimi - genius Asura apprenticed to Zojja who has overcome a severe diability to prove she is better than her peers
• Kasmeer - noble stripped of her societal rank due to actions of her family. Events in LS1 give her the ability to detect certain falsehoods. Her mesmer skills have been very useful
• Rox - independent and kind hearted Charr who is balancing her new friendship with Braham (and us) with her connections to Rytlock and the rest of the Charr. Is sent to sort out the TEquatl problem to prove herself worthy

Anet does not fill in gaps as well as it should and assumes knowledge of things in GW1 and LS1 which it doesn't always elaborate on. That part of your posts I can agree on

[Godric.4276]

As for your summary of the characters, whilst LS1 was very poor with story and exposition, it did more than the rather strange summary you gave. Whilst LS2 isn't great at filliung in the gaps, we do get a clear idea of Braham and Taimi at least as the LS progresses.

For reference, I've better summarised them below that can be taken from LS1

• Marjory - Private Investigator which played a part of the story as we used clues and her skills to solve issues. Her LS2 involvement resolves around her family ties and little else. Any distance between her and her sister is because Marjory is disowned from the family, partly due to her relationship with Kasmeer which is more to do with Kasmeer's nobility and the class gulf than their sexuality
• Braham - son of Eir who barely new his Mother and is rising to meet a legend he clearly too young and immature for
• Taimi - genius Asura apprenticed to Zojja who has overcome a severe diability to prove she is better than her peers
• Kasmeer - noble stripped of her societal rank due to actions of her family. Events in LS1 give her the ability to detect certain falsehoods. Her mesmer skills have been very useful
• Rox - independent and kind hearted Charr who is balancing her new friendship with Braham (and us) with her connections to Rytlock and the rest of the Charr. Is sent to sort out the TEquatl problem to prove herself worthy

Anet does not fill in gaps as well as it should and assumes knowledge of things in GW1 and LS1 which it doesn't always elaborate on. That part of your posts I can agree on

If that is a strange summary then I'm sorry, but that was the only relevant information I was able to garner from season two's first couple of chapters-. At least we can agree that maybe Anet can do better in the future with their plots and catching players up. Especially considering they don't seem to be afraid to sit an npc somewhere that can answer questions pertaining to the story. Though I should say for anyone reading to keep playing if they dislike most of the characters as I did, Taimi, Rox and Braham came around for me and I've been liking them. Kasmeer is a bimbo and Marjory just doesn't have any personality still so far.

[Randulf.7614]

@Godric.4276 said:

As for your summary of the characters, whilst LS1 was very poor with story and exposition, it did more than the rather strange summary you gave. Whilst LS2 isn't great at filliung in the gaps, we do get a clear idea of Braham and Taimi at least as the LS progresses.

For reference, I've better summarised them below that can be taken from LS1

• Marjory - Private Investigator which played a part of the story as we used clues and her skills to solve issues. Her LS2 involvement resolves around her family ties and little else. Any distance between her and her sister is because Marjory is disowned from the family, partly due to her relationship with Kasmeer which is more to do with Kasmeer's nobility and the class gulf than their sexuality
• Braham - son of Eir who barely new his Mother and is rising to meet a legend he clearly too young and immature for
• Taimi - genius Asura apprenticed to Zojja who has overcome a severe diability to prove she is better than her peers
• Kasmeer - noble stripped of her societal rank due to actions of her family. Events in LS1 give her the ability to detect certain falsehoods. Her mesmer skills have been very useful
• Rox - independent and kind hearted Charr who is balancing her new friendship with Braham (and us) with her connections to Rytlock and the rest of the Charr. Is sent to sort out the TEquatl problem to prove herself worthy

Anet does not fill in gaps as well as it should and assumes knowledge of things in GW1 and LS1 which it doesn't always elaborate on. That part of your posts I can agree on

If that is a strange summary then I'm sorry, but that was the only relevant information I was able to garner from season two's first couple of chapters-. At least we can agree that maybe Anet can do better in the future with their plots and catching players up. Especially considering they don't seem to be afraid to sit an npc somewhere that can answer questions pertaining to the story. Though I should say for anyone reading to keep playing if they dislike most of the characters as I did, Taimi, Rox and Braham came around for me and I've been liking them. Kasmeer is a bimbo and Marjory just doesn't have any personality still so far.

The sad part is, Marjory did have personality to start off with and was an interesting character they chose not to develop past LS1/early LS2. Any potential she had in LS3 where she goes off alone was never realised either.

Kasmeer is very much not a bimbo though and never displayed anything that suggests she is. She has been instrumental throughout the story - esp in PoF. In fact she does appears a few times in the open world in LS5, either teaching or leading. Her conflictions in LS3 and PoF concerning her devotion to the Six are handled very well by the writing team.

At this point, I find the story unsalvageable it is such a mess, but I think they should be prioristing a better LS1 recap without a doubt

[voltaicbore.8012]

@Randulf.7614 said:

At this point, I find the story unsalvageable it is such a mess, but I think they should be prioristing a better LS1 recap without a doubt

As little as I care about this, since ANet decided to make all these deeply uninteresting characters part of the ongoing story, they might as well.

I'll admit Canach and Taimi grew on me a bit, but outside of that, I find it was a pretty poor narrative decision to have these folks exist alongside us at all.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Alot of the problem is GW2's mixed storytelling between instances and open-world.

There's a huge amount of things, from LS2 onward, that just aren't explained unless you spend alot of time in the OW, doing every heart, every event, talking to NPCs all of it. For example, the main reason HoT story felt short is that almost all of it was told in massive meta event chains, with the instances just filling in the parts that you spend with your team.

This has become even worse as time goes on. Drizzlewood Coast has barely anything interesting in the instances. If you want to know characters like Effram you need to spend alot of time in OW listening to (well, reading) their dialogue and such.

That's also what makes it so hard for them to adapt LS1 into a replayable format, because it was almost all OW as well.

[Ayrilana.1396]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_Season_1

You can also find videos of players doing the episodes on YouTube as well.

[radda.8920]

It was the worst part of gw2 history. Not to mention that the majority of the events were annoying : zerg spam 1, 90% of the time. Only the puppet and the tower of nightmares were nice to doscarlet is one of the worst villains I've ever seen in a video game. The embodiment of emptiness. only the current saga almost manage to match the level of mediocrity of the first living story.i spent years on gw1, the lore was just perfect. And i remember at the beggining of gw2, i couldn't understand the waste of time arena was spending on such boring story and events during LS1Luckily Living History Season 2 gave me hope and then the first expansion (HOT) was perfect.Don't worry, you haven't missed anything

[Hirosama Nadasaki.6792]

@Hannelore.8153 said:For example, the main reason HoT story felt short is that almost all of it was told in massive meta event chains, with the instances just filling in the parts that you spend with your team.

This was a huge problem for me in LW Season 4. New maps were being introduced so fast and I barely got to see an inch of them because in the span of 4 quests I was already off to the next map, and entire story arcs came and went in a dazzling flash, so fast that I could barely care about them at all, stealing most of the impact they had.I imagine these maps and arcs were much more meaningful to people who did them as current content, as they actually had to spend time on the map doing the meta events and all since there was no next chapter yet, but to someone coming in later focused on the story, it felt awful.This is the exact same problem with LW1, no thought for the future players. Seems like they don't learn.

[firedragon.8953]

Yeah, going into Season 2 was super jarring. I also read the wiki and watched that 3 hour movie over a period of a week. It kind of helps a little, but is terrible from a game design and story telling perspective. I really wish the creative juices would flow a bit more to make a short Season 1 to fill us in on the cast we will play with for the next several hundred hours. Honestly they should have just had a whole new cast from S2 since they knew S1 would not be replayable.

In the end, this is basically what I figure someone needs to know about the characters and is much shorter. Don't expect to feel emotionally invested with the Characters, even if they act like you are best friends. You all just happened to come together by chance through the various events revolving around Scarlet and all of you survived it together. Let the characters grow on you (or not) during S2 and onward.

Marjory - A detective necromancer who got wrapped up in the events of LWS1 investigating some of the happenings with Scarlet. Her big claim is making an antitoxin to stop poison clouds made by Scarlet as well as discovering the plans to attack Lion's Arch. She has a mysterious contact known as E. Marjory is cool and mysterious, and has a thing for Kasmeer.

Kasmeer - A noblesse mesmer who is super religious and loves the Six. Her family has a bit of tarnished name. She could be considered to have fallen on hard times. She has a thing with Marjory.

Braham - A immature norn teen. Son of Eir Stegalkin, although their emotional relationship is quite rocky/distant. He asked Rytlock and the Charr for help to fight off Flame Legion and Dredge who were working with Scarlett and attacking his homestead. He was turned down, but Rox ended up helping him.

Rox - A charr with no warband who wants to join Rytlock's warband. She tries to prove herself and becomes a good friend of Braham during the process.

Taimi - A young asura who thinks Scarlet is super awesome. She eventually realizes Scarlet is crazy even if she is a genius. She also appointed Braham as her guardian, although he was reluctant (at first).

Canach - A villain/criminal that has tried to reform his ways and believes to be doing good although committing what are deemed as crimes. He worked for the Consortium (Asuran mercantile corporation) and was eventually arrested by Ellen Kiel. Someone paid for his release.

Ellen Kiel - A member of the Lionguard who became a member of the Captain's Council (ruling body of Lion's Arch). She investigated criminal activities happening in Southsun Cove (see "Canach")

[firedragon.8953]

I just came across this video and found it VERY concise and kind of orientates you. Note that the creator goes through the whole storyline up until Path of Fire, so if you don't want spoilers past LWS1, you shouldn't watch the whole video. With that said, it is a good overview of all the events from LWS1 to LWS3 (including HoT).