is it time to retire living world entirely?

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

this has been an issue of discussion for some time now, ever since icebrood saga, but i think its especially of interest with the expansion model change. the living world seasons, despite now being over, continue to cause confusion amoung the player base, especially to new players as to which they need to buy.

 

the entire system has always been an issue for players just joining the game, especially since many paid editions deliberately lack living world.

 

i would suggest at this point to just retire living world entirely. i don't mean just stop making them. i mean completely merge them into their relevant expansions, merge the map categories in the lfg, merge the achivement categories, and just completely scrap the whole idea permanently. even if we had to split heart of thorns and path of fire back into two separate expansions again since they would be shipping with twice the content as in the past, i think it would be worth it in the long term.

 

(this would be excepting icebrood saga, of course, which is technically its own mini-expansion already.)

 

it was a good run while it lasted, but as it continues to confound and demoralise every new player i invite to the game, i honestly feel like it needs to go. many players buy the living world episodes for gold, and only specific ones anyway, so i doubt its even making arenanet much money at this point.

Edited October 3, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Fueki.4753]

In case you haven't noticed, the "mini" expansion model is nothing but Living World.

Actual expansions are what they have stopped doing.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

In case you haven't noticed, the "mini" expansion model is nothing but Living World.

Actual expansions are what they have stopped doing.

But...living world was free.  Oh, I see what they did there...

[Fueki.4753]

11 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

But...living world was free.  Oh, I see what they did there...

Expansions delivered their story as a whole package. Living World stories released piece by piece.

"Mini" Expansions are also being released piece by piece.

The form of monetization is different, but the release format of "mini" expansions is the same as it was with the Living World seasons.

[Randin.5701]

At the very least, I do think it's time for them to make Season 2 free. Like S1, it (technically) doesn't add new zones, so it gives players less for their money than the subsequent seasons, and making it free would give new players a smoother ride up to the first full expansion.

[Solvar.7953]

I think it would be completely reasonable for the LWS be be included in the expansion it leads up to.  Eg, you buy HoT, you should get LWS2.  You buy PoF, you get LWS3, etc.

This might cost Anet some amount of money, but that is a pricing question.  I think they did change it so buying expansions includes the previous ones (or maybe requires it), which also makes sense because they then didn't have to worry about what features an account may have - If they had EoD, you would know they would have mounts for PoF and gliding from HoT.  Granted, the LWS didn't really add features like it, but it shows it can be done.  And I think just removing the confusion would be good for new player good will.

 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

On 10/3/2023 at 7:50 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

In case you haven't noticed, the "mini" expansion model is nothing but Living World.

Actual expansions are what they have stopped doing.

Technically only the quarterly updates are "living world". The expansion initial releases are much more than Living World, being multiple maps, masteries, and mechanical shifts in gameplay (weapon mastery this time around) at once. In regards to story, it's much like HoT and PoF. A clear ending to the start of the story, but a very obvious "To Be Continued" slapped on at the end.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Danikat.8537]

On 10/3/2023 at 2:08 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

But...living world was free.  Oh, I see what they did there...

Depends on the season. 1 and 2 were completely free when they first came out (1 still is, 2 requires gems if you didn't get it when it came out or during the 'return to' re-release), but Season 3 requires you to own HoT to play it and Seasons 4 and 5 require you to own PoF, so even if you didn't pay extra for the episodes you still had to pay something to play them, just indirectly.

What they're doing now is pretty much the same - you have to own EoD to get access to What Lies Beneath and What Lies Within and you have to have SotO to access whatever is released between now and the next expansion. All they've changed is the branding, the number of releases and that people who get it later will get it the same way - they don't have to pay extra for the episodes on top of buying the expansion.

Maybe they could re-work the existing seasons to work the same way. So Season 2 becomes free for everyone, Season 3 is included when you buy HoT, Season 4 and 5 are included when you buy PoF. Although I think that's unlikely to happen any time soon because it would annoy people who bought the Elder Dragon Saga Complete Collection and lose Anet money from people in future buying it. But I hope at some point they'll update that to include SotO and future expansions so it continues to be a way of getting everything up to the latest release in one purchase (which will mean calling it something other than Elder Dragon Saga Complete Collection) and maybe when they do that they can bundle the LW seasons with their relevant expansion.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Danikat.8537

[Vayne.8563]

On 10/4/2023 at 12:08 AM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

But...living world was free.  Oh, I see what they did there...

But the living world wasn't free for everyone, it was free for players around at that time, or the time they gave it away for free. I don't think everyone got it for free. Free if you were there isn't really free. They've been making money on the living world for years. They were rewarding loyal players with it who logged in by giving it away.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 10/3/2023 at 1:16 PM, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

is it time to retire living world entirely?

I don't understand the question, since ANet officially announced that they have retired the Living World model along with the full-expansion model, and that there will only be mini-expansions from now on with periodical releases.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

7 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Technically only the quarterly updates are "living world". The expansion initial releases are much more than Living World, being multiple maps, masteries, and mechanical shifts in gameplay (weapon mastery this time around) at once. In regards to story, it's much like HoT and PoF. A clear ending to the start of the story, but a very obvious "To Be Continued" slapped on at the end.

Technically you only get those updates if you paid upfront so... It's just a paid Living World.

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I don't understand the question, since ANet officially announced that they have retired the Living World model along with the full-expansion model, and that there will only be mini-expansions from now on with periodical releases.

They want to get season 2,3,4 and 5 for free if they bought expansions that they lead up to.'

So season 2 hot, season 3 pof sesaon 4 and 5 eod.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

5 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But the living world wasn't free for everyone, it was free for players around at that time, or the time they gave it away for free. I don't think everyone got it for free. Free if you were there isn't really free. They've been making money on the living world for years. They were rewarding loyal players with it who logged in by giving it away.

Living World is free when people need to bash on Soto.

[Teknomancer.4895]

3 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I don't understand the question, since ANet officially announced that they have retired the Living World model along with the full-expansion model, and that there will only be mini-expansions from now on with periodical releases.

Looks more like a branding/semantics exercise tbh. "We used to do this thing where we released content in variously sized pieces while calling them different things. After 11 years, just lumping it all under one new name is simpler."

And then how they choose to address bundling/pricing on the prior LW releases is a related but separate issue.

[Vayne.8563]

4 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Looks more like a branding/semantics exercise tbh. "We used to do this thing where we released content in variously sized pieces while calling them different things. After 11 years, just lumping it all under one new name is simpler."

And then how they choose to address bundling/pricing on the prior LW releases is a related but separate issue.

 So there were living world episodes that introduced the ability to use new weapons for each class?  Seems to me like major changes to the game came with expansions, rather than living world.

[Teknomancer.4895]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

 So there were living world episodes that introduced the ability to use new weapons for each class?  Seems to me like major changes to the game came with expansions, rather than living world.

I'm not talking about details or mechanics, so that is a non sequitur. The change is obviously about streamlining and rebranding, not game design. Stop looking at it like a player and look at it like an IT project manager working on streamlining a decade-old product's release schedule and marketing copy.

There was previously a separation between expansions and LW, but you can now stop thinking of them as separate things going forward because that's no longer valid.

Now they release "mini-expansions" which replace the full sized ones, and the "periodic" update releases replace the LW.

Very little really changed but the terminology and the condensed amount of content they're doing for each part.

[DeanBB.4268]

3 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Very little really changed but the terminology and the condensed amount of content they're doing for each part.

But it is changing. Gone are the days of buying an expansion and also seasons if you weren't around to get them for free.

But I agree, just lump the old seasons into the relevant expansion already. I think Anet must make decent $$$ off the old seasons, and hate to lose it.

[Vayne.8563]

3 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

I'm not talking about details or mechanics, so that is a non sequitur. The change is obviously about streamlining and rebranding, not game design. Stop looking at it like a player and look at it like an IT project manager working on streamlining a decade-old product's release schedule and marketing copy.

There was previously a separation between expansions and LW, but you can now stop thinking of them as separate things going forward because that's no longer valid.

Now they release "mini-expansions" which replace the full sized ones, and the "periodic" update releases replace the LW.

Very little really changed but the terminology and the condensed amount of content they're doing for each part.

Very little ever changes, if you don't look at the details though, and very often, the devil is in the details.

There are people saying the new expansions are just living world rebranded. I disagree, because the detail is different. We never got anything like new weapons in a living world episode as an example. We generally built on stuff that came before. I guess the closest thing would be the tables from IBS, or the downed skill from Season 3, but it's not the same.

Terminology has changed, because the system has changed and Anet wants people to understand that. The mechanics of the living world was that it was free for 90 days or so, and then it wasn't free any longer. That's no longer the case, and so new terminology is required. Otherwise confusion ensues. There's confusion either way, because people bring up stuff like Ante is just doing the same thing and calling it something else, but that's not true, because the way something is marketed is part of how you intereact with it.

Knowing you don't have to log in once you buy the expansion and you won't miss out on free content is a difference. Knowing that you're getting a new fractal and two strikes every year with challenge modes on all of them is a difference.

Saying it's not a difference is objectively false.  You can pick out the stuff you want to cover and say it's not a difference because I'm not paying attention to that. It's like the Knife of Phadreus from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Any way you slice reality you can get a different point of view. Mine is as valid as yours, but yours takes a particularly narrow and selective view of what's going on.

Anet changed how stuff was offered and really had no choice but to change the terminology surrounding it.

 

[Teknomancer.4895]

@Vayne.8563 You're still thinking like an end user.

Everything you wrote is basically SOP for the average garden-variety IT modernization & migration project, which is obviously what this was. If you've never been part of one of those from the inside, it would look like huge amounts of stuff are being changed wholesale for arbitrary reasons, yes. If you've ever been involved in one as part of the IT team tasked with making it happen, it's all routine operational details and nothing more.

Never underestimate the importance of those terminology "rebranding" exercises, because you can bet that management spent a surprising amount of time on what in any other context would be a minor consideration. Messaging is a much bigger deal that you'd think in these things (and yes, ANet seems especially bad at the whole communication thing).

End users look at it all and see X, but the IT Project Manager sees N. But in all honesty, whatever the IT department sees it as going forward is what will win between those two visions. The end user's input is not worthless, but it very rarely affects this kind of project. The scope probably looked something like this:

• Legacy system gets heavy daily use and the functions it provides are mission-critical to the organization.
• The original team that designed, stood up and administered that legacy system is gone due to organizational restructuring and ordinary attrition.
• The technology used to implement the legacy system is outdated and limits the ability to implement required changes going forward.
• Reorganize, restructure, streamline and automate the legacy system wherever possible in order to build in resilience and scalability and allow for reduced administrative workload until it ultimately reaches EoL and is supplanted with a replacement solution based on up-to-date technology.

Can it be argued that the company skipped one of the most important final steps in any major IT migration, that being User Acceptance Testing (UAT)? Absolutely, they don't seem to have done much if any of that at all. But you're hung up on what to call things and what happened when it was called X instead of now with it called N. That's not really in play anymore, let it go.

This project is likely in the monitor-and-remediate phase now, so none of that end-user belief structure matters. You can argue until you're blue in the face "but this is how it's been for a long time!" Yes that's true, it was. But it's not that way anymore and it will never be that way again, so you need to adjust.

That is literally every IT modernization and migration project ever.

[Tanuki.4603]

No!!!! its the only playable content int he game!!

Fractals too hard

STrikes too hard

WvW IVNISIBLE THIEF U CANT FGHT HIM!!!

PvP afk and bot every agme

 

WHAT DO U EVEN WANNA DO ?!?!??!

WE need living world or how do u even want me to play the game!!!!

I cant even paly character creator there is no strong like orc!!!!

[Tanuki.4603]

Dislike!!!!!

[Lucius.2140]

Just tie content:

1: LS2 + HoT: Is Mordremoth arc. Modremorth threat is presented in LS2 and the confrontation is in Hearth of Thorns. 

It could be easily been integrated into HoT to make it has more value.

LS3 is tied by masteries towards HoT but by plot to PoF. Also it could work as a way to sell whats next, kinda like LS1 will work towards HoT. What it offers to HoT is 6 maps.

I will integrate all of them, specially because HoT is old and people tend to value less older expansions.

2: LS4 is a continuation to PoF events and is thematically tied to the Crystal Dessert, so is a clear point towards PoF integration and offer it valuable content, items, mounts and maps.

3: IBS could be tied to Cantha to add to it and also because it could give more sense to the premature death of Jormag and Primordus xd.

Actually thematically it will be the expansion that kills dragons.

Tying IBS is an strech, specially since its scope always was to be a free expansion - shame it ended bad- but will help Cantha in terms of value.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Lucius.2140

[evilcat.6817]

There is some confusion, as LW1 is free for all. The rest is not, and if you want to buy it, do it in reverse order. Totally make sense.

Attaching each LW season to proper expansion sounds good. As player is already payer, so anet gets money anyway.

[BigDaddyDragon.8365]

They actually do give out the LW that goes with whatever expansion you are buying.  It just doesn't come with the cheapest version.  I know because I got them with all my alt accounts recently.  For $99 you get HoT, Path of Fire, and EoD and all LW 2-5.

Edited October 24, 2023 by BigDaddyDragon.8365

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, BigDaddyDragon.8365 said:

They actually do give out the LW that goes with whatever expansion you are buying.  It just doesn't come with the cheapest version.  I know because I got them with all my alt accounts recently.  For $99 you get HoT, Path of Fire, and EoD and all LW 2-5.

that's only on the complete collection and its fairly recent. buying it also means you can't get the deluxe editions unless you spend gems, which somewhat defeats the point of giving the living world seasons since you would've spent the same gems on them anyway.