Would Guild Wars 2 classic work?

[voidek.5738]

Only way to replay LWS1. :'(

[Sobx.1758]

No, it wouldn't.

[Ayakaru.6583]

And not have to see SAB skins outside the hub everywhere

[Danikat.8537]

I take it you mean something like WoW Classic where they release a separate server with a copy of the game as it was at launch?

If so that wouldn't actually include Season 1, which didn't start until somewhere between 1 month and 4 months later - depending on if you count the first Halloween and Wintersday festivals and the Lost Shores event which doesn't tie into the Season 1 storyline and was intended to be the first of a series of stand alone one-time events (scrapped because it was a mess and later replaced with the 2 week long living world releases).

I suppose maybe they could do a stand-alone server which constantly cycles through the first year and a half of the game, so all the season 1 releases are re-released as they were originally and then it resets and starts over. But personally I'd make some changes to the schedule. For a start I'd cut out the festivals which aren't really part of Season 1 and where most/all of the content is still available, like Super Adventure Box, Wintersday and Halloween. But I'd keep the Season 1 Dragon Bash, Festival of the Four Winds and Queens Jubilee because those were different and tied directly into the main storyline.

I'd also reduce the time for some of the releases, like the Flame and Frost Prelude (the first official living world release) which just consisted of finding and helping refugees in the Shiverpeaks and getting hints about the story but went on for almost a month. I'd probably merge Tequatl Rising and Twilight Assault which both focused on permanent content (a big deal at the time) - the updated Tequatl fight and the Aetherblade path in Twilight Arbor respectively. You'd need to keep the releases in there because they tied into the overall story but I don't think they'd need as much time because anyone who wants to complete everything can do it in the main game. (Even when it first released Tequatl Rising coincided with the return of Super Adventure Box.)

But then the downside to doing that is Season 1 could be quite time consuming. I always struggled to keep up, between travelling regularly for work and to see my family, normal work hours when I'm not travelling and other hobbies I rarely had time to do everything in each release and it was a matter of picking what I wanted to prioritise and could finish before it was all taken away and focusing on just that. Trying to do that alongside playing new releases on the current servers sounds impractical, I'd definitely miss some stuff and I know I'm not the only one in that situation. But I can't see a way they could keep all the releases permanently available as they originally were, to do that they'd have to be instanced or something and then it would be better to put them into the existing game.

The other downside is that in GW1 there's no way to have just 1 character on a different server, your whole account moves together. So either you'd have to move your account to the new server and just do season 1 until you were ready to move back (and possibly pay gems for each move) or I assume it would have to be done with something like beta test characters where you have to make a new one and then they're entirely separate from the rest of your account and nothing carries over.

However it's done I imagine it would be a lot of work for Anet and I'd prefer them to put Season 1 into the game as story instances like they used for the personal story and season 2 onwards rather than making it a separate system. I hope that's what they've been working on with the ones that have been turned into Fractals and the tiny random fragments we got during Icebrood Saga, but I'm not sure.

[Dawdler.8521]

People are going to love character bound unique skins - including legendaries - where you have to literally destroy gear worth thousands of gold in order to get the stat you want with that skin, and then you have to make a new if you want the skin on another gear piece or character.

Ah, those where the days.

[Danikat.8537]

@Dawdler.8521 said:People are going to love character bound unique skins - including legendaries - where you have to literally destroy gear worth thousands of gold in order to get the stat you want with that skin, and then you have to make a new if you want the skin on another gear piece or character.

Ah, those where the days.

Oh yeah, trying to adjust to the old pre-wardrobe system would be a nightmare. It was confusing enough the first time around, it would be even worse when people are used to the wardrobe system and not having to worry about saving an item with a rare skin on it because you can never get another one if you get rid of it.

I also remember at least one person who accidentally lost a legendary because they made it, then used a transmutation crystal to combine it with another exotic weapon to get the stats they wanted (standard practice as this was the only way to change the stats) then changed the skin for some reason and only later released doing that meant they could never get the legendary back because no part of it remained - using a transmutation splitter just gave them the exotic they'd gotten the stats from and the new skin.

That's another reason to prefer adding season 1 as instanced content rather than separate servers - it means we don't have to worry about losing all the QoL updates. (I've heard there was a similar problem with WoW with players reporting systems were broken or missing on the Classic server because they'd forgotten that's just how it used to be.)

[kharmin.7683]

How many years has it been? And people are STILL clamoring for season 1? Enough already.

[Omega.6801]

No, it wouldn't.No, you wouldn't want that either.LS1 wasn't all that good. Sure, the Marionette(the fight itself, not the 50min wait before it started) and the three chapters "Battle for Lions Arch" were great. But there were also releases that literally consisted of pressing F on about 200 signposts.No.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

The first Halloween and first Wintersday were cool.

But, I'd not give up the plethora of QoL updates we've had to go back to 'classic' Guild Wars 2.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"voidek.5738" said:Only way to replay LWS1. :'(

I'm afraid you can't replay LWS1 even with a "Classic" version because some of that Season 1 code doesn't exist anymore (it was overwritten) and there are no old backups. Meaning, not even the developers have a complete working Season 1 code.

[voidek.5738]

Game itself were much more, i dunno, "not user friendly' - i member you learned your weapon skills almost instantly, but 6-10 slots way slower, there was no content directions (go there to find this), no gliders/no mounts/no mastery alone made the game almost unimaginable at this point. Which would be cool change of pace. Biggest problemo - how to handle it after end of lws1 - simple restart of server from the very beginning, thus it creates paradox where you need additional server for those who want to stay in that world forever and for newbies, so it's already two additional instances - one is constantly restarting and one that never changes. Sorry, im a bit too brainstormy here. :p On the other hand, it should cost some gems realistically to Anet even consider such mess.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Dawdler.8521 said:People are going to love character bound unique skins - including legendaries - where you have to literally destroy gear worth thousands of gold in order to get the stat you want with that skin, and then you have to make a new if you want the skin on another gear piece or character.

Ah, those where the days.

also character bound dye unlocks

@"voidek.5738" said:Game itself were much more, i dunno, "not user friendly' - i member you learned your weapon skills almost instantly, but 6-10 slots way slower, there was no content directions (go there to find this), no gliders/no mounts/no mastery alone made the game almost unimaginable at this point. Which would be cool change of pace. Biggest problemo - how to handle it after end of lws1 - simple restart of server from the very beginning, thus it creates paradox where you need additional server for those who want to stay in that world forever and for newbies, so it's already two additional instances - one is constantly restarting and one that never changes. Sorry, im a bit too brainstormy here. :p On the other hand, it should cost some gems realistically to Anet even consider such mess.

A solution in search of a problem is bad enough but what you have here isn't even a solution to anything.

That would also require maintaining multiple code branches at the same time. They aren't even able to keep up with bugfixes while maintaining only one.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

It's software so you can make anything work with enough time and money, but I doubt it would be worth it. Rather than going backwards I would prefer to go forwards and have new content and stories to play.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

From a playerbase standpoint, no it would not.

[mindcircus.1506]

@voidek.5738 said:Only way to replay LWS1. :'(Didn't this community learn with Visions of the Past that the LWs1 content is objectively poor and not worth the resources it takes to make playable again?

[Ashen.2907]

If by "classic" you mean, "as it was at launch" then you wouldn't get LW1. If you mean as it was prior to the first expansion, that would be something else entirely.

[Danikat.8537]

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"voidek.5738" said:Only way to replay LWS1. :'(Didn't this community learn with Visions of the Past that the LWs1 content is objectively poor and not worth the resources it takes to make playable again?

The problem with those is you only get 1 short instance, out of context. Judging the whole of season 1 on that would be like trying to decide if you like a TV show by watching 10 minutes from the middle of the next-to-last episode. You're not getting any of the context, you won't know who any of the characters are or what's going on so it won't make any sense and it will be virtually impossible to follow the plot or care what it is.

It works as a tech demo to show that they can bring back the instances but I don't know why they bothered showing it to players because getting tiny fragments out of order with no context bares absolutely no resemblance to getting season 1 back.

(Unless, being extremely cynical here, it was done by someone who didn't want to bring back season 1. I like playing the story in GW2, I'd like season 1 to be playable again but I did two of those 'flashbacks' once each and then never again because in that format they're pointless. Assuming I'm not the only one who did something like that they've now got metrics to "prove" that even players who say they want season 1 back don't play the bits we've been given and could potentially use that to argue that no one really wants it. A bit like movie studios using the disasters that were the Catwoman and Electra movies to argue for years that no one wants to see female superheroes.)

[Luthan.5236]

No. It would not. Would only split the playerbase. Which might not have been a big deal for WoW with millions of active players. But here we have less players.

[mindcircus.1506]

@Danikat.8537 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@voidek.5738 said:Only way to replay LWS1. :'(Didn't this community learn with Visions of the Past that the LWs1 content is objectively poor and not worth the resources it takes to make playable again?

The problem with those is you only get 1 short instance, out of context. Judging the whole of season 1 on that would be like trying to decide if you like a TV show by watching 10 minutes from the middle of the next-to-last episode. You're not getting any of the context, you won't know who any of the characters are or what's going on so it won't make any sense and it will be virtually impossible to follow the plot or care what it is.This is by no means the only problem with this content.Not by a long shot.These instances were flat and unintersting. The Canach instance in particular is an awful gimmicky fight. I personally could have cared less about playing these things out of sequence. They were in essence supposed to be the best part of the content and they are substandard encounters by today's standards. Mechanics are awful, balance is janky, the environments other than Braham's instance have an amatuerish and unfinished feel.Compare these instances to the rest of the content we got with Visions of the Past, Forging Steel which is EXCELLENT, and the story instance with the Almora fight which stands out as one of the best story instance fights this game has ever delivered.You can take the Almora fight out of sequence and compare it to the Nightmare Incarnate instance and judge. You can take plenty of this game's content out of context, and rewards aside still have a fun and compelling encounter. The Season 1 content ages as well as a Tom Baker Doctor Who Episode. It has charm and is great for nostaligia, but it's production values make it borderline unwatchable.The content is objectively poor by today's standards.It works as a tech demo to show that they can bring back the instances but I don't know why they bothered showing it to players because getting tiny fragments out of order with no context bares absolutely no resemblance to getting season 1 back.They delivered this because the game director at the time, Mike-Z was busy catering to a loud vocal minority on this forum that said what was really important to their enjoyment of this game.They were catering to the same sentiment that fuelled the OP of this thread and putting what they could back in the game with the resources they had because a small part of this community asked for it over and over again.

I can appreicate and respect the desire to have a contiguous story in this game without the season 1 gap. I would like that too. But when I look at the content objectively and compare it with the rest of what we got with Visions of the Past or Icebrood Saga all I can do is ask:What else might we have gotten had the developers not diverted resources to this Nostalgia project?

[JHawke.7425]

Gw2 classic would be horrible lol, there is nothing to do now as it is if you enjoy endgame pve, classic version of the game would have even less to do

[voidek.5738]

@Luthan.5236 said:No. It would not. Would only split the playerbase. Which might not have been a big deal for WoW with millions of active players. But here we have less players.

b-but don't we have millions too literally??

[Astralporing.1957]

@voidek.5738 said:

@Luthan.5236 said:No. It would not. Would only split the playerbase. Which might not have been a big deal for WoW with millions of active players. But here we have less players.

b-but don't we have millions too literally??Do we? I sincerely doubt that.Remember, we're talking about

active

players. Not about the number of accounts ever created.

[Linken.6345]

@voidek.5738 said:

@Luthan.5236 said:No. It would not. Would only split the playerbase. Which might not have been a big deal for WoW with millions of active players. But here we have less players.

b-but don't we have millions too literally??

Accounts yes but not players.Some people got 10-50 accounts eachEditAnd thats not counting in all the inactive accounts either thats prob 70% of the account pool.

[Teratus.2859]

No it wouldn't.

And we wouldn't need a classic mode to play LW1 again, we just need Anet to make that content repeatable and modify quite a bit of it to be instanced instead of open world.Not a small task obviously but one a good number of us believe is worth doing and wish they would get around to doing it.That hole in the story annoys some of us greatly.

[Ashen.2907]

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@voidek.5738 said:Only way to replay LWS1. :'(Didn't this community learn with Visions of the Past that the LWs1 content is objectively poor and not worth the resources it takes to make playable again?

The problem with those is you only get 1 short instance, out of context. Judging the whole of season 1 on that would be like trying to decide if you like a TV show by watching 10 minutes from the middle of the next-to-last episode. You're not getting any of the context, you won't know who any of the characters are or what's going on so it won't make any sense and it will be virtually impossible to follow the plot or care what it is.This is by no means the only problem with this content.Not by a long shot.These instances were flat and unintersting. The Canach instance in particular is an awful gimmicky fight. I personally could have cared less about playing these things out of sequence. They were in essence supposed to be the best part of the content and they are substandard encounters by today's standards. Mechanics are awful, balance is janky, the environments other than Braham's instance have an amatuerish and unfinished feel.Compare these instances to the rest of the content we got with Visions of the Past, Forging Steel which is EXCELLENT, and the story instance with the Almora fight which stands out as one of the best story instance fights this game has ever delivered.You can take the Almora fight out of sequence and compare it to the Nightmare Incarnate instance and judge. You can take plenty of this game's content out of context, and rewards aside still have a fun and compelling encounter. The Season 1 content ages as well as a Tom Baker Doctor Who Episode. It has charm and is great for nostaligia, but it's production values make it borderline unwatchable.The content is objectively poor by today's standards.It works as a tech demo to show that they can bring back the instances but I don't know why they bothered showing it to players because getting tiny fragments out of order with no context bares absolutely no resemblance to getting season 1 back.They delivered this because the game director at the time, Mike-Z was busy catering to a loud vocal minority on this forum that said what was really important to their enjoyment of this game.They were catering to the same sentiment that fuelled the OP of this thread and putting what they could back in the game with the resources they had because a small part of this community asked for it over and over again.

I can appreicate and respect the desire to have a contiguous story in this game without the season 1 gap. I would like that too. But when I look at the content objectively and compare it with the rest of what we got with Visions of the Past or Icebrood Saga all I can do is ask:What else might we have gotten had the developers not diverted resources to this Nostalgia project?

Agreed.

LS1 was awful. I took an extended break from the game to reevaluate where to spend my gaming time in response to this content. It gave me the solid impression that the talent behind GW1 was gone.