It’s been about 6 weeks or so since Guild Wars 2 has had a major update. During those 6 weeks, there has been a WvW tournament, followed by a 2 week pause. Now for the next couple of weeks there’s the Halloween event, which is the same as last years. That’s a long time for nothing to be happening in the world of Tyria. The next installment of the Living World, Tyria’s Point of No Return, better be flawless.
The living world attempt has been a big deal. Since there hasn’t been any changes to the Halloween event, and no other released content from any other team, this leaves us to believe that even more resources are being thrown towards the living world. A lot of us are wondering if this is really what should be the priority for the developers. We’ve all heard about the possibilities it could bring to the game, and we all think they sound great. But we still haven’t seen it executed in a stable form.
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A lot of players would love to see unique events that happened during beta return. Is development for the living world taking way this possibility?
ArenaNet announced Tyria’s Point of No Return, the next installment in the living world. While season 2 has made some huge improvements with storytelling and character development, nearly every update has been as glitchy as Superman 64, preventing massive groups of players from progressing. I understand that these are free updates, but they still reflect on the future of the game. If all you produce is glitchy content, then how can the future of the game seem promising? That’s why I feel issues like this won’t happen in the next installment. There isn’t any reason for them to.
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The living world returns, but will it actually work?
As I stated earlier, nothing has really been going on in Tyria for over a month now. The WvW tournament has been the biggest event, and certainly kept some of us busy, but it didn’t require any time from the living world development team to keep things running. Since no new content was added to Halloween this year, the development team hasn't been busy with that either. Players have been waiting for over a month for new content, so it would make sense for the team to polish the next chapters, not only fine tuning the story, but also to test the updates so that players can have a smooth and glitch free experience.
That’s why I think so many players are looking to see if Tyria’s Point of No Return truly delivers. The developers have had all of this extra time to get things working right. If they want to prove the living world is worth sacrificing changes in holiday events, as well other story related events, now is the time to show us the possibilities they’ve told us about. This is such an important, and hopefully exciting time for Guild Wars 2.
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A lot of us have been around since the beginning, so we know what ArenaNet is capable of.
I do want to bring up the fact that the concept of the living world is new, but it isn’t brand new. ArenaNet has been messing with this for over a year now, and the game has been out for 2 years. The developers should have a pretty firm grip on how to implement changes to the game, even though the game is still young.
I really doubt Guild Wars 2 is suffering right now. Whenever I login, I see a ton of players roaming around. Sure, there are a lot of unhappy players, and for a while now they haven’t had anything to do to cheer them up. One way to win them back is for the living world to work. I still have massive doubts about it ever replacing the need for an expansion, but it can keep players interested in the game, continue to evolve the game world, and show that ArenaNet is still capable of creating fun polished content.
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