Players have had a long wait for a content update for Guild Wars 2, but the wait is finally over. This long wait is just one of several reasons players feel unsure about the games future. While season 2 of the Living World has made serious improvements, it’s also plagued with it’s own faults. Still, it has helped to keep your hopes up, at least a little bit. Echoes of the Past has been live now for nearly a week, and it seems that hope can grow a bit more.
Guild Wars 2 is a sequel, making it a part of an entire series of games, but I’ve often felt that the game lacked that connection. Guild Wars 2 could easily be taken as a reimagining of the world of Tyria to those who’ve never played the original games. Even for those of us that have, I think we all expected a bit more connection. Until now the Hall of Monuments was the only major connection, and even that was disappointing.
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The Tengu use to be seen all over Tyria. Now new players can learn what happened to this once proud race.
Echoes of the Past is finally taking steps to connect this game to the originals, at least when it comes to lore. The game does have several Easter eggs scattered everywhere for players to find, but unless you’ve played the originals, it may seems like random information, or even worse, it goes completely unnoticed! Echoes of the Past takes that precious amount of time to pull us aside and remind us that Tyria is not a young world, but one that has seen many adventures before.
Veterans of Tyria will find that the references to the past in this latest update are still very much simple Easter eggs, but all clumped into one small instanced area. This style of presentation makes them very hard to ignore. My guild-mates who hadn’t played the first games were suddenly interested to learn more, and even began to make more sense of the game world almost instantly. I myself was reminded of the events I had witnessed, and even learned what happened afterwards.
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I still meet players today that have no idea about the hostile past between the Charr and Humans.
Aside from lore, Echoes of the Past also brings something very important to the Living World, and that’s stability. While Season 2 of the Living World has brought better storytelling to the game, it was very glitchy. Often times these bugs caused players from completing the content. From what I’m experiencing now, this isn’t a serious issue. Sure there are a few bugs here and there, but nothing that’s preventing players from getting through the content.
How dare I demand free content to be perfect, right? I’m sure many of you are thinking that, and all I have to say is that even free content should be just as polished as paid DLC. First off, all content is a direct representation of the game. If someone sees even one part glitching like crazy,they will think this is an issue that plagues the entire game. It also represents the future of the game. If a development team can’t even produce decent free content, how can it be expected of them to create paid content that’s worth the cash? Glitches just irritate players causing them to log off, which means they won’t be around to buy silly backpack skins.
It’s been over a month since the newest content was added to the Living World, but I feel like it may have been worth the wait this time. Echoes of the Past is the part of the game that finally makes Guild Wars 2 feel like it’s truly connected to the original series. Really this type of content should have been added to the game long ago. It also shows just how stable a free content update can be, which we all hope continues in future updates. More importantly, Echoes of the Past gives us a reason to log in again, and reminds of just how fun the world of Tyria can be.
What do you think about Echoes of the Past? Do you feel that it connects Guild Wars 2 to the original series? Let us know in the comments below.
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