Was the personal story of the Sylvari really that bad?

[redwbulbul.8420]

First thing first, I played GW2 since launch and I was really excited of how they present the overall story and its setting in GW2 ( examples: its manifesto, teaser and race introduction videos). I choosed to play a sylvari, because they were introduced as a new race, born into a new wide world they wanted to learn from. ( It was a perfect match for a new player, who wants to understand tyria and its lore). Every playable race shared their story path with allies like a member of Destinys Edge, a mentor from the orders and several more. Through the story and discovering the maps you could travel to, I really enjoyed how we felt the tension to fight the threat of an Elder Dragon. To unite Destinys Edge was one of the best idea for the story. The overall conclusion was: Only united we stand, devided we fall. So the 5 races had to work together in order to stand against the threat coming from Orr - leading us to form the Pact. We experienced several losses through the fight and team up with new allies. Helping other races (Quaggan, Kodan, ...) and discovering new ones ( like the Largos) made this a huge adventure. Also helping Trahearne to fulfill his Wyld Hunt was rewarding. After we managed to kill Zhaitan there was room left to fight the other elder dragons, so every expac we could fight a new one. All in all the story was really well set up. Surely the implementation wasnt that great and the Zhaitan boss fight didnt felt that epic as I hoped for. Nonetheless the story was delivered how it was presented before release.

 

The personal story was for me a REAL ADVENTURE diving into a fantasy world!

 

.... now the real disappointment began:

With HoT, the story of the sylvari and the story of the elder dragons was a real mess. The lack of explanation for the story of the sylvari , for example their origin with Ventari and Ronan (-which I was so into it), the nightmare court, malyck and the other pale trees, made especially the personal story of the sylvari meaningless. With the comic team (Kasmeer, Marjory, Rytlock, Taimi, Braham, Rox and Canach) The Orders, Destinys Edge and the allied races on whole Tyria became meaningless. The overall theme "United we stand devided we fall" was given up. I agree that making the sylvari race a potential enemy and that killing an elder dragon is a bad idea was a dangerous but brave step to take GW2 to a new path. But they shouldnt forget what they have build the story up for. Now that the sylvari still survived after killing their "creator", there is just that silent void about the sylvari. So many things remained unexplained.

And from then on, PoF was a new direction for the story, where the human gods and the human race became the main plot, focusing on just one kind of lore. There is no further discussion for the sylvari.

If I would have played the human race from the beginning I wouldn't be that upset right now, because I would have a slightly different view of the story telling.

 

All the feeling of having a huge adventure and preparing for a war against the elder dragons... is gone.

 

I have to say that this review of the Story of GW2 is very biased and expresses my first impression of finishing the story once as a sylvari. And I also think that my opinion is just part of a minority in the gw2-community. I consider this not as a fully analyzed review and I might be wrong in some aspects.

I also apologize for my bad english.

 

 

 

[Kitty.6219]

I kinda expected a civil war, a siege of The Grove, a better role for the Nightmare Court to play, maybe finding allies in the Pale Tree to the West where Malyck was born. The HoT story feels rushed, feels weird, we are fighting for our lives and somehow we got enough people to do Dragon Stand, When did that happen? When were we able to get back to central tyria and ask for reinforcements? How?! It feels very weird!

[Nick Lentz.6982]

Here is the thing. HoT was the start of shit story telling. Taimi was the Dues Ex and drove the plot, I enjoyed what it had though.

They missed a lot of things that should of been told BEFORE we killed Mordy. Any racism or story arc with the Sylvari after that was pointless. They then ignored 90% of what happened in Maguuma for even more shitty story telling and Lore breakers and we got PoF. Which I will not start how bad that was.

The point is, we will never know. Because Anet will not develop old Content. If they can't sell it, they won't add it. Its unfortunate that the world is stuck in time, and we just have to deal with it.

[Randulf.7614]

I think the problem lay not in the actual storytelling, but in the direction they chose to take it. What they were trying to achieve in the urgent chase to rescue our friends was fine and made sense. Other arcs that needed to be used as mentioned so far in this thread deserved to be in and explored, either via the main instances or furthered by the new maps - the latter being something that was exceptionally well achieved in PoF and so far in LS4.

 

As for not developing core content, they tried it and it failed. LS1 was not a success story and they also tried adding new events during the early months/first year which they said had not proved to be as popular as they had hoped. A fully, evolving world cannot work in an MMO and have long term success as a business model as far as I can see. Not developing core content is a very wise decision.

 

But, yes otherwise HoT was a missed opportunity - likely lost forever - to really explore the Sylvari and their lore.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Nick Lentz.6982" said:

> Here is the thing. HoT was the start of kitten story telling.

 

Start? That was Season 1.

 

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> I think the problem lay not in the actual storytelling, but in the direction they chose to take it. What they were trying to achieve in the urgent chase to rescue our friends was fine and made sense. Other arcs that needed to be used as mentioned so far in this thread deserved to be in and explored, either via the main instances or furthered by the new maps - the latter being something that was exceptionally well achieved in PoF and so far in LS4.

 

More or less accurate. There was also management mishaps happening, and overall time constraints. Ever since they began working on GW2 (if not before), ArenaNet has had the issue of not having good time management and project management skills in their development of the franchise - they've gotten much better at this post-Heart of Thorns, however.

 

When making Heart of Thorns, their story direction (race against the clock to rescue Destiny's Edge), and more importantly their decision to rescue Destiny's Edge in the penultimate story instance of HoT, resulted in the wide range of other topics needed to be tackled being distractions to that plot which hurt the plot. As it is, it feels weird that the PC would suddenly sidetrack for Tarir and Rata Novus, and it would have been weirder if the PC had detoured for the three other major topics (Malyck, seed cave, and Nightmare Court), let alone the smaller topics (such as the three Mordrem Commander origins and pre-DS encounters- originally they had planned for us to encounter one per map in the storyline like we encounter Stavemaster Arywn in The Jungle Provides).

 

It all falls down to poor management, and whatever reason they decided they had to have HoT be a race against the clock plotline from start to finish. And now that we're in Season 4 with the plotline going how it is, the only way we'll be seeing more is via raids, side story acheivements, or if future LW installments bring us to old areas like S3E6 brought us back to Orr.

[Nick Lentz.6982]

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @"Nick Lentz.6982" said:

> > Here is the thing. HoT was the start of kitten story telling.

>

> Start? That was Season 1.

I was being modest :p. But to me, it was more of a relief that we finally killed Scarlett or Even Zhaitan than Mordy or Balthazar. I felt like we are practically a god once we reached Mordy, and have too much plot armor to fail, and the last time I cared was season 1 xD. There were definitely a lot of questionable moves in story in season 1 though.

[deatine.2498]

Well after the original story, I thought all of HoT just felt like a big "Where's Waldo" with Destiny's Edge and Trahearne. I really missed some actual lore.

I was also quite sad that everything from the original story, especially the orders, became absolutely meaningless quite suddenly. As Charr, I have basically been kicked out of my own race at level 30 (should be a big deal for Charr) , and been officially kicked out of my army (Vigil) by level 80 for no real reason, imo. Because "eh, you're doing other stuff now". Yet, wherever I go, there's Charr warbands and Vigil soldiers doing important stuff. I am not part of that anymore in any way for...reasons? I don't know.

 

It left me feeling standing besides the story, if that makes sense.

 

As far as I know a lot of the GW2 team (including original owner?) changed since the original story, so there's that.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

> @"deatine.2498" said:

>(including original owner?)

 

Nah. A lot of the team has rotated over- which is normal for a franchise this old- but Mike O'Brien's one of the original founders of ArenaNet, years before even GW1.

[Sovereign.1093]

the problem came when the had to release content everyweek. quality went down.

 

 

[Zaklex.6308]

> @"Kitty.6219" said:

> I kinda expected a civil war, a siege of The Grove, a better role for the Nightmare Court to play, maybe finding allies in the Pale Tree to the West where Malyck was born. The HoT story feels rushed, feels weird, we are fighting for our lives and somehow we got enough people to do Dragon Stand, When did that happen? When were we able to get back to central tyria and ask for reinforcements? How?! It feels very weird!

 

There are no reinforcements from Central Tyria involved, those are all Pact survivors rescued as we travel through the different maps...even though appearances would dictate the the vast majority of the forces were killed and or captured(some dialogue even mentions that), we find plenty of survivors as we travel through each map. When we reach DS they've all gathered for the final confrontation with Mord...the supply lines have been established and as we beat back the Mordrem there needs to be less and less need for protecting those lines. Of course there are a few recruits that show up in DS, those would be the only people from Central Tyria that I would consider reinforcements.

[azureai.9764]

> @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> > @"Kitty.6219" said:

> > I kinda expected a civil war, a siege of The Grove, a better role for the Nightmare Court to play, maybe finding allies in the Pale Tree to the West where Malyck was born. The HoT story feels rushed, feels weird, we are fighting for our lives and somehow we got enough people to do Dragon Stand, When did that happen? When were we able to get back to central tyria and ask for reinforcements? How?! It feels very weird!

>

> There are no reinforcements from Central Tyria involved, those are all Pact survivors rescued as we travel through the different maps...even though appearances would dictate the the vast majority of the forces were killed and or captured(some dialogue even mentions that), we find plenty of survivors as we travel through each map. When we reach DS they've all gathered for the final confrontation with Mord...the supply lines have been established and as we beat back the Mordrem there needs to be less and less need for protecting those lines. Of course there are a few recruits that show up in DS, those would be the only people from Central Tyria that I would consider reinforcements.

 

I think you are largely correct - plus the local tribes also pitch in to help out. Laranthir of the Wild seems to have done some massive heavy lifting to make that final assault happen.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I think DS makes a lot of sense. The maps tell a story in itself, pretty much the only thing that worked out, even with the almost completely ripped out Nightmare Court storyline. Every map is a chapter in a great story.

 

VB is survival. You rescue whoever you can, you rally, you fight for a foothold and get your scattered army back together.

AB you establish a basecamp, stabilize your army, your supplies, find some allies, gather first information on what the hell to do.

TD you establish forward camps, go into offensive and (you really do) break through a weak flank into Mordremoth inner most domain (and thus Mordri himself)

DS you bring the fight to Mordremoth himself. You divide your reorganized army into three operational groups that attack Modremoth in a pincer movement, destroy his defenses and finally defeat him (while some useless heroes distract him with their pathetic little battle in his mind, thinking they did the hard work).

 

This is (for me) very enjoyable. VB is desperate struggle, AB is hope, TD is preparation, DS is final battle and victory.

 

I enjoyed doing the meta events a lot and still occasionall enjoy them (there isn't much in PoF to enjoy on THAT level IMHO. In fact, there isn't much to enjoy in PoF at all. Maps are gorgeous, but the NPCs are all idiots or worse, which really grinds on me, there are no real, nice meta event chains to speak off... etcpp.). Sure as a sylvari main, I felt that A LOT of potential was wasted, a lot of things untold, a lot of plot holes uncovered. I can only hope that at some point there will be something to at least fill in the worst examples (like why there are nightmare courties in DS. And why they seem to know you).

 

Also we REALLY need an update on PT's status.