Guild Wars 2 is STEALING My SOUL - Living World 2

Preach has now finished Living World Season 2 and Heart of Thorns is on the horizon. Lets see what Mike thinks of how ArenaNet evolved the game and what he thinks they need to learn from.

00:00 - Intro
01:17 - New Zone Exploration
03:44 - Characters & Villains
06:10 - Storytelling
08:56 - The Story/Plot
11:46 - Gameplay
17:27 - Summary Thoughts
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Twitter: @Preachgaming
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Credits:

[Machinationstudio]

The thing the "trying GW2 in 2023" creators miss out on is that between most episodes in the LW story, there are weeks where we grind the map repeatable content, and that content was the most rewarding thing to do at the time, so it wasn't a big deal for players of that time to play those 20mins waiting for the story conditions to be fulfilled.

[Joshwana]

As a WoW player, it's easier to stomach/understand the Elder Dragon design if you think of them more as this series' Old Gods rather than something more akin to the Dragon Aspects or your typical fantasy dragon archetype

[Dallo]

HoT was absolutely one of the best "venturing in an unknown, uncharted land" experiences I've ever had in ANY MMO. By far its still my favourite expansion and the zones for the expansion were some of the best designed, with so much verticality and exploration to do

[broomguy]

I hope Mike plays through the zones of HoT and does the meta-events as he finishes the story journal. The big zone events tell a big part of the story and have some of the best events in the game.

[waltereadie]

Every time those skritt tunnels are inaccessible it means the mission to make them accessible again IS active. There's a spot you have to go to on the map to clear out some bandits. If the tunnels are closed it means the bandits ARE there and as soon as you clear them the tunnels open again. You don't have to wait for anything unless you just want to wait for somebody else to clear the bandits for you.

[arkanaloth]

the scritt tunnels are locked by a player triggered event, you don't have to wait, you just go over there, start killing bandits until the boss spawns, kill him, and that unlocks the tunnels. Most people actually don't realize this and think they need to map-hop.

the upper right hand corner of the zone is the scritt area and just go there and kill until the boss pops.

[SteezSamurai]

Heart of Thorns is what made me fall in love with GW2. I'm excited to see what Preach thinks about it!
Really looking forward to the next adventures <3

Heart of Thorns (HoT) is peak GW2 at least in terms of map design. The verticality, complexity, explorability, and jumping-puzzle-ability of HoT maps is just off the charts in HoT. One of the most fun things to do is figure out the hidden ways of getting up into the high forest canopy of the Verdant Brink map (first HoT map). Can’t wait till you get to that and start making vids on it!

[billlong]

Glad to hear you're loving the game. When you jump into HoT be sure to do the Verdant Brink (first zone) night meta event. It's fun and it's a great way to get a full set of exotic stat selectable armor.

[Kassilphe]

The story hits differently according to your previous experiences. As Mike guessed, Rytlock as well as the statue fight mean more to you when you play a Charr yourself (for those never having played a Charr, the catacomb with the statue is the first tutorial boss fight and where you lose your fist squad who are also all your childhood friends). I for my part was a Sylvary from the beginning, with all the mystery of being a whole race not older than 20years. Revealing their origin in that cave scene was quite impactful to me

[roadrunne]

Your recent look into GW2 encouraged me to come back after 3 years since I'm burnt out from other MMO's, thanks :) Looking forward to trying out many more classes & characters, as well as more content

[mebrandonb]

It's exciting to hear you're enjoying yourself considering the content you've played, the best is yet to come for sure. Heart of Thorns has some great moments in the story but probably the best part (for me) are the maps, meta events and the introduction of raids. It really takes off from here and I can't wait to see how you feel about the game going forward!

[jurare]

~ 5:19 without really spoiling (as you already pretty much noticed the theme behind the Elder Dragons), there´s a distinct reason why the Elder Dragons (Note: they´re Elder! Dragons. Not just any Dragons or some kind of Dragon-Like Creatures) are designed that way. The Elder Dragons are all assigned to one specific Domain of Magic that is represented in the Eternal Alchemy (pretty much what scarlet discovered during LWS 1), so you already defeated the Elder Dragon that was assigned to the domain of "death" (aka Zhaitan). Obviously, as you can clearly see from the visuals that represent the eternal alchemy, there are more domains of magic out there, which makes it pretty obvious that there are Elder Dragons sleeping out there in Tyria (as at this point of time, only the destruction of the Ley-Line in Lions Arch, and the death of Zhaitan, the released magic from the "domain of death" woke up Mordremoth, the jungle dragon)

As i hear you commenting on how you imagine Dragons: well, that may be true to the "average" dragon, but this is NOT the case for Elder Dragons. Elder Dragons are primordial beings, that are deeply connected to their domain of magic. They´re better described as "natural disasters" that are deeply connected to the world itself (it´s hard to describe without spoiling anything, it will make sense the more you get into the later parts of the lore).

11:26 this is basically what Living World is all about. The biggest thing about Living World is, that it connects each expansion, or rather: it creates the path going from one expansion to the next. This does NOT mean that there won´t be new "villains", and it does ESPECIALLY NOT mean that they´re not important. In fact you can view Living World more as "expansion-like" content, just without new specializations. And they are (story-wise) just as important as Expansions (and as a small teasing hint: we have more Elder Dragons than the game has expansions. I think i don´t have to say more than that).

~14:41 in this case, it often helps to limit the framerate. The engine is over 10 years after all, and there´s still stuff left in the game that is related to the DirecX 9 -compatibility. And while DX9 will be removed, until the process is complete this still indirectly limits the game unfortunately. Once the transition is complete though, we can expect improvements (as ANet won´t have to take care of basically 2 Graphics-engines anymore). What often helps is to actually cap your FPS to 60FPS (you won´t need more than that in an MMO anyway).

17:45 i would not call Living World "optional for story", because (as you already correctly expierienced), it contains important story-relevant stuff. While yes, Living World Season 2 is probably one of the least interesting or important chapters (i personally think that LWS1 is even more important for some context), at this point of time you probably don´t understand the importants of (at least some) the events you witnessed (yet). But i can assure you: it WILL become important later on and i can only encourage you to keep going through the story in order, and not to skip anything. (In fact, you are already taking the first steps towards some essential characters of the latest expansion (End of Dragons). You just don´t really know why, or who i am referencing here, for now). Also, the later Living World episodes will be WAY more on the impactful story-parts than what you expierienced so far.

[seelefire]

I'm glad you're doing living world seasons. I skipped ahead to expansions and it was actually a really jarring experience. I'm going back and doing living world and it explains so much. It also has a lot of maps and gameplay that you won't experience with the base game.

[Ilikebeatzzz]

Can't wait for your jurney to HoT. People either loved the expansion or complained about it, it being frustrating and what not, but for me it was the peak of any MMORPG. Truly challenging and interesting open world content. After all, that's the first thing people think about when you say MMO. Big open world, with a lot of people in it, and GW2 took that to another level with HoT.

[Scyths]

I'm surprised about all the bugs you've experienced to be honest. I've done the storyline of the game up to the latest expansion (Which I still haven't played) with 3 different characters, and I encountered very few bugs. So it is surprising to me that the community says that there are a lot of bugs.

[Taygeta]

Mouth of Mordremoth meta fight is so epic. Blew my mind the first time I did it. I just did it a few more times recently for the new legendary weapons and it still hold up really well as an epic fight from 9 years ago. One great thing about horizontal progression is that all these old zones are filled with life and active players.

They keep adding optional achievements like legendary skins that gets you to complete collections in older contents and breaths more life to all parts of the game despite of when they came out.

[slaggy]

nice vid, and what ever some might say, i would 100% encourage you to play through the living world season's to see both the high's and lows but also to get the story they built which is one of the big things in gw2 that keeps me getting back to the game

[MerlinCGBroadway]

The ripples of Scarlet Briar can be felt throughout the entirety of the gw2 storyline. Don't forget about her. I hope you enjoy HoT :)

[Tahulrik]

Rytlock went from being one of those 'so he is a character...' characters in guild wars...
To a badass very notable hero from HoT and onwards.

I can't wait to see preachs reaction to him in the future.

Season 4 is still absolutely stellar, and I'm looking even more forward to that !!