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Well, hopes that these things would improve with experience is proven once again to be wishful thinking. IMO, this is by far the worst event in the Living Story chain to date and, yet again, another waste of developer resources.

You’ve taken a very free form MMO with a massive game world and reduced it to a stage on which to host the worst example of Theme park trash one could imagine.

The Queen’s Pavilion? Each piece of the pie is just a variation of a theme park exhibit of everything that is wrong with MMORPGs. Apparently, difficulty is supposed to make up for the complete lack of any redeeming design qualities, but it just makes the content as frustrating on a play level as it is on a design level.

The Balloon rides. Could have guessed we wouldn’t actually get a vista like traveling experience, instead it’s just another portal. Just gates to some stairs with a chest and an escort request required to unlock the door. Stale, boring, horrible; huge disappointment.

Yet another currency, because we all know we need more of those. Why not allow all holiday and LS events to share a currency, so players who are casual can maybe save up and buy something nice every other event, rather than just making it pointless to try to earn a temporary currency you may have no hope of making anything useful of.

Speaking of special currency, now we don’t just need special currency to get nice skins, we need that currency AND gold!

One of my guild mates that hadn’t completely abandoned the game, (the rest of the guild left after Guild Missions ended up being for large guilds only due to unlock costs), returned after a month away to check this out. It took us an hour to agree it was horrible, log out and go play something else.

Arenanet, you are killing the game. You are thumbing your noses at the Manifesto and apparently doing everything possible to make the game the worst kind of theme park.

I love the core game. It was very close to the game I’ve been waiting for since I started playing MMOs over 14 years ago. There was a natural progression for closing the gap between the game at launch and the lofty ideals of the Manifesto. It would have been hard work, it may have taken a couple years of steady progress, but the path ahead was clear.

Why have you abandoned the game world, allowing the illusion of life that Dynamic Events provided to flutter away as the world has remained stuck in an infinite loop, in exchange for the absolute worst kind of MMO content?

At this point, the issue isn’t more permanence, Living Story has culminated to the inevitable conclusion that Living Story itself is a colossal waste of everyone’s time and energy that needs to shelved for some miraculous Plan B asap.

It’s not fun. It doesn’t make the game feel alive. It’s frustrating for casuals. It’s the worst form of theme park content one could imagine. It diverts resources from where it’s really needed. It diverts players away from the assets of the game, the massive, richly detailed game world. It even sours the concept of Holiday Content, because Holiday Content is too much like LS content and many of us have had as much of that as we ever hope to experience.

If there is anyone left at ANet that believes in the Manifesto and actually understands what MADE this game so incredible, it’s time for you to show those who have become so lost the way back.

I can’t even couch this with anything positive, other than maybe that some of the skins are nice, even if they are wasted behind a currency that few are going to want to bother earning.

The biggest problem is that the content isn’t just a waste, but it’s actually soured the game for a number of people in a way I could never have imagined possible a year ago. You would have been better off doing nothing but the occasional holiday event than this.

What should you have done? Well, you should have stuck to the original plan you talked about last fall and created boatloads of new Dynamic Event content. Content that would have advanced the story with in each game zone told by the Dynamic Events that were there at launch. Adapting some, replacing some, rotating some in and out of circulation. That would have created a Living World. that would have preserved the sense of a dynamic game environment. That would have shed the negative stereotypes about Theme Park MMOs.

Instead, we got this mess.

Queen’s Pavilion is satire of everything that is wrong with really, really bad theme park MMO design, but it seems you guys are oblivious to the joke. It may be the worst part of the Jubilee, but the rest of it isn’t much better.

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

Thanks for taking the time to comment Anthony.

First, I’d just make clear I don’t see this event in any way as a step forward. Concentrating mob grinding content in an area the size of a small baseball stadium has got to be one of the biggest steps backward for the game. I like the story, but the content is just bad.

Second, Dynamic Events. Back when Colin talked about the strategy for adding tons of new DEs to the game, he actually specified that the intent was to drop that content into the game with out fanfare, with each update, so that over time, players would continue to be surprised by fresh, new content in the game world. To now insinuate that the reason you abandoned that approach was because it received little attention and fanfare is just plain bizarre.

Dynamic Events can be added with as much or as little fanfare as you desire. It shouldn’t just be random events tossed into the game, it should be an evolution of events with in each zone in a way that makes sense given the events that occurred there previously. It would make perfect sense to use storytelling to bring focus on a zone where the more dramatic events for each update will play out, while still progressing content in other zones and building the foundation for big events to come. The writers would have plenty to do with out the Living Story framework.

It seems you gave up way too quickly on the content that makes the game special, in order to pursue gimmicky content that would never have made it into the game during pre-launch development. That the gimmicky stuff has been temporary just makes it all an even bigger waste of time, money, resources, talent and potential.

The issue I and others have is really multi-tiered. The wasting of development resources best spent elsewhere, the underwhelming impact and limited benefit of most content created under the “Living Story” and, at least as importantly, the abandonment of the evolution of the game world.

Tyria, outside of the temporary and gimmicky content, has not progressed or evolved. Dynamic Events only produce an organic, dynamic gaming experience if they themselves change and evolve on a regular basis and in a way that makes narrative sense.

Queen’s Pavilion would be considered a satirical representation of old school, mindless, unimaginative MMO game design if it weren’t so clear you seriously believe it represents progress.

The game world has become stale and static. The game has suffered under many months of events that draw people away from organic, free form game play in the incredibly vast and detailed game world, with the trend further reinforced by “jump through these hoops” dailies and monthlies.

Everything you have done this year has been designed to reward hoop jumping, cool-aid drinking, linear game play and then you wonder why so few people still free roam the long static game world ?

IMO, we are way beyond the point where fine tuning the current strategy based on player feedback is going to do much to preserve the ongoing potential of the game. The game, at launch, was an incredible achievement and sparked significant success. Why you would decide to undo everything the core game design and the Dynamic Event approach to content managed to achieve is just beyond me.

Arenanet laid out the case for this world design and the value of Dynamic Events as the core of the new MMO content delivery paradigm prior to launch. The game at launch proved the concept. Then you just toss it all aside because there was no fanfare about the DE content you added last October, after stressing that you would be adding such content with out fanfare? Please, clear up my confusion, because I don’t get it.

It almost seems that you guys didn’t have the patience for the long game, didn’t get the instant gratification you wanted from adding Dynamic Event content, so then started working on tossing out flashy gimmicks, hoping no one would notice that you gave up on the game world.

The game, at launch, was extraordinary, perhaps the best MMO at launch in the history of the genre. In 2013, the perpetual drum beat has been to drive a march towards the extremely ordinary, under the cover that you are “doing more than almost any other MMO developer has done”. Quality is probably more important than quantity, but it has been sorely lacking. That this year’s content actively undermines the core game content, rather than supporting it, sadly means that the game would probably have been better off with nothing than what was actually produced.

Stop designing live updates as if this were just any other ordinary, stale, quest driven, last generation MMORPG and start supporting, expanding and renewing what made the game special and successful at launch!