Guild Wars 2 'living story' to focus more on personal experiences

Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet will take the game's "living story" idea in a more personalized direction, and will offer more in-game events that will "blend" with players' personal experiences into more dynamic storylines, director Colin Johanson told US Gamer.

Moving forward, the main narrative of Guild Wars 2 will paint a broader picture of the trials and triumphs of the world of Tyria and include lesser storylines that Johansen suggests will inspire more player-driven narratives.

"The living world updates that we did in the first half of this year definitely fall under the category of side story arcs kinda," Johanson said. "However, I can say that the story that's playing out right now is a part of much larger story, and it's something that will become clear as the year progresses."

Johnason said that despite recent emphasis on new events in smaller, specific regions, ArenaNet has many larger plans for Guild Wars 2's future using the living world idea.

"Some of the bigger pieces of feedback that we've heard from our players is that the things that happen in the living world are very compartmentalized," he said. "They feel like they happen to a very specific part of the world, they feel like they're transient, that they occur and go away again and that's something we're working on.

"There is now, and certainly will be a lot larger focus on ensuring that the content we're building is creating experiences that people can permanently have when they come back two years later," he added. "Instead of saying, 'I see something that happened two years ago but I can't experience it,', we want players to say, 'I'm playing this and I'm playing it as a result of something that happened two years ago.'"