Athrenn.9468

Overall, I thought that Daybreak was the strongest Living World release to date and here is why. The Big Things:The raid, fractal, Living World episode all felt like they belonged together. All three mediums tell a different, yet interconnected story, and that's how it should be. Raids allow us to face challenging foes who deserve more than a quick death in some story mission. The Underworld was the perfect choice of location coming off the story of what's happening with the realm of the Gods. Fractals allow us to delve into Tyria's past and explore the backstories of Living World characters like Joko and the Sunspear dervish who he turned to his side. Fractals also allow us to step into the shoes of other people throughout history and experience it first-hand—something that adds depth to the present day story. That brings us to Living World, the present-day story of constantly evolving episodic drama. In Daybreak, we witnessed the beginning stages of a plot that will affect all of the northern continent's governments equally, and that makes for good drama. When all three stories are woven together in this fashion, it feels deep and rewarding to explore all three facets. The story told together by all three mediums is stronger than the individual parts—that's called synergy, and up until now it's been lacking. Keep releasing content like this and you will continue to impress me with the depth of your story. The Little Things:In Episode 1: Daybreak, the stakes were both epic and personal. Saving the world all the time gets really boring unless the PC's actions are driven by a personal commitment like the bond they share with Aurene and Dragon's Watch. Stories are all about relationships and Daybreak allowed us to see just how far the Commander would go for the people he/she cares about. In terms of gameplay, the battles also felt epic—especially the skirmishes fought between the Mordant Crescent and Sunspear armies, but also with the Great Hall Warden whose story was told through the Fractals of the Mists. Lots of bodies on screen makes it feel like a real battle.Old characters from GW1 were handled well, giving us closure on Koss's story but also giving us some insight into his odd relationship with Margrid the Sly whose descendant is still running the family business of piracy.The jail break mechanic was tailored to the PC's profession. Being able to solve problems using profession mechanics is really cool and it makes me feel like we're really solving problems with our own skills, not just some convenient plot macguffin.That's all I have for now but there were so many little things I was impressed with that I can't even list them all. Details are important to me and Daybreak got it right, down to the little things.

Purchasable EmotesThis was an amazing part of Lord of the Rings Online that I highly recommend as a member of the role-playing community. To add some context, a single emote might cost around 200 Turbine Points in their microtransaction store. You can buy 600 Turbine Points for $7.99 USD so it averages out to around $2-3/emote. In LOTRO, emotes are not unlocked account-wide but I see no reason why they shouldn't be if implemented in Guild Wars 2. Here is a list of LOTRO Store Exclusive Emotes to consider. While the Lotro Wiki page doesn't show screenshots of the emotes being performed, each emote from the Lotro Store is acted out by the character in-game which makes them useful role-playing tools. This also opens the door for special emotes acquired through in-game achievements where being able to perform that animation could be considered a prestigious reward, thus adding another type of incentive to the achievements page. If emotes were added to GW2, I would be willing to pay the same amount: $2-3 per emote on average.

There's far too much to comment on, so I'm going to restrict this post to one topic: the character assassination of Balthazar. What is Character Assassination?This is the definition that I will be using for the term, taken from a blogger who summarizes it quite nicely: This moment when we, as the viewer, feel betrayed, because the character we have fallen in love with, the character who has won our hearts, has suddenly turned into a total and horrendous jerkface. Character assassination is something that happens in long-running series where the writing direction changes and a new villain is required for the chopping block. The effect this kind of writing has is more noticeable on long-standing fans of a franchise and the results are well documented in the world of comic books. In my opinion, it's never a good idea to take characters who fans of the franchise know and love and turn them into "the worst villain imaginable", especially when it's such a sharp turn that only had two episodes of build-up between Flashpoint and Path of Fire. I was personally disappointed that a character with over ten years of history was reduced to the Balthazar that we saw in Path of Fire, mostly because I've been playing Guild Wars 1 since the year it released and he always seemed more interesting in the original series than he was portrayed here in this story.