Let's Talk About the Festival of the Four Winds in GuildWars2
Our dry spell of updates is at an end andthe guys at ArenaNet are ending it with a bang. The Festival of the Four Windswill be coming out on May 20th and promises to revisit some of the event in thefirst Living World season, preview the Second Living World season and work onLion’s Arch. It promises to be a huge event and along with it a lot ofquestions about what is happening. It is worth taking a moment to dissect whatcame with the announcements and what we already know.
In the real world the reasons for thisparty is to highlight the Chinese release of Guild Wars 2 that occurson the 15th. This update is meant to catch-up the Chinese players to the restof us, in the terms of the Living World stories, and gets us all properly syncedup moving forward. It is a necessary step for us to be all on the same page andnot leave all these new players completely shell-shocked as they are thrown into the chaos that will be the second season.
In the game’s terms we know that theZephyrites are honoring their trade agreement with Lion’s Arch. Here we willsee steps taken towards rebuilding Lion’s Arch by “participating in challengesand activities to raise funds to rebuild the city they helped defend.” Thisfestival even has a call back to the popular Queen’s Gauntlet where we willface even newer foes to test ourselves against.
It is pretty shocked at the decision torebuild Lion’s Arch, however. We had really thought that the destruction ofLion’s Arch was the way ArenaNet proved to us that they would touch any part ofthe game and change it for good. This would be their way of saying that,despite all the work necessary to adjust the personal story, they would touchanything to improve the game for the players. We wanted to see more playerinvolvement when it came to the next choice moving forward for a player hub.Perhaps if they offer us some decisions to make for Lion’s Arch, and allow usto vote on it like we did during Cutthroat Politics, then we could all feellike we had an actual voice in the game once more.
The second concern is for the Chineseplayers who will be slightly fresh to the game. We are going to be goingthrough history and a Gauntlet that was truly difficult. If the fresh-facedplayers, and players who only are just experiencing Guild Wars 2 forthe first time on launch day, will be acclimated enough to the game for thisstep of the Living World? The chaos that occurred during the Karka invasion wasbad enough for us and we had a lot of time to get ready for the game. We canonly hope those new players don’t get cut out of experiences merely due totheir limited exposure to the game.
The last concern is the worry of rehashedcontent we are potentially facing.The ArenaNet can bring back old content andstill make it fun ala the Super Adventure Box. It is seeing something like theGauntlet return makes us wonder how they can keep it fresh and relevant. TheGauntlet and the Zephyrites were some truly unique experiences and to show themto the Chinese market is a great way to show them all the things the game iscapable of; but, I hope it is done also to keep us all equally entertained.