Does Anet need to keep upping the ante?

One thing that disappoints me as someone who plays RPGs is that your character, the hero, always needs to fight some collosal villian in games it seems. Take the GW series. The first game you fought a lich which was intent on the prophecies thing. Not too bad as far as games go. The next game, you've got the vengeful spirit of shiro and his undead army... that's starting to push it. In NF and the upcoming GWEN, you've got to fight some self-style gods or whatever and I have to ask myself if that's really necessary.

Take factions. It would have been just as good as a storyline if the villian was a rogue general that was decended from Shiro and wanted to reclaim his family's honor. Or NF, if you left out the whole abadon part it'd still be an interesting story. And in the upcoming GWEN if the destroyer was just a powerful dragon or beholder or something, it could still be an interesting story.

I guess my point is that as an RPGer, I'm getting sick of all the stories where you have to save the world. Whatever happened to saving the kingdom from an evil witch, or the princess from a dragon, or bring order to a lawless kingdom, or even try to bring peace to two houses that have fueded for generations (what Factions could have done but failed miserably at). Even something as simple as saving a group of villagers from the bandits(monsters) that have been terrorizing them (7 samurai/kung fu hustle) would be a playable game as well.

What do you all think about games seemingly needing to introduce more and more outlandish scenerios? I really hope that in GW2, things are a little more simple. To be perfectly honest, I think game makers are trying to create exaggerated scenerios in part to one up each other and in part because they are overlooking the fact that you can have good games without needing to save the entire world. And it's begining to bore me.

I just kill stuff, the story is irrelevant the 2nd, 3rd, 4th.....10th time through the game. Atleast outlandish things might give them a chance to make interesting landscapes. I quite liked the Realm of Torment, and the outside edges of the Desolation.

I find it interesting that the lich is probably the most difficult to kill and requires the most strategy, while Shiro and Abaddon are just... push overs. And Abaddon is a god! I mean seriously, when I equipped some random henchies to get a feel for the abaddon mission, beat it on my first try, I couldn't help but say "...that's it?"

It worked for Dragonball Z. Why not Guild Wars?

I find Shiro to be the hardest, maybe it's just my play-style. Abaddon and the Lich are fairly easy. Hardest part about the Lich is having PuG warriors with healing hands blocking him off the bloodstone. Abaddon can be killed with master's reward by a team of 4, not much else to be said about that really.

Yeah, I guess Shiro and Lich are just about playstyle, but Abaddon is just about trying not to laugh too hard.

Thing is they didn't need a god to require the Realm of Torment, just a powerful demon lord that we need to kill, forcing us to go into their realm because it won't come out.

Shiro wasn't too bad, except for being an idiot (lets become mortal before dealing with the forces of light, despite being able to make afflicted). The Lich did at least outsmart our characters (not that this says much).

I never really understood that either, why become mortal again so that you can be killed? Seemed like he was doing a pretty good job of wrecking havoc among Cantha without being mortal.

Quoted for truth!

But anet had to make shiro be dumb and become mortal because other wise we wouldn't have been able to beat factions.

Cause not all of use are 12-16 year old males that are into a plotless action show that keeps getting less and less believable.


If you are into going to such places, that would have worked fine. However my point still remains that things are getting excessive and part of me wants to argue that needing to go there counts as excessive.

That would have been great in the meeting eh?

A:Well guys, the game is coming along great! However, I have been thinking, how are the players going to kill an immortal spirit?

B:I KNOW! We can make him become mortal by killing an old bald guy!

A:Fantastic idea. Why would he want to become mortal though?

B:Well, I don't know, but who says we have to explain? Muhahaha

Everyone:Muhahaha

Pride. Shiro was written as a prideful idiot, a bombastic fool. He wanted to show Cantha that he had balls the size of Glint's eggs, and he succeeded... in getting kicked in the balls, repeatedly, by the player characters.

as some old guy pops in with: "Smoke!"

Saving the kingdom is what quests are for. To save the world you need an epic adventure. RPGs normally have ALWAYS been about stopping some unforeseen or ultra powerful evil from ruling the world. There aren't many RPG stories that deviate from this. SciFi games take it even further by saving the galaxy or set of galaxies.

Though being bored by this means that your tastes are probably on the verge of changing and a nonRPG game with a simple story or no story at all might do you some good.

But then they couldn´t turn the most useless, stupid, pathetic, disgusting person into something "better".

O my god, how I hate the nightfall story!!!!!!

I have to agree with the thread starter. This escalation gets boring really fast. But GW:EN will be the same right?

Unfortunately GW:EN seems already to be the "Ragnarok" of GW... I would have had some nice ideas.

An army of Black Moas is terrorizing Istan. After a while you discover that Cynn and your bastard son are plotting sinister schemes to badmouth the Sunspears.

This is because you betrayed her with Tahlkora and Melonni. Koss also wants to have a word with you. Elona is on the brink of civil war. You will have to re-unite Reverend Mhenlo and Cynn. This is done through a series of Minigames. The right sequence of answers is: 1,3,3,7.

Your son, realizing that he lost his mother to Mhenlo the manRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO and his father having a personal dungeon he calls rather immodest "The Hall of Monuments", decides to throw himself from the Cliffs of Dohjok.

Saddened and grief-stricken you return to the Maguuma Jungle to become a farmer, where you find a new love in Snow White and live together with her and the 7 Asuras.

After loot-scaling and several balance nerfs, your family falls into poverty. You ask your old friends for help, but they are all dead or have their own problems. Aidan has become and outlaw calling himself "Da Hood" and is on a rampage in the Charr Homelands. Devona replaced Joacim Cans as the lead singer of Hammerfall, having a blood feud with Tarja Turunen of Nightwish. Eve became the wife of Palawa Joko, who made, together with Bonesmith Rokel, a fortune with Juicy Heket Legs, driving McDonalds and Burger King out of business. Talon Silverwing became the most prominent victim of bird flu several years ago.

Because of the evil jokes the 7 Asura played on him, yours and Snow White's son bears an ill hatred towards all midgets and dwarves. With the words "This is stupid, ffs!!1!!1!" he turns toward the northern wastes and turns into the Great Destroyer, zealous to destroy the world before it gets nerfed to hell even more.


As you can see, personal conflicts bear enough conflict potential. If you have a decent writer, it needs no gods and demigods to ruin a story.

Sounds like....Guild Wars: Lifetime.

And for everyone not in the U.S. Lifetime is a channel for chick flicks when he cheats on her and then he takes the baby and has an affair with her brother.

Omniclasm, Longasc; thank you for some of the best posts I have read on this forum.



Yeah, I have to agree with the OP, it does seem a bit odd that we have to constantly save the entire world. First an Evil Lich, then a Demi God, then a Fallen God. Personally, it doesn't give me much faith in the real gods or their power, who have shown themselves to be quite lazy might I add.

I personally kind of liked the storyline portion of Nightfall when you just had to fight the Korunans and try to convince the Vabbians to join your side. It was plausibly difficult. I was kind of disappointed with how easy it was to defeat the Margonites and other divinely made forces. Not disappointed with how hard they were, I found them annoyingly difficult at times. But as far as actual storyline and lore, it seems like a group of humans should have easily been killed by the servants of a god. And not any effort worth mentioning for a god, fallen or not, to defeat some pesky humans and possibly their pet centuar. It seems like the more chapters there are, the more diluted the difficulty of evil becomes. Just after Prophicies, I would have cringed at the thought of facing a god like Abbadon, becuase.. well.. he's a god. And being a god, that carries a certain level of expectancy of power; I.E. moving mountains, changing the weather, making a perfect soufflé the first time around, etc. Now I'm plotting to overthrow Dwayna.

Have you never did any of the quests? There are plenty of quests in the game that are smaller things such as saving a village, or rescuing a person etc. I mean you can't really stretch those smaller plots across 25 missions without it getting really boring. I'd rather save the world several times, than rescue 25 villages over and over. Or save 25 different princesses...etc.

As far as Shiro is concerned. He wanted to die. Think Zasalamel from SC3 except less interesting, asian, no scythe and a hair cut fitting of a hobo.

On topic: Okay saved the world 3 times. Now what?

Ending a game by beating a common thief is pretty anti-climatic.

You get my vote.

Let's put it this way:

Shiro was more powerful than a god.

I liked the story behind factions, and prophecies is rather amazing in the little intricacies of the story.

Nightfall fails at a good story. Bear me for a minute:

• In Nightfall, There is a legion already dedicated to fighting heroes, like the justice league. But instead of the justice league, it's the Sunspears
• There's a psychotically zealous villainess.
• She worships a "forbidden" god and unleashes him onto the world.
• The justice league must defeat the villainess and defeat a god.

I may be simplifying it... but that's all the story is in Nightfall, to be honest... and as a long-time roleplayer, I don't take much satisfaction in that story.

"Save the day" is so overused in RPGs that it's hard to consider interesting. In Earthbound, one of the interesting parts in the main storyline is that Ness must venture into his own mind to unlock his true strength. And you literally venture into his mind, and fight inside his mind.

Now, with the Great Destroyer, we're fighting yet another god. Only this time, he's affecting the entire world, instead of just an isolated pocket in Elona. I know you got to keep players interested, but eventually we'll be fighting across the galaxies. :P What I'm saying is we should try downsizing some of the story.

QFT. Shiro was no brain surgeon. He was duped into killing the first emperor by a Fortune Teller that told him things like "your swords will be sought after by many" and "Your name will live on for generations." All this was true of course, but not as he expected. Shiro was a fighter... good with swords. Cleaved enemies in twain.

When you think about it, there are an awful lot of similarities to MacBeth. Big dumb warrior gets manipulated into killing the king by some lady (or ladies) who claim he has a brilliant future. Not a big surprise that both of them got stabbed in the end. Well that's too much reading/gaming for you.

The problem stems from the writing it just playing sucks at certain points. Half of the time they are doing satire's on other forms of the medium (Star Wars, LOTR, and etc.) and the other half they basically try too dam hard to create something original. Clearly in Nightfall the whole “you never fight alone,” is combination of both that just got really, really, annoying.

Nevertheless if you write a good plot devoid of melodrama and tasteless static repetitive blunders you might find something you never seen before. I am sorry but I disagree with the OP, I don’t mind saving the world; as long as it keeps you guessing till the very end. I do however think that the next villain has to be quite personal to get my attention.

I can answer you why that plot hole about Shiro, is about though. What was never explained was the fact that Shiro became stronger and kept all of the power he had as an Envoy; when he became mortal. Also the fact he could only go so far from Cantha as a spirit, for his duties only permitted him to stay there (as part of his personal curse). However as a mortal he had no ties to any type of formal duties from the mists, even though he broke most of them.

Save the world again from some big baddy! yeah! boooring...

The Lich was a puppet of Abaddon set on destroying Tyria. Shiro was a puppet of Abaddon set on destroying Cantha. Of course Abaddon needs te be bigger and badder than his two minions, he owns them.

Yes and no. DQ1 had you rescue the princess from a dragon (first half of the game) then go save the kingdom; DQ2 had you saving the world. FFI had you save the princess (minor quest) then have the world. But then you look at the old D&D gold box games, saving the entire world was never an option. If that's one thing the D&D games did right, it was to keep the scope such that you could be a hero without needing to save the world.

I guess my complaint then is that the adventure always has to take on an epic nature instead of being more quest-like.


Not really as I prefer the gameplay and the fact that RPGs have an actual plot. I'm just getting bored with there's always being some menacing thing that's threatening the entire world. It's been done to death. In some games like FFVII and FFX, it works. In others, like FFVI imo, would have still been great games if they didn't have to go all the way out there.

It isn't the gameplay or the stories that bug me, it's the scope and I really think the genere needs a bit of refreshment.


What if it was the common thief you were chasing since the very beginning of the game, or the common thief managed to get his hands on something very valuable and important? It all really depends on the skill of telling the story and how things unfold.

However, I would leave open that some signifigance in the event is okay (saving the kingdom or town), it just doesn't always need to be saving the world type of thing.


I think that the point I'm trying to make is that it can work, but unlike what's been happening, it isn't always necessary or even good for the story. Nightfall could have worked fine if instead of the abadon plot, the sunspears and the vabbians beat Kourna back to gandara, and over the course of 3 or so missions captured the city leading to the final battle against a normalish human Varesh (she could have been level 30 or whatever) who had a unique skill bar and was protected by a boss of each class. That would have proved to be a memorable fight (depending on the bosses and veresh's skills) and been a game of a more reasonable scope. And you would have still been the hero that ended the civil war.

I love the 'saving the world from an evil god/monster/demon' thing. Never gets old for me.=P
The story in Nightfall was cool enough, and the fight with Abaddon was memorable; especially because of the fantastic music in that mission.XD
It's cool they continue this type of story in Eye of the North, and hopefully they do the same in Guild Wars 2.
Although it wouldn't be wrong to add some more sidequest with more ordinary bosses as well.8)

I think Mr. Grubb and their other writers need a bit to get off their old-fashioned D&D-Fantasy ideas.

I love D&D, do not get me wrong. But the genre developed into another direction and offers much more than old and boring evil god vs good peasants stories.

Highly acclaimed is "The Song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin. The first novel is aptly titled "A Game of Thrones".

The supernatural elements and fantasy-typical elements are there, but they did not play a major role so far. It was more about medieval courtly intrigue, games of power and ambition. In between all this we get to see the fates of several characters from their point of view, which is often really surprising.

The villain Jaime Lannister, initially the "kingslayer" and outright ruthless and vile, gets much more human and likeable in the course of the series.


There are some supernatural elements looming in the north outside the "Wall", and some Dragons on another continent, but the story works surprisingly well without GODS. I am afraid Martin could fall for the typical fantasy trap and make a dark and omnipotent god or whatever invade the world. But he did VERY well without all this so far, his medieval fantasy set for me the standards for modern fantasy.

We didn't save the world 3 times, we saved it once, from abaddon..
yeah, shiro and lich belong to him, and i really like the story, how the 3 parts connecting to each other,
example: a quest let you know that abaddon sent a demon that made shiro against the emperor..
it is really worth to do quest in nightfall...

Congratulations, heroes, you have defeated the fallen god Abaddon and restored peace to the world.

Your next task is to bake cookies.

Yes, they need to keep upping the ante. This is what fantasy RPGs are all about.

I disagree about upping the ante. They need to keep the drama at the same level as the previous titles, so that it can't be compared poorly to the other chapters.

Ideally they should've had a wide story arc that involves all the events of the previous chapters, and the final chapter could have a real climax and resolution. People would want to get all the chapters to get the whole story. With the completely isolated storylines, new players that get done with Prophecies might heed everyone's advice and skip Factions and go straight to Nightfall.

Well, in GWEN the world is about to end, drastic changes, etc. etc....

I would say the end of the world is the absolute climax. So well, for GW we do not need to think about that anymore.

Fantasy RPG might be about progression, but it is the ultimate crux of any MMO. Most visibile in EverQuest and its expansions, the immense power creep made things more and more stupid.

A good and compelling storyline - that is what is needed, and it is not achieved by rising the stakes even more. Once you saved the world and the universe plus everything that is good, holy and your family and whatever, you will get the idea that "upping the ante" is just a crappy solution when there is a lack of ideas.

Our characters all die a ridiculously normal death by natural aging between GW:EN and GW2.
Am I the only one to find this kind of redundant as closure for above-the-divine saviours of the world?

GW2 will add the Z-axis: the only component that was missing to allow our characters to develop ...
high-speed levitation!

I don't see why that shouldn't be possible in GW2.
I'll take on Grenth ... or Balthazar ... or ... why not both? After that, you're next.
Y'know ... this (players impeaching gods) could actually be some interesting new gameplay for GW2, no?

GW scenarios have been bleak from the start; they'd better give us the tools in GW2 to RP our world story together ourselves.

Bah. I like the story of prophecies. the first time through it, well it was cool. It had an immersive storyline.

Factions was, Blah.

Nightfall was, Hmm, BLECH!

GW:EN should have bothe Kuuvang, and Glint, and I'll be happier...

Can we be the bad guy next time??

*smirks evily*

Seriously though, i dont think Shiro is much more powerful than the Lich was. While abbadon might have been a fallen god, what he does show is that the god are "weak".

Upping the ante would involve a bad guy stronger than the current gods (similar to the titans vs the Olympians in Greek Mythology).

Which sounds fun. someone mentioned the coming of ragnarok, its a good analogy.

The Best bit of prophecies IMO was playing Pre-Searing to Kryta, in reality the Charr have been a very minor race in gw thus far, but they have made a large impact on people because the early prophecies events were smaller scale and more personal. As a hero then your job was 1st to defend Ascalon from the Charr and then lead some surivors across the mighty Shiverpeaks to establish a new home. I would have been very excicting to help them establish it and watch it grow, (kinda like the command post missions crossed with the way Nf changes maps to Update them to teh current world status)

Although i have liked all the story so far very much so, i did find the whole Abaddon is behind everything kinda a big Scape goat. I hope Gw 2 goes back to its smaller scale roots and return it to the fun-ness that gw started as rather than the Hardcore Gw its become.

Devona, what does the scouter say about his power level?

they should make it fable style..i want to marry and kill my wife so i get horns Muahahahaha