What if GW had gone a different path?

Imagine if the story of the Prophecies campaign did not end the way it did. Imagine if the story was told across different "campaigns" or expansions until 5-6 expansions down the road the heroes of Ascalon and the allies they picked along the way reached its final conclusion.

What I am referring to is rather than a series of not very related stories (Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall and then EoTN), we had a long quest that consisted of several chapters.

Chapter one say takes us from pre-searing Ascalon through the war and exudos of of Ascalonian refugees led by Prince Rurik and us [although I wish the game allowed those who wanted to stay and fight alongside King Adelbern to do so] and ends with say us fighting our way through the treacherous Shiverpeaks to finally reach our Deldrimor allies. Of course everything is in a lot more detail than the way it is.

Chapter two picks up from where C1 left adding the ability for players who started with this chapter to create say Deldrimor characters who play a Deldrimor background story to see them into the game and allow them to level up abit before they join the quest of the Ascalonians to reach Kryta. This chapter sees us all the way into Kryta and gets us entangled into its civil war.

And so the story continues to unfold chapter after chapter eventually taking us into the Ring Fire Islands where we foolishly open the door of Komalie. However next we do not just go to Hell's Precipice and slay the evil Lich thereby re sealing the door [that was too quick]. Instead we venture through the door of Komalie into the realm of torment to confront the problem at its source.

Here some old stories unfold. Not only do we have to deal with the titans that pop up at every turn but we also run across some tormented ghosts who tell stories of the past. Stories that had to do with the charr and others that much preceded our time, but all related. In one of the these flash backs we are told the story of Abaddon and his defeat and chaining at the ruins of Morah.

Eventually we come to confront the Lich Lord at the gate of madness and after that we confront his lord Abaddon whom we do not kill [being a god and all]. Instead we teach him that we mortals make our own destiny. Which serves as a lesson to the other 5 not to interfere in the affairs of Tyria anymore leaving the world for its inhabitants to manage.

Our last mission would be to take the refugees back to Ascalon where we easily defeat the Charr, now demoralized with the defeat of their gods and the god of their gods at the hands of their enemies. We inspire a rebellion within the ranks of the charr who finally realize that we taught them they could be their own masters. The rebuilding of Ascalon starts and thus ends the story and we are ready for other stuff.

Again the idea was that with each chapter players who just started their GW career can join as allies from the area where that chapter is happening.

Of course its too late for this kind of thinking but would you guys have liked the story more this way or do you have any other ideas?

I actually enjoyed the Core campaigns including factions (only once though too many fed ex quests)
I enjoyed the story line of each game and didn't worry too much about the tie in to the other campaigns.

Too bad that other influences destroyed the game for me.

or you could play the game.

As it was, it was decent in terms of story. I only wish our characters weren't so involved in the cutscenes or dialog. It kinda breaks the immersion for me, especially in GW:EN.

o.O dialogue*

I don't think the developers/designers whoever could have done this, but if it ended up being more into the story [and less end-game aesthetics like collecting useless things] than it would have been a better RPG.

Interesting idea, though it might have seemed a bit drawn out to have that story spread out across 5+ campaigns. Though, I wouldn't really mind if they took one storyline and really, really expanded it instead of making two or three seperate stories that sort of, kind of fit together.

I like the idea.
A more detailed and less dramatic storyline had been more to my taste.

The current stories are a bit "sigh, yet another final apocalypse...".

Regards,
Cloudbunny

That's what ruined NF for me. That along with "Abaddon whom we do not kill [being a god and all]. "

I just wish the damn Norn, Dwarves, and rabbit people would sell me some damn armor. I mean, WTF? I saved the world 3 times!!!

How do you reason with a malignant god?

To be honest, if you were going to make this a single saga, it wouldn't be so bad to have the conclusion result in the defeat of Abaddon - strange as it may seem, the Nightfall storyline made it at least tenable.

I would actually have favoured a single coherent storyline in that manner, but that's a matter of taste more than anything else, and it also would mean we needn't have visited Cantha (or most of Elona actually). To some that may seem a good thing, but I'm probably happier with the way things turned out.

This might sound crazy, but I'm one of the people who had the least fun in Prophecies. I wouldn't be able to stomach doing Prophecies every time with my new characters.
I'm glad each campaign had it's own story because there is no reason to play them in a particular order or play a particular one at all with each new character.
Each game being a stand-alone title, with the option of using the same character, was something I thought was cool.

Nice idea that, yeah in retrospect i probabaly would have enjoyed that, even more than the current three chapters and EoTN.

True enough - with the GW stand-alone chapter concept, having the chapters tied together in storyline would be more than a little odd anyway.

i think thats an awesome idea
tbh i think o probably would've liked that more than the way they actually did it because its sort of confusing as to who is doing what when (if you know what i mean)

but yeah, cool idea.

I'd like that. BE nice to have a richer lore, however: what would players do once you beat part of a story? Dungeons, etc?

An example of ideas that could arise from dungeons: Take Sorrow's Furnace for example. Our quests there focuses mainly on preventing the Stone Summit from learning the true name of the Great Destroyer, which we successfully did. However that did not seem to have made any difference - Eye of the North.

What if the Great Destroyer story was a branch off from the main story once we hit Deldrimor Lands and got involved with their struggle against the Stone Summit. Dont you see how very consistent and sensible would it have been if we somehow FAILED to prevent the stone summit [Sort of although we did what was required a sneaky stone summit got away with the Tome of Rubicon]. We chase after and there starts the sub-story of the Great Destroyer.

From there we could have discovered the Northern Lands, the Charr Homelands..etc.

The possibilities are HUGE.