Living Story = Living World ? & vice versa ?

#1 - Aug. 27, 2014, 7:47 a.m.
Blizzard Post

This is something that is still somewhat alluding me, and perhaps I misunderstand what is what exactly, if there is a difference…

See from my perspective these are two separate things, but from how the forum is set up, as well as where the focus of the updates is concerned, it seems these two are very much related, to a point where I am wondering if they are being perceived as the same thing. What is your pov on this?

See, most of what the ‘Living Story’ entails I fully understand, the whole ‘the story continues regularly’ is captivated very well in the words ‘Living Story’. So that’s pretty clear to me…

But the ‘Living World’ is where my brain starts to produce ‘syntax error’ like effects. Sure in LS1 I could see how the living story effected some parts in the world to make it more then apparent that the story wasn’t something happening on some illusive story plane, but had true implication on the game world as well. But is that it? I mean, ‘living world’ seems to imply way more than just an influence of the Living Story upon the game world? At least in my mind it does… What about you all?

So, mostly I wondered what people here thought about what these terms imply and whether they are reflected as such in the game…

#6 - Aug. 29, 2014, 3:50 p.m.
Blizzard Post

ArenaNet uses the terms interchangeably but what they imply are certainly different and yet neither hold true to what we are given (at least, in my view).

When we started communicating about this (more than a year ago), the term “Living Story” floated around but we decided to call this the “Living World” for reasons we’ve explained. In season 1, players discovered (among a lot of other things) Southsun Cove, the Zephyr Sanctum and the Tower of Nightmares appeared and was then destroyed. So was Lion’s Arch. You can still see some remnants of Scarlet’s influence here and there with Energy Probes for example. In Season 2, released updates included more than new story steps. They included new zones and changes to existing ones. And obviously new threats changing the dynamic of the world of Tyria. That’s the idea behind Living World.