Well you probably knew it was coming. Icebrood has a bad reputation and for good reason, but as Mike does point out - it is hard to hold too much against a free piece of content. Where do you stand, are you as angry about it knowing it was free (at least initially)? Let us know. When I was putting this together I couldn't stop laughing at Mike's reaction to the video of Sam. Its crazy how different Mike's reaction is, only knowing him as Braham, when there are many out there (myself included), who would be happy to take a bullet for that man 😂
comparing this to shadowlands is a stretch. shadowlands was horrible in every sense and pissed on everything that was before. icebrood saga was just mid. atleast you get an easy ascended back piece
There are a lot of interesting puzzles and mini dungeons hidden in the Bjora Marches, but yeah overall pretty weak. I think most of us were just happy for any content at all when it came out. There was a really long gap between this and LWS4 and major shake ups in Anet staff, so people were glad the game was still alive.
They fired a lot of staff but also had a lot of people moved to [redacted ArenaNet Project] which after 5 years of development got completely cancelled and I can only hope that in 5 or 10 years we finally hear the details of what happened to this because it is truly tragic. EoD was a high point in the game but it was immediately followed by another Icebrood level low with over a year with just Season 1 remake capped off with Gyala Delve....
There was a lot of speculation at the time of this release that there was going to be a much more drawn out "icebrood saga" building up jormag, then a "firebrood saga" building up primordus, then smashing them together. But then studio layoffs combined with the greenlighting of End of Dragons meant that most of the remaining devs were working on EoD. Many people guessed that those who were left were told to "wrap up icebrood saga". Again, this was speculation by the playerbase, we don't entirely know what happened behind the scenes.
The rock concert event is genuinely some of the most fun I've ever had in something I just stumbled upon while exploring in any MMO. And it's not even close. That event is fire!
Did anyone show Preach the disastrous Icebrood Saga announcement? Arenanet rented a theater and told its players to tune in for a big announcement, so people got hyped up naturally thinking it was the 3rd GW2 expansion. Then the event begins and the big announcement is that Living World is renamed to Icebrood Saga, and half the reserved time was actually taken by the NCsoft merch guy. It was mortifying.
The only positive I got from the Icebood Saga was Anet's potential to have a horror themed game. Everything was conceptually creepy in Jormag's ice maps and I really appreciated that. Even the soundtrack is amongst my favorites.
OMG yes I forgot because I also agree that the ending sucked but the part where you have to investigate the deaths and jormag is whispering in your ear that creepy ambience for an MMORPG was the first-of-its-kind for me like I've played other fantasy RPG that have tried doing a semi horror-themed but none did it so well as it was done in gw2
Another thing to note was the announcement for Icebrood Saga. There was a live announcement on a stage in front of audience members, something typically reserved for expansions. But they were very clear that Icebrood Saga was not an expansion, but it would have "expansion like" features. They also were very clear this was NOT a living world episode, instead it was something in between the two. This marketing was confusing, people speculated what a "saga" could be as they were saying it's a new third option between LW and Xpacs. So from the very beginning, expectations weren't clear. The first episodes were strong, so people were hopeful, but as you saw it dwindled overtime and very little resources were given to complete it. Some point through IBS they shifted everything over to hastely make EoD, draining more resources. By the time EoD came out and was finished, they silently re-branded IBS as Living World S5, something they were so ademant against when it was first announced. I don't think it lived up to their own expectations.
Your comment made me realize that this xpac is abbreviated IBS, which is commonly used for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is fitting 😂 Still feel bad for Anet over it though
The end of icebrood saga was a big middle finger to any gw1 player. Primordus was introduced in Eye of the north as the BBEG, strongest and most dangerous of the elder dragons and he was done dirty by being offed in such an anticlimatic way.
Primordus has always been stated to be one of the weaker Elder Dragons. This includes way back in GW1 days, and it is part of the reason why he began stirring earlier than the others. Kralkatorrik was the biggest of the lot, both literally and in terms of threat, and we know that he would have served as the main antagonist of the Elder Dragon Saga, if not all of GW2, had Anet not been forced to dramatically alter the story following NCsoft's meddling back during LWS4. The ending of Icebrood was a letdown, for sure, but please do try and avoid wholecloth fabrications. It is quite unbecoming.
@@chumsie2411 Tbh I was thought that IBS would be going on for at least 2 living world season or just like kralk in PoF and LWS4. IBS should just be the intro story for jormag and their connection to primordus and in EoD we should solve the twin dragons' problem
I didn't play GW1 so I have any opinions on Primordus's death, but I could never imagine the final episode of IBS to be canon because Jormag is made to be so intelligent and he'd die by walking into the most obvious trap is outrageous.
Icebrood saga was created because the team thought GW2 was going to die in favor of a new Arenanet project. Once that project fell through they had to put all their efforts into EoD. Icebrood Saga was completed by a skeleton crew with very low resources.
"Something is rotten" - spot on. Game has amazing bones, but has been criminally under resourced by the company, current dev team feels like one guy handling balance for entire game (unsuccessfully), one dev planning content releases (massively unsuccessfully as evidenced by NKC and Gyala), and the rest of the entire team working on gem store releases. Game feels like it is in pure maintenance mode, no major innovation, terrible class balancing decisions, and just flat out boring unless you like doing the same strikes, same raids, same meta events every day for years, and years, and years.
Regarding strikes and difficulty in IBS content: At the time of IBS release Anet was aware that 10man group content had the lowest participation ever, to the point that it wasn't even worth designing it anymore. The solution was to design 10man content that would appeal to the very casual majority of the GW2 playerbase, as a "dip your toes in" kind of content. They also made them quite gold efficient with decent rewards tied to them and a way to retroactively progress content from previous Living World seasons (e.g. exchange Eternal Ice Shards for LWS4 currency). In terms of engagement it worked, IBS strikes are cleared daily even today, since it's a form of content that doesn't require the chaos of open world, you can dip in and out whenever you want, without waiting for an event timer, and you can choose who you play the content with. People with low end PCs naturally prefer instanced content over open world content simply because it's easier to render 10 people and their abilities instead of 100 people and their abilities. It ticked off a lot of the boxes for casual players. However, it highlighted more than ever the other consistent great problem of GW2: Casuals vs Minmaxers: For a while now, due to the boon system and the at times hidden complexity of GW2 builds, an optimized player that knows what they are doing can deal almost 5-6 times the damage of a player that just pushes buttons. I will use Drakkar as an example, since you showcase it in your video. This boss takes around twenty minutes with an evening pug group, thirty if you include pre-event and RP. That's because the boss scales decently the more people you have, so players need to actually deal damage for the health bar to go down. If you do the same boss with a daily reset group (they start at about 2am and they have way more knowledgeable/hardcore/sweaty players) it takes about 7-8 minutes from start of pre-event to boss being dead. You don't have an arcdps meter installed (probably for the best) and that protects you from seeing how a mass of players that just spams 1 can turn every fight into a 20min slog, completely ruining the open world experience. Naturally, situations like the above create a divide between the optimized groups (all boons, meta builds, knowledge of the fights etc.) that absolutely demolish content and groups that just spam 1 and hope for the best. The approach that Anet has taken was that they would rather make everything easier than make everything harder, because trying to teach their players a few more indepth mechanics led to things like the final map of EoD meta (avoiding spoilers) incident. It was a salt train for months before it was nerfed to the ground compared to what it is today. They called it mathematically impossible, which it genuinely wasn't since groups were clearing it since day 1. When competent groups told them "it's a guaranteed win if you do the pre-events and have a decent team comp" it started the most tribal war between casuals and optimizers ever in GW2. I feel it would be a very interestic topic for you to see how the community reacted to that particular meta. As someone who has cleared multiple mythic WoW raids and knows your gaming background, I can tell you that even though EoD strikes are much better in terms of design than the IBS ones, don't expect to find any real challenge in your journey. Wings 5-7 are the pinnacle of GW2 difficulty. The only pieces of content that can even be compared to heroic raids in WoW are Dhuum, Qadim1, Qadim2 and some of the EoD challenge mode strikes. They lack dps/healing checks, they lack variance (if you beat it once, you can beat it 100 times), and for the most part they lack mechanics that force the entire group to respond. Really happy that we agreed on our experience with IBS strikes, and looking forward to you rating EoD content and beyond.
Some people were very mad, let me try to frame why. Imagine it's 2007 and you are a veteran of guild wars 1, they announce guild wars 2 and release an expansion in guild wars 1 called eye of the north. You go through this epic campaign and at the end you meet this GIANT city-sized dragon named Primordus. Now you wait 5 years for guild wars 2 to release to get the elder dragon story line, then you wait another 8 years and finally they do a story with this dragon you've been waiting all these years to take down, and he has almost no story or good fight to mark his end. I know it was free, but this was meant to be an extremely important story beat...
The dragon response missions were the only thing that bothered me with Icebrood saga. The rest of the content I really enjoyed. The strikes had me concerned because I had not done raid content and it was a good stepping stone to help me hop into raid content. I think it would be cool to get another raid, but I doubt it will be a reality. I found the story for Icebrood Saga to be enjoyable especially if you played as a charr or went around reading the things in the Charr area. If you play a Charr you run into your old friend who informs you about what happened when you were gone. Weirdly enough I find myself revisiting the Ice Brood Saga maps now and then to change what I want to do. However, I will only do the response missions if I have a group or a friend needs it done.
It was kinda bad for Charr characters though where your Warband from your personal story ( aside from your sparring partner ) just either join the enemy or die. ( or both ) And Charr player is treated as if he never returned or contacted them which is dumb.
The biggest reason people will farm things in IBS is that it unlocks a mastery for a great CC table that people will use throughout the game, farming those easy strike missions used to be one of the best ways to get blue ice shard currency which you could purchase stat selectable ascended gear, couple interesting cosmetics and one of the best gold and material farms in the Drizzlewood Coast meta.
Im very mixed in IBS but i had to take an 8 month break once it ended. Wish you mentioned bangar as a character cuz he was really good, jormag being this sisnister manipulative enemy unlike the other dragons had me super hype but by the end theyre just another mindless creature :/ I unironically really enjoy DRM's now that i can just casually go back to them. To me the biggest let down by far was the fact they didnt kill off braham. Instead of giving him a sacrifice of norn legend hes just kind of a purposeless wanderer, the fact he came out of the fight completely unscathed had me thoroughly upset
It was so tragic how they had to rush out the end of icebrood saga! It could have been such a satisfying end to do the full fire and ice duel. But it fell flat by the end. 😢
They never said it publicly, but what always seemed like the case to me is that they pulled most of the resources form it to start on EoD ASAP after the players raged so hard at them for announcing IBS instead of another expansion. So instead of taking longer to make sure IBS was good, they had to scramble to start on EoD so that they could tease it well over a year early just to try to calm the players down. So in a some way it's the players' fault for being so dramatic about the announcement of IBS, but on the other hand they could have said an expansion will come after while they gave IBS the time it deserved. Although the backlash from the players may have also been causing a lot of revenue loss, which meant they couldn't wait to finish IBS. The better solution might have been to build off of IBS into an expansion about Jormag vs Primordis, and then into EoD after that.
Honestly Ice Brood could of been really good, I was enjoying it for a good while. Up until I had to go through all those instanced quests, all of them feeling far too samey and just getting planted into the area we were needed. It took me a while to get through that last half just because I was so uninterested by that point and in the end while EoD was fine, don't think it was nearly as good as it could have been.
It's really annoying that Living World and stuff like Icebrood Saga were free at the time of release but now you come later then you have to pay for it.
Yeah ISB was championed as a sort of living world forever, no more expansions. (Ironically it's now the reverse) They clearly had big long plans for jormag and primoridus with the set up. But much of the community saw this as maintenance mode and that was only compounded later by NCSoft's decisions. NCSoft didn't see the money from this, demanded they lay people off for some unannounced game and go back to expansions. In hindsight we can see that it was indeed in a maintenance mode for ArenaNet to launch another game and the content was limited but not awful. However, when the decision to move back to expansions happened, any plans for the icebrood saga story was scrapped and cut short to develop an expansion instead, what we now know as End of Dragons. That's when DRMs came in and the plot became a mess. By the end everyone just wanted to be done with it. Despite the circumstances I think they could have made the transition smoother and with less plot holes, it would still be bad but not this bad.
Icebrood Saga was supposed to have 4 other living story chapters at least before the end. They were rushed into stopping it to work on the EoD Expansion.
Personally, with how EoD turned out, I don't think Icebrood deserved to get rushed and chopped like that. EoD isn't much better, and it can't even use an excuse that it's an entire expansion. There was better story and flow in Icebrood than that.
Ice brood Saga was a real rough time, especially the dragon response missions section. Waiting weeks at a time for them was excruitiating. Dragonstorm was such a letdown as well. I often daydream of redesigning the encounter as a big map where Jormag and Primordus are just fighting in the background and the players have to tip the fight out of each others favor to get them to kill each other, with ryland and brahm as sabatours. Coulda been amazing. Its important to remember that it wasn't all bad. Drizzlewood is a great farming map and the drakkar meta is great and worth returning to regularly. The reason they made a bunch of easy strike missions was because back then there was a lot of players that were too afraid to go anywhere near raids, so it was supposed to be a baby stepping stone to steer players in that direction to gradually introduce them into that kind of content. They were very careful in making the strikes progressively harder. Have fun in Cantha!
I still remember the news of them saying no more expansions, this is the style they're going for. The death of the game was near and a skeleton crew worked on this while they poured resources into some side project that fell through. This was a real dark time to be a GW2 player
It really was a sad part of the game's history. Masteries aside I actually think Icebrood was on pace to be the best living world yet before the rushed ending. One thing that stood out to me watching Preach play through it though that I hadn't noticed while it was coming out is how incredibly random the strike missions feel. They're just all over the place in their design. Then there's Forging Steel, which really excited me as a new potential story mission format (group missions like GW1), but then they never made anything like it ever again. They were really throwing things against the wall to see what sticks it feels like in hindsight.
Originally the strikes in IBS were meant to be a learning platform for raid content, as Arenanet had noticed the low player amount in raids. And their spike in difficulty for most players. The thought process was that the game needed a 10 player group content that increased in difficulty towards the raid level, requiring more and more coordination in the group. Which was a correct idea from the developers. Problem was that the community shifted that idea very fast. Instead of a learning platform, strikes became a common content for players to do. And a certain part of community even spread the behaviour of kill proofs from raids to get in to the strike groups. This actually was really prevalent during IBS and made me avoid finding groups as a random player. I was becoming more and more a casual player due to IBS at that time. And as the community did not move to raids, the idea of strikes shifted. As strikes seemed to be quite popular, Arenanet decided to continue with the system for end game group content.
Definitely gotta agree that IBS is a lowpoint, I enjoyed playing all of the maps extensively, but IBS felt like I just went through it really fast. I do enjoy some of the IBS maps though, I think the Drakkar META is pretty solid, I also think Dragonstorm is pretty cool as well! So even if it is a lowpoint, I still think there are pieces of content that is fun to play. But I find this to be the beauty of GW2, that you can go back and forth between any zone of any era to do any content you want at any time. The whole world map is evergreen content and I personally love it.
Covid really harmed Icebrood Saga. I don't think it would have been this rushed and forced to build EoD as the same time without it. As a fun fact : Episode "No Quarter" and "Jormag Rising" (with the best map aka DrizzleWood Coast) was release right after covid started and came with NO voice-acting. A first for gw2. It was surreal to play this part of the game with mostly no voice actors. They came months later (may/july => november 17) Right after that tho, "Champions" started and everything went to shit. 1 and a half year of nothing with EoD coming in 28/2/22 severly unpolished (and still isn't)
The layoffs and covid hit hard to Icebrood Saga. First part was genuinely cool, though. And even with the lackluster masteries it has a lot of my favorite maps in the game. Fair review Preach, hope you enjoy End of Dragons! It's always cool to see your Gw2 content. RIP Stan Lepard, the Metal Legion concert completely proves that you were a genius!
The dragon response missions felt like such a chore. I hated them. I almost stopped playing icebrood saga when going through them. I only continued just so I could check off the "it's done" box.
I love how Icebrood started. It was creepy and fun and had a great character death in it. Shame for the layoffs and covid i think it could of been a strong story. While the strikes started off weak I do think a few IBS ones are okay for introductory content. The problem is they come so late in the story, most people like you, have done or seen Lion's Court. I think there should be better stepping stones. Or at least a strike/two each expansion. Feels like if they want to do a future of strikes some back tracking would be helpful. I'd love to see them do more raids too but I know that's more work than they can probably take right now. But if this expansion really hits it off good maybe the future will be bright.
Dragon respons missions was such a misstep. I also remember thinking exactly what preach did. "There's more? What were they thinking?" Never seemed to end.
I thought IBS started great. I really enjoyed the first 5 episodes. Then the good news arrived that there would be a new expansion after all and everything went to crap. I suspect they moved the majority of their devs to EoD and put a skeleton crew on IBS to finish it off. The moment the dragon strikes show up, all was lost.
As someone who was massively disappointed by 90% of EoD, it added salt in the would knowing part of the reason second half of IBS was so trash was because they focused their efforts into EoD, which itself turned out to be a giant flaming pile of garbage, in my opinion.
Originally IBS didn't even have voice acting, the devs were very forthcoming in explaining it was due to covid restrictions forcing everyone to work from home even though they at the time didn't have the infrastructure to allow that.
It was not all IBS. It was just two episodes (the drizzlewood ones) that the voice recording fell unto the big lockdowns. Please do not misinform about events.
@@hanneskarlbom6644 So the phrase "Originally IBS didn't even have voice acting, " Implies not all IBS? Like how?Just admit you are misremembering and correct it.
The thing is that I really loved how the Icebrood Saga started and it still is among my favourite content in the game. From the tone set in the trailer, to the story beats and all that it entailed. The first few releases were awesome, the prologue was REALLY good and delivered things in a completely new way, I still remember the ending cutscene for the prologue and how it worked in the engine, it was extremely well done. The story setup up until that point was extremely well done, but once the announcement for a new Guild Wars 2 expansion was done, it became so clear that the Icebrood Saga was being cut and had to end as soon as possible to free up resources. The result of that was Champions and the many dragon response missions, which just drag along for way too long and have bosses that are just HP sponges that take ages to kill. They had to wrap the story up so insanely fast that they only introduce Primordus back at the last second, to kill him off instantly after. The screentime was basically zero. Up until Champions, the story built up quite well. But Champions was just the "lets do everything we can to wrap this up ASAP" and it was the worst. I have no doubt that eventually, they would have killed each other. But it's clear that the Icebrood Saga was intended to be all about Jormag and slowly build it up as an incredible force, followed by a Firebrood Saga doing the same for Primordus and followed by a confrontation and the final end. That that story all was shoehorned into a few short missions is clear and the game suffers heavily from it. What is dragging down the Icebrood Saga is clearly the Dragon Response Missions and if they re-tuned these, they could become way more fun and people wouldn't hate Icebrood Saga as much as they do. They're just the absolute worst pieces of shit content in the game and they need to be re-tuned, because in the core of them, they ain't that bad. But forcing people to do chores for 5 minutes, followed by battling extreme HP sponges in a fight that is boring and takes way too long, ain't what this game needs. On the other hand, it introduces the Drizzlewood Coast, which is amazing. Duality. My hope is that they will one day - hopefully soon - go through the Icebrood Saga and finetune it to improve it. Perhaps the Festival team could take a look at it, since all festivals were added upon the last few months, we can live with a year without additions to them and focus on the Icebrood Saga :)
I LOVED the start of icebrood saga. The first 3 or so chapters were some of my favorite in the game and DRMs and the story with primordy/jormag tuned my favorite living story to probably my least favorite very very quickly :(
as a new player in 2023, IBS was a great experience - maybe not on the same level as LW4, but not that far. The strikes are a great daily content, Drizzlewood is one of the best metaevents I played in any mmo game, you can return again and again, do south, south, jump into a north meta event, it's really cool, we're speaking about hundreds of small events to be part of during a crazy fast invasion of enemy map! There were some other good things too - actual death of an important character, the metal concerts, finally a good hub to return to, good rewards, good enough story, loved some of the north maps and scandinavian/viking themes in masteries and maps, story...
I remember playing Icebrood Saga and being so sad. Me and my brother would always discuss lore since we were kids playing GW1. Here was a franchise we loved so much with a future so uncertain we didn't know if we were ever going to see the fate of the dragons. Icebrood Saga felt like they were trying to give us something rather than nothing, and it was overall a miss in its delivery to the point we had decided not to play End of Dragons. Thankfully EoD was great to playthrough and renewed some faith in the team.
Matt is the male norn npc and took over as Canach. Liam voices a ton of characters too. Sam also has a lot of map npc- yesterday I found him in that eound basin in Seitung harbor. There are also two Vox Machina and Mighty Nein easter eggs in the game, and one dedicated to Matt himself ( a note about a storyteller that made a world real with his words and sent his friends into it)
"The story has gotten better and better" this made me sad because it's all downhill from here culminating in that steaming pile of crap that was Gyala Delve
I had looked forward to hearing how you liked the flow of Drizzlewood Coast and the masteries associated with that particular zone as I think they're pretty good, but you skipped talking about it
The only memorable thing in IBS imo, huge map with 2 back to back meta event with tons of champs and bosses fight. Oh and the Forging steel instance where you play as Ryland and his warband.
Remembering that period of time before IBS, i have the feeling that IBS was a big trial for anet. The studio had seen another game project failed and went trough layoffs the previous winter. The community felt like gw2 was in danger. Then Anet organised a huge event to announce what everyone hoped being a new expansion but ended up being IBS. I think Anet wanted to announce a new expansion indeed but they didn't have the green lights for it so they had to stick to IBS. Story and maps wise, IBS was great, at least up to drizzlewood part 1! Bjora with its light puzzles and creepy story is my favourite map and i know many players who like world exploring love it. Despite drm being horrible, IBS has many good points, like having the first open world farmable infusions, and it was received very positively overall. I think this is what gave Anet funds/safety to go on with a real expansion. Speaking of strike missions, this is my take: Anet realized how little was the raid playerbase. It's renowed to be not casual-friendly. GW2 lacks a real introduction to raids. That's why strikes were so utterly easy in IBS, starting with the super easy ice construct. You will notice how strike missions are organized like a difficulty ladder starting from the very first IBS one and ending with EoD last ones. EoD has also a lot of tutorial content to introduce players to gw2 combat system and this all was clearly planned out starting in IBS. Looking back at it, my only concern remains the rushed ending of the saga, which could have been a great narrative arch if only Aned didn't have to rush it or side work it while developing EoD.
Terminal GW2 players here, I love your honest takes on the GW2. Icebrood saga was what broke my brand loyalty, now I just enjoy when anyone takes shots at Anet for these updates. "yeah hit them harder, fuck em."
I enjoyed IBS until Champions. And even the DRM aren't that bad when you look at them as optional repeatable content - the problem was it was forced and mandatory. And the only piece of content. As I luckily was taking a 18 month long break from the game I had to do a lot of story catch up to do, and just finished in time to get through all these missions at once, which is probably why it didn't feel as bad as it felt for the players who have been active all the time. So I sometimes do come back to that content and maybe I sometimes do a daily DRM when I feel like it. But more likely for the zones. And music. Something that wasn't mentioned but also contributed to the disappointing quality of IBS is the fact that it was produced during a time a certain virus was holding the world hostage - this included missing voice overs for some content for example and maybe was also the reason they didn't bring all the usual cast. But don't worry: End of Dragons is way better than the second half of IBS: Storytelling, maps including meta events and strike missions all shine in EoD.
Yeah 2 things: Icebrood Saga strikes are weird. They were intended to be an in-between that were easier but lead into raids. They were meant to be gateway content to get players into raids who though raids were too hard and too big of a difficulty jump, but then later they decided to replace raids with strikes (personally I prefer strikes for the most part because they're easier to integrate and do multiple difficulties). I would love for them to go back and rework those original strikes and give them CM's as well, but I doubt they'll do it. GW2 has a track record of not going back to work on old content and instead focus on new content. As for the story, you didn't mention it so idk if you knew that a lot of players were already pissed at the announcement of Icebrood Saga just because it wasn't an expansion announcement. So they never publicly said it, but what seems to be the case to me is that the first half was stuff already in development so it came out good, and because a lot of players were so upset and that didn't placate them, they pulled most of the resources from IBS to start working on EoD so that they could announce it ASAP to calm people down. Which is also why EoD got announced WAY ahead of release, which they don't usually do. Usually they tend to announce things only a couple months before they release. As for EoD, they teased it like almost 2 years before it came out, while IBS was still ongoing. It felt like a big "HEY HEY WAIT GUYS WE'RE GOING TO DO AN EXPANSION PLEASE CALM DOWN!". Not only that but announcing Cantha, which GW1 fans and weebs alike had been begging for since the launch of GW2. Basically I think they dropped IBS and put all their eggs into the EoD basket as a hail marry to stop the riot. Luckily it seems like it worked, sadly at the cost of IBS living up to what it could have been. It still could have been handled better obviously, by instead using IBS as a lead in to an expansion about Jormag and Primodis, but they might have felt backed into a corner and really needed that Cantha hype to help save them from the backlash. The player revolt may have also been enough to cause financial issues to where the company really didn't have the time to wait and finish out IBS with the time it needed.
Re: Too easy strikes. Gotta remember at the time most of the playerbase was either raiders, doing fractals, or open world players. ANet wanted to bring up this mid-tier difficulty things that would be kind of a step up to raids, where players would learn about boons and more involved mechanics and hopefully end up feeling confident for more difficult end-game content, thus justifying the development time for raids. So, the first 3 strikes were made purposefully easy and increasing in difficulty. Boneskinner was the first strike that was actually difficult and I remember that at release groups were having a TON of difficulty beating it. The ones that followed, Whisper and Cold War (not gonna count Striking Steel) were actually a step up in difficulty, especially Whisper. I don't think you mentioned these in this video so I'm kinda curious what you thought about them! Mostly because EoD strikes follow the same pattern, with the first being easy, the second slightly harder, etc, culminating in the hardest one (the challenge mode for this one is currently the hardest PvE endgame content). Ultimately, I don't think Anet expected strikes to be quite as popular as they became, which is why they are no longer a stepping stone for raids but rather what has come to replace them. As much as I enjoy raids though I think it was probably for the best. Maybe one day we will get another raid and it will be a tailored raiding experience instead of something thrown together just because that's what's expected.
One thing to note with Icebrood saga is that it was created and released during the pandemic. So at that time not only did ANET lack recourses, because of other inner reasons, but they were lacking the talents. Icebrood saga came out without voice-over. Since the pandemic was going on so many of the things were done remotely. Voice acting was added with a later patch. And you can tell. It is rushed. It is half-arsed. They just needed to push something out there at all cost. It is quite dissappointing, but it did bring us a good gold farm... And for the strikes: The strikes were initially created to be an introduction into raids. For new players to see what a raid boss would be like for when they get into raiding themselves. There were means of gathering high- end gear such as Ascended through strikes. It was meant to prepare the player for the raiding experience. BUT what happened was the community loved it so much they wanted more! And that is what happened. Raids got scrapped and instead we got more support on what the PvE community wanted for end-game content: More fractals and more strikes.
Besides the DRMs which I started replaying GW2 at the tail end of, and not being able to get into GW1 really, I thought IBS otherwise was completely fine which is admittedly a really weird circumstance to be in compared to most of the other players like with the Primordus situation. It's really weird cause I really liked PoF and while I get HoT as a theme I didn't like it too much, and EoD is moreso of a mixed bag for me.
The problem is that i still feel that Anet hasn't recover fully from such hit ( all those layouts) , right now they varely have people to release content for the game, if the next expansion is disapointing, i'm pretty much done with the game.
My general understanding about ibs is that at some point arenanet split their staff into two groups. One was directed to work on eod and second was finishing ibs, that's why i think it becomes worse towards the end. They just didn't invested enought resources into it and that's why we got champions. And regarding champions, i assume they wanted to make it repeatable content, but how it works - it is not profitable and not interesting so everyone will just do it once for achievements and that's it. Ofc there is simple solution to that - add more rewards, but knowing anet it won't happen, as they rarely return to stuff they already made to fix it. Regarding strikes - They said it was supposed to be introduction to raiding, but because it is so easy - it's now more popular than raiding. However, they fixed that issue in eod strikes. They are more difficult, have challenge motes and I personaly think this is how it should look like. And regarding story- charr civil war and discovering ryland were the best plots so far.
Fair analysis! It was a really low point for the community. Except the metal concert. Overall, the game seems to have more than recovered and luckily survived that era. I do really love the zones, metas and overall aesthetic of IBS though
The thing with the early strikes is there was no desire for much of the community to do any kind of large group instanced combat. Raids flopped, so they made the icebrood strikes very accessible. It seems this worked, to this day those strikes fill very quickly and are done frequently, and they built a community that was ready for the EOD strikes including Old Lions Court.
I love this game and have played since early launch. I still like it a lot, I play it almost every day, I'm not dissing it or calling it dead or any such thing - I want it to be as amazing as it can be. That said: EoD and SotO haven't really gotten me as hype as HoT or PoF. They've been fine, but... I'm actually kind of worried that skyscale has permanently reduced the fun of exploring the world for me. Not ruined it, mind, but... I can't help but think of how much more fun the new maps would be if griffin and gliding were our only aerial options. Ziplining up a tree and trying to fly the grriffin between branches in EoD, learning to let the griffin ride updrafts so it could handle more situational verticality in SotO.... I'm actually really sad about it. I'm having trouble envisioning what the future of map design for GW2 is like... and I really hope the people at ANet had some ideas before releasing it.
It started out so good and then they dropped the ball so hard it smashed through the ground, past burnt out dwarf cities and burrowed into the core of Tyria to smoulder forever next to Primordus' immense wasted potential.
Imagine building up two giant fuck off dragons for an entire "expansion" and then having to fight two bozos instead. Not even fighting the dragons. Especially insulting after you can actually fight Mordremoth in a meta. They pulled the same shit they did at the end of the core story. And the fight ends with fucking what? Magic girl rainbow rays of friendship. And they call FF14 the weeb game. At least FF would let you fight the dragons. Also something about Aurene just rubs me the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on it. Something about the voice or the pretentious self-importance.
100% agree, covid was a big time to have people comming back to MMOs and gw2 was so alive during 2020 due to covid. Seeing all my old friends come back online was a blast. But the end of dragons did not get me on board, I really ignored the content. I haven't even done it.
Icebrood was the first chapter in GW2 I didnt finish. And I havent bothered to do it ever since. I have started EoD but havent even left the first zone. I loved GW1 to bits, hardly a boss or a nook that I wasnt familiar with, then, finally GW2 dropped and despite some let downs here and there, whenever they released new content, I was there. But Icebrood isnt the only problem, it just managed to put the finger where it hurts.
I think "lump of excrements" is a bit harsh for a Living Story-chapter, that brought some of the best characters in all Tyria (Bangar), one of the best maps (Grothmar Valley) and one of the meta events that's in daily rotation (Dragonstorm). I get that the Icebrood Saga was a massive letdown when we all were expecting so much more than it delivered, but I think this shouldn't overshadow the really good aspects of it
There is one silver lining about the Icebrood Saga, and it's a significant one. It was here where Arenanet learned that they can repurpose story content into repeatable instanced content such as strikes and events like Dragonstorm. The reason I say this is significant is because Path of Fire and Hearth of Thors (and their repsective Living World seasons) were feature rich expansions, but also took A LOT of resources for Arenanet to craft. Which most likely contributed to the layoffs in 2019. By having a smaller team on Icebrood Saga, Arenanet had to make the best out of it whatever content they made. The end result was poor, but it allowed them to improve their production pipeline and laid the groundwork for End of Dragons. Hopefully Arenanet can maintain the momentum into Secrets of the Obscure.
I don't quite understand what you mean. Isn't a lot of fractals just that? Like, the one with the dredge (from super early Scarlet's arc), the aetherblades base and Mai Trin's right?
They shouldn't have had to 'learn' that though - GW1 turned the old Hall of Heroes into Tomb of the Primeval Kings = one of the best bits of content in that game. But then Anet for years seemed to want to utterly forget the first game, which is more than a shame as I still think it has the best skill system of any mmo type game ever and it is still a crying shame that the GW2 skill system is terribly bare in comparison.
I really hope preach plays the strike CMs blind... That is how you get the raid like progression imo. Also IBS strikes, whisper of jormag is alright mechanically it really just requires a CM, and the boneskinner actually has mechanics but it is tuned so low that people ignore the failure mechanics and just circle dodge it. Personally I think they could keep all IBS strikes relevant by just upping the base numbers a bit (still let them be easy, but I was able to two person the ice golem at its release and it is easier now). And then put CMs in there for the best of them.
Icebrood Saga was the low point for the game (despite all the massive content droughts), and was the point where after 9 years of playing I finally took a break. EoD definitely was a proper second wind for the game, and I am very happy for it.
Completed this arc for second time yesterday in order to obtain the legendary amulet, which is just barely enough to arm twist someone to going back thru some of this stuff (notably the end with the Champions arc). Needless to say this vid is well timed for the likes of me. For the whole "COVID was a thing" crowd... Icebrood free releases: Started in September 2019 and went through April 2021 Also happening at this time: FFXIV Shadowbringers For anyone who's played both of those titles for years, I think the best way to sum that up is a quote from John Wick: "Oh." Further exacerbating my ire is I've been a fan of the GW franchise since picking up GW1 back when it released, so to see how elements played out in IBS (an apt acronym)...holy shit it was bad. Kinda surprised Mike didn't tee off on one particular element at the end of Icebrood (Braham) like he did with one in LWS4 (Aurene). But I suppose the whole "everyone has plot armor" mindset had taken a firm hold. Perhaps EoD will shed some light on why I say that, though.
2:47 I'm honor lvl 500 in WoW and I do PVP since TBC. I love that from that game, pve? I don't care that much. But now I stopped playing PVP to do the same you are doing with GS2 and Destiny 2. I'm watching the history of the game since the beginning. I already did Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms and started TBC with my evoker. I'm going to do every quest, every rep, etc. All by walking. It's so fun
I have got to say though, Zaithan aside, every time you see a dragon in GW 2 they are gigantic and epic, WOW doesn't really even do that in Dragonflight. Even with IBS being what it is, the fight at the end with the two dragons... they are so massive.
if i recall though, didn't Icebrood come out during the height of COVID? So there were some substantial limitations that they had holding some things back. including during that time they used sub titles only for the story, and added the voices in later to finish things off.
I'm a GW2 fan, and even I have to admit Icebrood took a dive in quality. It's a shame because it had some strong points, such as fun maps, an increased number of story cutscenes, and a good number of cool earnable skins. However, the rushed story arc, questionable instanced content additions, and lame masteries really did a number on the overall experience.
I enjoyed the three maps we got with events and bosses and to be fair, the overall story wasn't too bad (just rushed). But the Icebrood Saga was just a series of broken promises. We were promised "Expansion like features" and got basically nothing. Dragon Response Missions though, whomever came up with that idea deserves a special place in the mists.
Development for IBS happened during COVID lockdown. When it was first launched it didn't even have voice acting because the voice actors were unavailable. The conditions were really harsh, so we have to judge it keeping that in mind. Let's just think of it as GW2's filler episode. Now the skiff expansion - they have no real excuse for how that turned out. I mean, fishing? Who cares about fishing in MMOs, ESPECIALLY one where you can literally go underwater and kill fish with special underwater skills?! Just because most MMOs have fishing doesn't mean it's fun or quality content. Fishing is just an afterthought in games, and that's the only thing it can be. They could've made an epic underwater expansion with Largos and Blackjack, but nooo, let's bring Cantha back. The fact that the expansion also features a water dragon feels like such a slap in the face. I pushed through the EoD story and left it, never to return. Don't even care about the masteries, don't need them. Not even the resurrect from the jade bot, it's not worth it. Great job with SotO though, love it so far! The level design is on point (with verticality done right), the lovecraftian story is really captivating, the rifts that have us revisit old maps are great for some quick farming action, the weapon adjustments were long due and the new legendary armors sound extremely promising! Also, fingers crossed for a future underwater expansion - the infrastructure is there, let's use it and show Blizzard it can be done right!
Yeap, let me preface this by saying I didn't play GW1 so I wasn't aware of Primordus' status for being the bad ass it was supposed to be, but the entire thing was just such a huge drop off. The witty, smug bastard of a dragon in Jormag, who cleary is beyond just tossing itself headlong into a fight, then proceeds to toss itself head long into a fight. Drove me nuts. Edit: To add, I completely agree about not going back to these zones. I honestly don't think I stepped foot back there since. Couldn't agree more with that point.
Honestly, the worst part of IBS was the absolute disservice to Primordus. Jormag had plenty of build up over the course of the game and it would've been a fine move to kill Jormag. Primordus on the other hand, has barely had any presence in GW2. For 95% of the game, Primordus' influence is limited to "Watch out traveler, there's some Destroyers in those caves." It was a whole thing that the Asura were driven to the surface by Primordus, and the Dwarves are nearly extinct because of him and had to turn to stone to fight them, yet we never get any pay off. We don't get to go underground to retake lost cities, we never get to see how the Dwarves react to their fight finally ending, or how the Asura react to being able to go to their ancestral home again. All of it got thrown out because they needed to fast track to EoD and couldn't afford to spend any more time on him.
Well you probably knew it was coming. Icebrood has a bad reputation and for good reason, but as Mike does point out - it is hard to hold too much against a free piece of content. Where do you stand, are you as angry about it knowing it was free (at least initially)? Let us know.
When I was putting this together I couldn't stop laughing at Mike's reaction to the video of Sam. Its crazy how different Mike's reaction is, only knowing him as Braham, when there are many out there (myself included), who would be happy to take a bullet for that man 😂
comparing this to shadowlands is a stretch. shadowlands was horrible in every sense and pissed on everything that was before. icebrood saga was just mid. atleast you get an easy ascended back piece
There are a lot of interesting puzzles and mini dungeons hidden in the Bjora Marches, but yeah overall pretty weak. I think most of us were just happy for any content at all when it came out. There was a really long gap between this and LWS4 and major shake ups in Anet staff, so people were glad the game was still alive.
They fired a lot of staff but also had a lot of people moved to [redacted ArenaNet Project] which after 5 years of development got completely cancelled and I can only hope that in 5 or 10 years we finally hear the details of what happened to this because it is truly tragic.
EoD was a high point in the game but it was immediately followed by another Icebrood level low with over a year with just Season 1 remake capped off with Gyala Delve....
@@Aurelyn That's intresting, considering that End of Dragons hasn't even released 2 years ago.
There was a lot of speculation at the time of this release that there was going to be a much more drawn out "icebrood saga" building up jormag, then a "firebrood saga" building up primordus, then smashing them together. But then studio layoffs combined with the greenlighting of End of Dragons meant that most of the remaining devs were working on EoD. Many people guessed that those who were left were told to "wrap up icebrood saga".
Again, this was speculation by the playerbase, we don't entirely know what happened behind the scenes.
The rock concert event is genuinely some of the most fun I've ever had in something I just stumbled upon while exploring in any MMO.
And it's not even close. That event is fire!
Did anyone show Preach the disastrous Icebrood Saga announcement? Arenanet rented a theater and told its players to tune in for a big announcement, so people got hyped up naturally thinking it was the 3rd GW2 expansion. Then the event begins and the big announcement is that Living World is renamed to Icebrood Saga, and half the reserved time was actually taken by the NCsoft merch guy. It was mortifying.
Oh gawd I brain bleached that event from my memory but now it's back 😔
The only positive I got from the Icebood Saga was Anet's potential to have a horror themed game. Everything was conceptually creepy in Jormag's ice maps and I really appreciated that. Even the soundtrack is amongst my favorites.
THIS! the start was so good!
OMG yes I forgot because I also agree that the ending sucked but the part where you have to investigate the deaths and jormag is whispering in your ear that creepy ambience for an MMORPG was the first-of-its-kind for me like I've played other fantasy RPG that have tried doing a semi horror-themed but none did it so well as it was done in gw2
Another thing to note was the announcement for Icebrood Saga. There was a live announcement on a stage in front of audience members, something typically reserved for expansions. But they were very clear that Icebrood Saga was not an expansion, but it would have "expansion like" features. They also were very clear this was NOT a living world episode, instead it was something in between the two.
This marketing was confusing, people speculated what a "saga" could be as they were saying it's a new third option between LW and Xpacs. So from the very beginning, expectations weren't clear. The first episodes were strong, so people were hopeful, but as you saw it dwindled overtime and very little resources were given to complete it. Some point through IBS they shifted everything over to hastely make EoD, draining more resources.
By the time EoD came out and was finished, they silently re-branded IBS as Living World S5, something they were so ademant against when it was first announced. I don't think it lived up to their own expectations.
Your comment made me realize that this xpac is abbreviated IBS, which is commonly used for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is fitting 😂 Still feel bad for Anet over it though
People were SO MAD. hahahahaha
There's also the matter of COVID, which affected development at this point.
The end of icebrood saga was a big middle finger to any gw1 player. Primordus was introduced in Eye of the north as the BBEG, strongest and most dangerous of the elder dragons and he was done dirty by being offed in such an anticlimatic way.
GW1 players waited more than a decade for the Primordus storyline, only to get shafted. Pure pain.
Primordus has always been stated to be one of the weaker Elder Dragons. This includes way back in GW1 days, and it is part of the reason why he began stirring earlier than the others. Kralkatorrik was the biggest of the lot, both literally and in terms of threat, and we know that he would have served as the main antagonist of the Elder Dragon Saga, if not all of GW2, had Anet not been forced to dramatically alter the story following NCsoft's meddling back during LWS4.
The ending of Icebrood was a letdown, for sure, but please do try and avoid wholecloth fabrications. It is quite unbecoming.
@@chumsie2411 Tbh I was thought that IBS would be going on for at least 2 living world season or just like kralk in PoF and LWS4. IBS should just be the intro story for jormag and their connection to primordus and in EoD we should solve the twin dragons' problem
the Revan of guild wars. swtor did our boy dirty, too
I didn't play GW1 so I have any opinions on Primordus's death, but I could never imagine the final episode of IBS to be canon because Jormag is made to be so intelligent and he'd die by walking into the most obvious trap is outrageous.
Icebrood saga was created because the team thought GW2 was going to die in favor of a new Arenanet project. Once that project fell through they had to put all their efforts into EoD. Icebrood Saga was completed by a skeleton crew with very low resources.
The amount of mistakes ANet did with GW2 is impressive. And even with all those mistakes it is a great MMO. Imagine if they were more professional
EoD isn't any better tho
@@ctg4818 wdym? EoD is great. Way better than icebrood
@@ravio1042 it is decent, but far from good, and if you mix up Gyala, Jesus Christ
Didn't know this, but it makes sense tbh. I will say though that icebrood had one of the best meta maps imo. That fucking concert is sick
"Something is rotten" - spot on. Game has amazing bones, but has been criminally under resourced by the company, current dev team feels like one guy handling balance for entire game (unsuccessfully), one dev planning content releases (massively unsuccessfully as evidenced by NKC and Gyala), and the rest of the entire team working on gem store releases. Game feels like it is in pure maintenance mode, no major innovation, terrible class balancing decisions, and just flat out boring unless you like doing the same strikes, same raids, same meta events every day for years, and years, and years.
Regarding strikes and difficulty in IBS content: At the time of IBS release Anet was aware that 10man group content had the lowest participation ever, to the point that it wasn't even worth designing it anymore. The solution was to design 10man content that would appeal to the very casual majority of the GW2 playerbase, as a "dip your toes in" kind of content. They also made them quite gold efficient with decent rewards tied to them and a way to retroactively progress content from previous Living World seasons (e.g. exchange Eternal Ice Shards for LWS4 currency). In terms of engagement it worked, IBS strikes are cleared daily even today, since it's a form of content that doesn't require the chaos of open world, you can dip in and out whenever you want, without waiting for an event timer, and you can choose who you play the content with. People with low end PCs naturally prefer instanced content over open world content simply because it's easier to render 10 people and their abilities instead of 100 people and their abilities. It ticked off a lot of the boxes for casual players. However, it highlighted more than ever the other consistent great problem of GW2:
Casuals vs Minmaxers: For a while now, due to the boon system and the at times hidden complexity of GW2 builds, an optimized player that knows what they are doing can deal almost 5-6 times the damage of a player that just pushes buttons. I will use Drakkar as an example, since you showcase it in your video. This boss takes around twenty minutes with an evening pug group, thirty if you include pre-event and RP. That's because the boss scales decently the more people you have, so players need to actually deal damage for the health bar to go down. If you do the same boss with a daily reset group (they start at about 2am and they have way more knowledgeable/hardcore/sweaty players) it takes about 7-8 minutes from start of pre-event to boss being dead. You don't have an arcdps meter installed (probably for the best) and that protects you from seeing how a mass of players that just spams 1 can turn every fight into a 20min slog, completely ruining the open world experience. Naturally, situations like the above create a divide between the optimized groups (all boons, meta builds, knowledge of the fights etc.) that absolutely demolish content and groups that just spam 1 and hope for the best. The approach that Anet has taken was that they would rather make everything easier than make everything harder, because trying to teach their players a few more indepth mechanics led to things like the final map of EoD meta (avoiding spoilers) incident. It was a salt train for months before it was nerfed to the ground compared to what it is today. They called it mathematically impossible, which it genuinely wasn't since groups were clearing it since day 1. When competent groups told them "it's a guaranteed win if you do the pre-events and have a decent team comp" it started the most tribal war between casuals and optimizers ever in GW2. I feel it would be a very interestic topic for you to see how the community reacted to that particular meta.
As someone who has cleared multiple mythic WoW raids and knows your gaming background, I can tell you that even though EoD strikes are much better in terms of design than the IBS ones, don't expect to find any real challenge in your journey. Wings 5-7 are the pinnacle of GW2 difficulty. The only pieces of content that can even be compared to heroic raids in WoW are Dhuum, Qadim1, Qadim2 and some of the EoD challenge mode strikes. They lack dps/healing checks, they lack variance (if you beat it once, you can beat it 100 times), and for the most part they lack mechanics that force the entire group to respond. Really happy that we agreed on our experience with IBS strikes, and looking forward to you rating EoD content and beyond.
Some people were very mad, let me try to frame why. Imagine it's 2007 and you are a veteran of guild wars 1, they announce guild wars 2 and release an expansion in guild wars 1 called eye of the north. You go through this epic campaign and at the end you meet this GIANT city-sized dragon named Primordus. Now you wait 5 years for guild wars 2 to release to get the elder dragon story line, then you wait another 8 years and finally they do a story with this dragon you've been waiting all these years to take down, and he has almost no story or good fight to mark his end.
I know it was free, but this was meant to be an extremely important story beat...
plus in story they build this madafuker to be the strongest end he just die like bicth after all this years
I haven't been this early since Braham wasn't the most obnoxious character in Tyria.
10 years is a long time
I dream of a day when Trahearne and Scarlet are resurrected and team up to destroy Braham
The dragon response missions were the only thing that bothered me with Icebrood saga. The rest of the content I really enjoyed. The strikes had me concerned because I had not done raid content and it was a good stepping stone to help me hop into raid content. I think it would be cool to get another raid, but I doubt it will be a reality. I found the story for Icebrood Saga to be enjoyable especially if you played as a charr or went around reading the things in the Charr area. If you play a Charr you run into your old friend who informs you about what happened when you were gone. Weirdly enough I find myself revisiting the Ice Brood Saga maps now and then to change what I want to do. However, I will only do the response missions if I have a group or a friend needs it done.
It was kinda bad for Charr characters though where your Warband from your personal story ( aside from your sparring partner ) just either join the enemy or die. ( or both ) And Charr player is treated as if he never returned or contacted them which is dumb.
I can see the appeal of doing DRMs once in awhile but the fact that they force you to do them consecutively for the story burned me out so much.
Loved the first half of Icebrood Saga... 2nd half I rushed through then went back to world boss farms
The biggest reason people will farm things in IBS is that it unlocks a mastery for a great CC table that people will use throughout the game, farming those easy strike missions used to be one of the best ways to get blue ice shard currency which you could purchase stat selectable ascended gear, couple interesting cosmetics and one of the best gold and material farms in the Drizzlewood Coast meta.
I was waiting for this one. The crowning achievement of just trashing a story 15 years in the making. RIP Primordus, my boy. You were done dirty.
Im very mixed in IBS but i had to take an 8 month break once it ended. Wish you mentioned bangar as a character cuz he was really good, jormag being this sisnister manipulative enemy unlike the other dragons had me super hype but by the end theyre just another mindless creature :/
I unironically really enjoy DRM's now that i can just casually go back to them.
To me the biggest let down by far was the fact they didnt kill off braham. Instead of giving him a sacrifice of norn legend hes just kind of a purposeless wanderer, the fact he came out of the fight completely unscathed had me thoroughly upset
It was so tragic how they had to rush out the end of icebrood saga! It could have been such a satisfying end to do the full fire and ice duel. But it fell flat by the end. 😢
They never said it publicly, but what always seemed like the case to me is that they pulled most of the resources form it to start on EoD ASAP after the players raged so hard at them for announcing IBS instead of another expansion. So instead of taking longer to make sure IBS was good, they had to scramble to start on EoD so that they could tease it well over a year early just to try to calm the players down. So in a some way it's the players' fault for being so dramatic about the announcement of IBS, but on the other hand they could have said an expansion will come after while they gave IBS the time it deserved. Although the backlash from the players may have also been causing a lot of revenue loss, which meant they couldn't wait to finish IBS.
The better solution might have been to build off of IBS into an expansion about Jormag vs Primordis, and then into EoD after that.
Honestly Ice Brood could of been really good, I was enjoying it for a good while. Up until I had to go through all those instanced quests, all of them feeling far too samey and just getting planted into the area we were needed. It took me a while to get through that last half just because I was so uninterested by that point and in the end while EoD was fine, don't think it was nearly as good as it could have been.
It's really annoying that Living World and stuff like Icebrood Saga were free at the time of release but now you come later then you have to pay for it.
Yeah ISB was championed as a sort of living world forever, no more expansions. (Ironically it's now the reverse) They clearly had big long plans for jormag and primoridus with the set up. But much of the community saw this as maintenance mode and that was only compounded later by NCSoft's decisions. NCSoft didn't see the money from this, demanded they lay people off for some unannounced game and go back to expansions. In hindsight we can see that it was indeed in a maintenance mode for ArenaNet to launch another game and the content was limited but not awful. However, when the decision to move back to expansions happened, any plans for the icebrood saga story was scrapped and cut short to develop an expansion instead, what we now know as End of Dragons. That's when DRMs came in and the plot became a mess. By the end everyone just wanted to be done with it. Despite the circumstances I think they could have made the transition smoother and with less plot holes, it would still be bad but not this bad.
don't forget Icebrood Saga was made during COVID time. when it was first released, the characters had no voice, they add it later.
Imagine at the end two dragons just mouth-to-mouth each other and died in bright explosion. That's it.
What if we kissed in Far Shiverpeaks? 😊 Haha joking... Unless?..
@@daydev2599 Kiss the signposts. That's what we tell the squid kids in Vermont.
Icebrood Saga was supposed to have 4 other living story chapters at least before the end. They were rushed into stopping it to work on the EoD Expansion.
Even with sacrificing IBS, EoD was still rushed
@@moo3oo3oo3 That's the unfortunate truth of massive layoffs and covid at the same exact time.
Personally, with how EoD turned out, I don't think Icebrood deserved to get rushed and chopped like that.
EoD isn't much better, and it can't even use an excuse that it's an entire expansion. There was better story and flow in Icebrood than that.
I like to think it's no coincidence that Icebrood Saga and Irritable Bowel Syndrome have the same acronym
IBS will always leave a bitter taste in my mouth after their bizarre character assassination of Smodur the Unflinching.
Can't have a ruthless good guys in the Western games. They are only allowed to be villains or die if with good guys
@@Jinny-Wa Smodur is an authoritarian power-driven leader. He never was a good guy.
Ice brood Saga was a real rough time, especially the dragon response missions section. Waiting weeks at a time for them was excruitiating.
Dragonstorm was such a letdown as well. I often daydream of redesigning the encounter as a big map where Jormag and Primordus are just fighting in the background and the players have to tip the fight out of each others favor to get them to kill each other, with ryland and brahm as sabatours. Coulda been amazing.
Its important to remember that it wasn't all bad. Drizzlewood is a great farming map and the drakkar meta is great and worth returning to regularly.
The reason they made a bunch of easy strike missions was because back then there was a lot of players that were too afraid to go anywhere near raids, so it was supposed to be a baby stepping stone to steer players in that direction to gradually introduce them into that kind of content. They were very careful in making the strikes progressively harder.
Have fun in Cantha!
I still remember the news of them saying no more expansions, this is the style they're going for. The death of the game was near and a skeleton crew worked on this while they poured resources into some side project that fell through. This was a real dark time to be a GW2 player
Thank God gw2 didn't die
It really was a sad part of the game's history. Masteries aside I actually think Icebrood was on pace to be the best living world yet before the rushed ending. One thing that stood out to me watching Preach play through it though that I hadn't noticed while it was coming out is how incredibly random the strike missions feel. They're just all over the place in their design. Then there's Forging Steel, which really excited me as a new potential story mission format (group missions like GW1), but then they never made anything like it ever again. They were really throwing things against the wall to see what sticks it feels like in hindsight.
@@roastedbloop I think the EoD strikes are a big improvement over what the IBS ones are
Drizlewood coast is one of the best maps and metas, love that place
Originally the strikes in IBS were meant to be a learning platform for raid content, as Arenanet had noticed the low player amount in raids. And their spike in difficulty for most players.
The thought process was that the game needed a 10 player group content that increased in difficulty towards the raid level, requiring more and more coordination in the group. Which was a correct idea from the developers.
Problem was that the community shifted that idea very fast.
Instead of a learning platform, strikes became a common content for players to do. And a certain part of community even spread the behaviour of kill proofs from raids to get in to the strike groups. This actually was really prevalent during IBS and made me avoid finding groups as a random player. I was becoming more and more a casual player due to IBS at that time.
And as the community did not move to raids, the idea of strikes shifted.
As strikes seemed to be quite popular, Arenanet decided to continue with the system for end game group content.
Definitely gotta agree that IBS is a lowpoint, I enjoyed playing all of the maps extensively, but IBS felt like I just went through it really fast.
I do enjoy some of the IBS maps though, I think the Drakkar META is pretty solid, I also think Dragonstorm is pretty cool as well!
So even if it is a lowpoint, I still think there are pieces of content that is fun to play. But I find this to be the beauty of GW2, that you can go back and forth between any zone of any era to do any content you want at any time. The whole world map is evergreen content and I personally love it.
Covid really harmed Icebrood Saga. I don't think it would have been this rushed and forced to build EoD as the same time without it.
As a fun fact : Episode "No Quarter" and "Jormag Rising" (with the best map aka DrizzleWood Coast) was release right after covid started and came with NO voice-acting. A first for gw2.
It was surreal to play this part of the game with mostly no voice actors. They came months later (may/july => november 17)
Right after that tho, "Champions" started and everything went to shit. 1 and a half year of nothing with EoD coming in 28/2/22 severly unpolished (and still isn't)
The opening sketch made me find the sub button. Well done.
If GW2 was a bbq menu, icebrood saga is the grilled chicken which someone forgot to spice
It's more like someone vomited bud light lime onto it
It's the grilled vegetables just there for the single Vegetarian that turned up.
The layoffs and covid hit hard to Icebrood Saga. First part was genuinely cool, though. And even with the lackluster masteries it has a lot of my favorite maps in the game.
Fair review Preach, hope you enjoy End of Dragons! It's always cool to see your Gw2 content.
RIP Stan Lepard, the Metal Legion concert completely proves that you were a genius!
The dragon response missions felt like such a chore. I hated them. I almost stopped playing icebrood saga when going through them. I only continued just so I could check off the "it's done" box.
I love how Icebrood started. It was creepy and fun and had a great character death in it. Shame for the layoffs and covid i think it could of been a strong story. While the strikes started off weak I do think a few IBS ones are okay for introductory content. The problem is they come so late in the story, most people like you, have done or seen Lion's Court. I think there should be better stepping stones. Or at least a strike/two each expansion. Feels like if they want to do a future of strikes some back tracking would be helpful. I'd love to see them do more raids too but I know that's more work than they can probably take right now. But if this expansion really hits it off good maybe the future will be bright.
One big redeeming quality of the IBS meta events is that they are insanely profitable, especially dragon storm and drizzlewood.
drizzle my wood daddy
I regularly farm Drizzlewood for Clovers. Its a good place to test builds too
They really are my favorite mindless content to do.
If I recall correctly a lot of IBS launched without voice acting at all and it was added retroactively due to covid complications.
Actually I think it was only episodes 3 and 4 without voice acting.
Anyone remember when they didn't have voice actors when Drizzlewood first came out? It was all grunts and grrrs lol.
4:30 RIGHT?!! the shader stuff with the dragon swimming through the ice is awesome
You do get the Mount stealth mastery in the Icebrood Saga masteries.
Dragon respons missions was such a misstep. I also remember thinking exactly what preach did. "There's more? What were they thinking?" Never seemed to end.
I thought IBS started great. I really enjoyed the first 5 episodes. Then the good news arrived that there would be a new expansion after all and everything went to crap. I suspect they moved the majority of their devs to EoD and put a skeleton crew on IBS to finish it off. The moment the dragon strikes show up, all was lost.
As someone who was massively disappointed by 90% of EoD, it added salt in the would knowing part of the reason second half of IBS was so trash was because they focused their efforts into EoD, which itself turned out to be a giant flaming pile of garbage, in my opinion.
Originally IBS didn't even have voice acting, the devs were very forthcoming in explaining it was due to covid restrictions forcing everyone to work from home even though they at the time didn't have the infrastructure to allow that.
grrrr.. arrggg ... hummm (charr noises),
It was not all IBS. It was just two episodes (the drizzlewood ones) that the voice recording fell unto the big lockdowns. Please do not misinform about events.
@@mormegil231 I don't know how that is misinformation, I didn't specify the ENTIRE IBS.
@@mormegil231 uhm wrong, Bjora Marches released with no voice acting as well.
@@hanneskarlbom6644 So the phrase "Originally IBS didn't even have voice acting, " Implies not all IBS? Like how?Just admit you are misremembering and correct it.
The thing is that I really loved how the Icebrood Saga started and it still is among my favourite content in the game. From the tone set in the trailer, to the story beats and all that it entailed.
The first few releases were awesome, the prologue was REALLY good and delivered things in a completely new way, I still remember the ending cutscene for the prologue and how it worked in the engine, it was extremely well done.
The story setup up until that point was extremely well done, but once the announcement for a new Guild Wars 2 expansion was done, it became so clear that the Icebrood Saga was being cut and had to end as soon as possible to free up resources. The result of that was Champions and the many dragon response missions, which just drag along for way too long and have bosses that are just HP sponges that take ages to kill.
They had to wrap the story up so insanely fast that they only introduce Primordus back at the last second, to kill him off instantly after. The screentime was basically zero.
Up until Champions, the story built up quite well. But Champions was just the "lets do everything we can to wrap this up ASAP" and it was the worst.
I have no doubt that eventually, they would have killed each other. But it's clear that the Icebrood Saga was intended to be all about Jormag and slowly build it up as an incredible force, followed by a Firebrood Saga doing the same for Primordus and followed by a confrontation and the final end. That that story all was shoehorned into a few short missions is clear and the game suffers heavily from it.
What is dragging down the Icebrood Saga is clearly the Dragon Response Missions and if they re-tuned these, they could become way more fun and people wouldn't hate Icebrood Saga as much as they do. They're just the absolute worst pieces of shit content in the game and they need to be re-tuned, because in the core of them, they ain't that bad. But forcing people to do chores for 5 minutes, followed by battling extreme HP sponges in a fight that is boring and takes way too long, ain't what this game needs.
On the other hand, it introduces the Drizzlewood Coast, which is amazing. Duality.
My hope is that they will one day - hopefully soon - go through the Icebrood Saga and finetune it to improve it. Perhaps the Festival team could take a look at it, since all festivals were added upon the last few months, we can live with a year without additions to them and focus on the Icebrood Saga :)
I LOVED the start of icebrood saga. The first 3 or so chapters were some of my favorite in the game and DRMs and the story with primordy/jormag tuned my favorite living story to probably my least favorite very very quickly :(
as a new player in 2023, IBS was a great experience - maybe not on the same level as LW4, but not that far. The strikes are a great daily content, Drizzlewood is one of the best metaevents I played in any mmo game, you can return again and again, do south, south, jump into a north meta event, it's really cool, we're speaking about hundreds of small events to be part of during a crazy fast invasion of enemy map!
There were some other good things too - actual death of an important character, the metal concerts, finally a good hub to return to, good rewards, good enough story, loved some of the north maps and scandinavian/viking themes in masteries and maps, story...
I remember playing Icebrood Saga and being so sad. Me and my brother would always discuss lore since we were kids playing GW1. Here was a franchise we loved so much with a future so uncertain we didn't know if we were ever going to see the fate of the dragons. Icebrood Saga felt like they were trying to give us something rather than nothing, and it was overall a miss in its delivery to the point we had decided not to play End of Dragons. Thankfully EoD was great to playthrough and renewed some faith in the team.
I had no idea Sam voiced Braham. I'm not too surprised, though, because a lot of Critical Role actors voice characters I didn't recognize them as.
He's the voice of Tizlak the big frog guy in HoT too. :)
Matt is the male norn npc and took over as Canach. Liam voices a ton of characters too. Sam also has a lot of map npc- yesterday I found him in that eound basin in Seitung harbor. There are also two Vox Machina and Mighty Nein easter eggs in the game, and one dedicated to Matt himself ( a note about a storyteller that made a world real with his words and sent his friends into it)
The consecutive Dragon Response missions definitely killed a part of me that liked the beginning parts of Icebrood Saga.
"The story has gotten better and better" this made me sad because it's all downhill from here culminating in that steaming pile of crap that was Gyala Delve
I been worried about this video since you started. At least it starts kinda neat.
I had looked forward to hearing how you liked the flow of Drizzlewood Coast and the masteries associated with that particular zone as I think they're pretty good, but you skipped talking about it
He didn’t do it. I’ve watched all of the streams. He just didn’t do it and rushed through the story. Mike doesn’t take time to explore and do zones.
@@OspreyRed Aw, that's such a bummer.
@@OspreyRedwith affection to preach it is absolutely bonkers bananas to me if he is loving this game while mostly mainlining the story instances haha
The only memorable thing in IBS imo, huge map with 2 back to back meta event with tons of champs and bosses fight.
Oh and the Forging steel instance where you play as Ryland and his warband.
I enjoyed everything with the Char and Drizzlewood Coast. The civil war was fun. Also, Sam Riegel is goated.
Shadowlands? Felt more like Warlords of Draenor to me. Unfinished, abandoned, full of bad ideas. But at least no Mission Tables, eh?
Also got chopped up by COVID. Some of the patches were released without voice acting because everyone was WFH.
Remembering that period of time before IBS, i have the feeling that IBS was a big trial for anet. The studio had seen another game project failed and went trough layoffs the previous winter. The community felt like gw2 was in danger. Then Anet organised a huge event to announce what everyone hoped being a new expansion but ended up being IBS. I think Anet wanted to announce a new expansion indeed but they didn't have the green lights for it so they had to stick to IBS. Story and maps wise, IBS was great, at least up to drizzlewood part 1! Bjora with its light puzzles and creepy story is my favourite map and i know many players who like world exploring love it. Despite drm being horrible, IBS has many good points, like having the first open world farmable infusions, and it was received very positively overall. I think this is what gave Anet funds/safety to go on with a real expansion.
Speaking of strike missions, this is my take: Anet realized how little was the raid playerbase. It's renowed to be not casual-friendly. GW2 lacks a real introduction to raids. That's why strikes were so utterly easy in IBS, starting with the super easy ice construct. You will notice how strike missions are organized like a difficulty ladder starting from the very first IBS one and ending with EoD last ones. EoD has also a lot of tutorial content to introduce players to gw2 combat system and this all was clearly planned out starting in IBS. Looking back at it, my only concern remains the rushed ending of the saga, which could have been a great narrative arch if only Aned didn't have to rush it or side work it while developing EoD.
Terminal GW2 players here, I love your honest takes on the GW2. Icebrood saga was what broke my brand loyalty, now I just enjoy when anyone takes shots at Anet for these updates. "yeah hit them harder, fuck em."
To me, GW2 is so much more than just the latest content at any given point in time. But, to each their own.
I enjoyed IBS until Champions. And even the DRM aren't that bad when you look at them as optional repeatable content - the problem was it was forced and mandatory. And the only piece of content. As I luckily was taking a 18 month long break from the game I had to do a lot of story catch up to do, and just finished in time to get through all these missions at once, which is probably why it didn't feel as bad as it felt for the players who have been active all the time. So I sometimes do come back to that content and maybe I sometimes do a daily DRM when I feel like it. But more likely for the zones. And music.
Something that wasn't mentioned but also contributed to the disappointing quality of IBS is the fact that it was produced during a time a certain virus was holding the world hostage - this included missing voice overs for some content for example and maybe was also the reason they didn't bring all the usual cast.
But don't worry: End of Dragons is way better than the second half of IBS: Storytelling, maps including meta events and strike missions all shine in EoD.
I had genuinely forgotten about dragon response missions.
Locked them away in the depths of my memories. Probably to recover my mental health.
I applaud your honesty and am so happy that you are still enjoying gw2. I wonder if you will keep playing when you are finished ... I really hope so
Yeah 2 things: Icebrood Saga strikes are weird. They were intended to be an in-between that were easier but lead into raids. They were meant to be gateway content to get players into raids who though raids were too hard and too big of a difficulty jump, but then later they decided to replace raids with strikes (personally I prefer strikes for the most part because they're easier to integrate and do multiple difficulties). I would love for them to go back and rework those original strikes and give them CM's as well, but I doubt they'll do it. GW2 has a track record of not going back to work on old content and instead focus on new content.
As for the story, you didn't mention it so idk if you knew that a lot of players were already pissed at the announcement of Icebrood Saga just because it wasn't an expansion announcement. So they never publicly said it, but what seems to be the case to me is that the first half was stuff already in development so it came out good, and because a lot of players were so upset and that didn't placate them, they pulled most of the resources from IBS to start working on EoD so that they could announce it ASAP to calm people down. Which is also why EoD got announced WAY ahead of release, which they don't usually do. Usually they tend to announce things only a couple months before they release. As for EoD, they teased it like almost 2 years before it came out, while IBS was still ongoing. It felt like a big "HEY HEY WAIT GUYS WE'RE GOING TO DO AN EXPANSION PLEASE CALM DOWN!". Not only that but announcing Cantha, which GW1 fans and weebs alike had been begging for since the launch of GW2. Basically I think they dropped IBS and put all their eggs into the EoD basket as a hail marry to stop the riot. Luckily it seems like it worked, sadly at the cost of IBS living up to what it could have been.
It still could have been handled better obviously, by instead using IBS as a lead in to an expansion about Jormag and Primodis, but they might have felt backed into a corner and really needed that Cantha hype to help save them from the backlash. The player revolt may have also been enough to cause financial issues to where the company really didn't have the time to wait and finish out IBS with the time it needed.
Re: Too easy strikes. Gotta remember at the time most of the playerbase was either raiders, doing fractals, or open world players. ANet wanted to bring up this mid-tier difficulty things that would be kind of a step up to raids, where players would learn about boons and more involved mechanics and hopefully end up feeling confident for more difficult end-game content, thus justifying the development time for raids.
So, the first 3 strikes were made purposefully easy and increasing in difficulty. Boneskinner was the first strike that was actually difficult and I remember that at release groups were having a TON of difficulty beating it. The ones that followed, Whisper and Cold War (not gonna count Striking Steel) were actually a step up in difficulty, especially Whisper. I don't think you mentioned these in this video so I'm kinda curious what you thought about them! Mostly because EoD strikes follow the same pattern, with the first being easy, the second slightly harder, etc, culminating in the hardest one (the challenge mode for this one is currently the hardest PvE endgame content).
Ultimately, I don't think Anet expected strikes to be quite as popular as they became, which is why they are no longer a stepping stone for raids but rather what has come to replace them. As much as I enjoy raids though I think it was probably for the best. Maybe one day we will get another raid and it will be a tailored raiding experience instead of something thrown together just because that's what's expected.
One thing to note with Icebrood saga is that it was created and released during the pandemic.
So at that time not only did ANET lack recourses, because of other inner reasons, but they were lacking the talents.
Icebrood saga came out without voice-over. Since the pandemic was going on so many of the things were done remotely. Voice acting was added with a later patch.
And you can tell. It is rushed. It is half-arsed. They just needed to push something out there at all cost.
It is quite dissappointing, but it did bring us a good gold farm...
And for the strikes: The strikes were initially created to be an introduction into raids. For new players to see what a raid boss would be like for when they get into raiding themselves. There were means of gathering high- end gear such as Ascended through strikes. It was meant to prepare the player for the raiding experience. BUT what happened was the community loved it so much they wanted more!
And that is what happened. Raids got scrapped and instead we got more support on what the PvE community wanted for end-game content: More fractals and more strikes.
Besides the DRMs which I started replaying GW2 at the tail end of, and not being able to get into GW1 really, I thought IBS otherwise was completely fine which is admittedly a really weird circumstance to be in compared to most of the other players like with the Primordus situation. It's really weird cause I really liked PoF and while I get HoT as a theme I didn't like it too much, and EoD is moreso of a mixed bag for me.
The problem is that i still feel that Anet hasn't recover fully from such hit ( all those layouts) , right now they varely have people to release content for the game, if the next expansion is disapointing, i'm pretty much done with the game.
I actually think theres a lot ot love about Dragon Response missions
My general understanding about ibs is that at some point arenanet split their staff into two groups. One was directed to work on eod and second was finishing ibs, that's why i think it becomes worse towards the end. They just didn't invested enought resources into it and that's why we got champions. And regarding champions, i assume they wanted to make it repeatable content, but how it works - it is not profitable and not interesting so everyone will just do it once for achievements and that's it. Ofc there is simple solution to that - add more rewards, but knowing anet it won't happen, as they rarely return to stuff they already made to fix it. Regarding strikes - They said it was supposed to be introduction to raiding, but because it is so easy - it's now more popular than raiding. However, they fixed that issue in eod strikes. They are more difficult, have challenge motes and I personaly think this is how it should look like. And regarding story- charr civil war and discovering ryland were the best plots so far.
Fair analysis! It was a really low point for the community. Except the metal concert. Overall, the game seems to have more than recovered and luckily survived that era. I do really love the zones, metas and overall aesthetic of IBS though
The thing with the early strikes is there was no desire for much of the community to do any kind of large group instanced combat. Raids flopped, so they made the icebrood strikes very accessible. It seems this worked, to this day those strikes fill very quickly and are done frequently, and they built a community that was ready for the EOD strikes including Old Lions Court.
It only goes downhill from there, sadly
Oufff here we are knew this was coming. Fs for Primordus :(. Thanks for reminding me that it was good at the beginning
Drizzlewood Coast, Strikes and DS are really good content.
GW2 really seems like a quality rollercoaster
I'd say it's more like Finland in Dirt Rally 2.0. Boing, boing, boing, boing. Every time it starts to go up, it belly-flops for a moment.
The cool part is the horizontal progress so you choose which content you prefer and focus on that
I love this game and have played since early launch. I still like it a lot, I play it almost every day, I'm not dissing it or calling it dead or any such thing - I want it to be as amazing as it can be. That said: EoD and SotO haven't really gotten me as hype as HoT or PoF. They've been fine, but... I'm actually kind of worried that skyscale has permanently reduced the fun of exploring the world for me. Not ruined it, mind, but... I can't help but think of how much more fun the new maps would be if griffin and gliding were our only aerial options. Ziplining up a tree and trying to fly the grriffin between branches in EoD, learning to let the griffin ride updrafts so it could handle more situational verticality in SotO.... I'm actually really sad about it. I'm having trouble envisioning what the future of map design for GW2 is like... and I really hope the people at ANet had some ideas before releasing it.
It started out so good and then they dropped the ball so hard it smashed through the ground, past burnt out dwarf cities and burrowed into the core of Tyria to smoulder forever next to Primordus' immense wasted potential.
Anyone know if Preach is going to do the fractals at some point? That was the end game for a long time and I don't know if he's covered it yet.
Imagine building up two giant fuck off dragons for an entire "expansion" and then having to fight two bozos instead. Not even fighting the dragons.
Especially insulting after you can actually fight Mordremoth in a meta. They pulled the same shit they did at the end of the core story.
And the fight ends with fucking what? Magic girl rainbow rays of friendship. And they call FF14 the weeb game. At least FF would let you fight the dragons.
Also something about Aurene just rubs me the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on it. Something about the voice or the pretentious self-importance.
100% agree, covid was a big time to have people comming back to MMOs and gw2 was so alive during 2020 due to covid.
Seeing all my old friends come back online was a blast.
But the end of dragons did not get me on board, I really ignored the content.
I haven't even done it.
Portions of Icebrood launched without voice acting. Remember that? They had to retroactively add it later. Rough times...
Icebrood was the first chapter in GW2 I didnt finish. And I havent bothered to do it ever since. I have started EoD but havent even left the first zone. I loved GW1 to bits, hardly a boss or a nook that I wasnt familiar with, then, finally GW2 dropped and despite some let downs here and there, whenever they released new content, I was there. But Icebrood isnt the only problem, it just managed to put the finger where it hurts.
The Metal Legion concert is the best meta in the game, it's simply amazing and fun.
I think "lump of excrements" is a bit harsh for a Living Story-chapter, that brought some of the best characters in all Tyria (Bangar), one of the best maps (Grothmar Valley) and one of the meta events that's in daily rotation (Dragonstorm).
I get that the Icebrood Saga was a massive letdown when we all were expecting so much more than it delivered, but I think this shouldn't overshadow the really good aspects of it
There is one silver lining about the Icebrood Saga, and it's a significant one. It was here where Arenanet learned that they can repurpose story content into repeatable instanced content such as strikes and events like Dragonstorm.
The reason I say this is significant is because Path of Fire and Hearth of Thors (and their repsective Living World seasons) were feature rich expansions, but also took A LOT of resources for Arenanet to craft. Which most likely contributed to the layoffs in 2019. By having a smaller team on Icebrood Saga, Arenanet had to make the best out of it whatever content they made. The end result was poor, but it allowed them to improve their production pipeline and laid the groundwork for End of Dragons. Hopefully Arenanet can maintain the momentum into Secrets of the Obscure.
I don't quite understand what you mean. Isn't a lot of fractals just that? Like, the one with the dredge (from super early Scarlet's arc), the aetherblades base and Mai Trin's right?
They shouldn't have had to 'learn' that though - GW1 turned the old Hall of Heroes into Tomb of the Primeval Kings = one of the best bits of content in that game. But then Anet for years seemed to want to utterly forget the first game, which is more than a shame as I still think it has the best skill system of any mmo type game ever and it is still a crying shame that the GW2 skill system is terribly bare in comparison.
I really hope preach plays the strike CMs blind... That is how you get the raid like progression imo.
Also IBS strikes, whisper of jormag is alright mechanically it really just requires a CM, and the boneskinner actually has mechanics but it is tuned so low that people ignore the failure mechanics and just circle dodge it.
Personally I think they could keep all IBS strikes relevant by just upping the base numbers a bit (still let them be easy, but I was able to two person the ice golem at its release and it is easier now). And then put CMs in there for the best of them.
Icebrood Saga was the low point for the game (despite all the massive content droughts), and was the point where after 9 years of playing I finally took a break. EoD definitely was a proper second wind for the game, and I am very happy for it.
Completed this arc for second time yesterday in order to obtain the legendary amulet, which is just barely enough to arm twist someone to going back thru some of this stuff (notably the end with the Champions arc). Needless to say this vid is well timed for the likes of me.
For the whole "COVID was a thing" crowd...
Icebrood free releases: Started in September 2019 and went through April 2021
Also happening at this time: FFXIV Shadowbringers
For anyone who's played both of those titles for years, I think the best way to sum that up is a quote from John Wick: "Oh."
Further exacerbating my ire is I've been a fan of the GW franchise since picking up GW1 back when it released, so to see how elements played out in IBS (an apt acronym)...holy shit it was bad.
Kinda surprised Mike didn't tee off on one particular element at the end of Icebrood (Braham) like he did with one in LWS4 (Aurene). But I suppose the whole "everyone has plot armor" mindset had taken a firm hold. Perhaps EoD will shed some light on why I say that, though.
2:47 I'm honor lvl 500 in WoW and I do PVP since TBC. I love that from that game, pve? I don't care that much. But now I stopped playing PVP to do the same you are doing with GS2 and Destiny 2. I'm watching the history of the game since the beginning. I already did Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms and started TBC with my evoker. I'm going to do every quest, every rep, etc. All by walking. It's so fun
also, make sure to do the drizzlewood coast metas. those are worth revisiting the Icebrood Saga content. Just once at least.
I have got to say though, Zaithan aside, every time you see a dragon in GW 2 they are gigantic and epic, WOW doesn't really even do that in Dragonflight. Even with IBS being what it is, the fight at the end with the two dragons... they are so massive.
if i recall though, didn't Icebrood come out during the height of COVID? So there were some substantial limitations that they had holding some things back. including during that time they used sub titles only for the story, and added the voices in later to finish things off.
I'm a GW2 fan, and even I have to admit Icebrood took a dive in quality. It's a shame because it had some strong points, such as fun maps, an increased number of story cutscenes, and a good number of cool earnable skins. However, the rushed story arc, questionable instanced content additions, and lame masteries really did a number on the overall experience.
I enjoyed the three maps we got with events and bosses and to be fair, the overall story wasn't too bad (just rushed).
But the Icebrood Saga was just a series of broken promises. We were promised "Expansion like features" and got basically nothing.
Dragon Response Missions though, whomever came up with that idea deserves a special place in the mists.
IBS was a time I used to go back and do a bunch of chives I didn’t do before hand. So, I was happy enough for the slower (albeit grindy) pace of IBS!
Development for IBS happened during COVID lockdown. When it was first launched it didn't even have voice acting because the voice actors were unavailable. The conditions were really harsh, so we have to judge it keeping that in mind. Let's just think of it as GW2's filler episode.
Now the skiff expansion - they have no real excuse for how that turned out. I mean, fishing? Who cares about fishing in MMOs, ESPECIALLY one where you can literally go underwater and kill fish with special underwater skills?! Just because most MMOs have fishing doesn't mean it's fun or quality content. Fishing is just an afterthought in games, and that's the only thing it can be. They could've made an epic underwater expansion with Largos and Blackjack, but nooo, let's bring Cantha back. The fact that the expansion also features a water dragon feels like such a slap in the face. I pushed through the EoD story and left it, never to return. Don't even care about the masteries, don't need them. Not even the resurrect from the jade bot, it's not worth it.
Great job with SotO though, love it so far! The level design is on point (with verticality done right), the lovecraftian story is really captivating, the rifts that have us revisit old maps are great for some quick farming action, the weapon adjustments were long due and the new legendary armors sound extremely promising!
Also, fingers crossed for a future underwater expansion - the infrastructure is there, let's use it and show Blizzard it can be done right!
Yeap, let me preface this by saying I didn't play GW1 so I wasn't aware of Primordus' status for being the bad ass it was supposed to be, but the entire thing was just such a huge drop off. The witty, smug bastard of a dragon in Jormag, who cleary is beyond just tossing itself headlong into a fight, then proceeds to toss itself head long into a fight. Drove me nuts.
Edit: To add, I completely agree about not going back to these zones. I honestly don't think I stepped foot back there since. Couldn't agree more with that point.
Honestly, the worst part of IBS was the absolute disservice to Primordus. Jormag had plenty of build up over the course of the game and it would've been a fine move to kill Jormag. Primordus on the other hand, has barely had any presence in GW2. For 95% of the game, Primordus' influence is limited to "Watch out traveler, there's some Destroyers in those caves." It was a whole thing that the Asura were driven to the surface by Primordus, and the Dwarves are nearly extinct because of him and had to turn to stone to fight them, yet we never get any pay off. We don't get to go underground to retake lost cities, we never get to see how the Dwarves react to their fight finally ending, or how the Asura react to being able to go to their ancestral home again. All of it got thrown out because they needed to fast track to EoD and couldn't afford to spend any more time on him.
Braham never getting that bow back.
A jewel of an intro